What's going on with the graphics on the Wii?

Let me start by saying:

• I understand the Wii is about gameplay over graphics.
  
• I understand that all current Wii games are rendered at a maximum of 480p (although the Wii is technically capable of rendering at 720p, see here) .
  
• I understand that the Wii is not as powerful as the XBox 360 or Playstation 3 (PS3).

However, I also recognize that the Wii is more powerful than the Gamecube, the PS2, and is about as powerful as the original XBox (the Wii has a more capable CPU, but it's GPU lacks support for programmable shaders).

So, given that you'd expect the graphics for Wii games to easily surpass the Gamecube and PS2, and be as impressive as the original XBox, right?

Well, in practice this has not been the case. And if you own a Wii you probably share in my pain, as the last generation consoles showcased more impressive games than one can find on the Wii:

Halo 2 (XBOX)	God of War 2 (PS2)
Ninja Gaiden Black (XBOX)	Beyond Good & Evil (XBOX)
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (XBOX)	Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (XBOX)

So why is it we don't see graphics that are at least as good as the last generation on the Wii? There are a few reasons:

• Nintendo advertised to 3rd Party Developers that they could save money by developing games on the Wii, since it's audience doesn't care as much about graphics. As a result, developers aren't spending as much time (or money) trying to push the limits of the Wii to improve the way the games look.
  
• For the reasons above, many Wii games are direct ports of PS2 games with waggle controls bolted on (no graphical enhancements were made for the Wii).
  
• To reduce the cost of the Wii's graphics card, Nintendo chose to implement fixed function shaders (instead of programmable shaders) which makes it more difficult to perform effects that have been commonly seen in last generation consoles. It's not that these effects could not be duplicated on the Wii, it just takes more effort to do so. Nintendo could provide a free game engine to 3rd Party Developers thereby reducing the effort (and cost) for generating these effects; however, I could find no evidence that Nintendo is pursuing such a course.

So is all hope lost for quality graphics on the Wii? Is Nintendo taking any steps to improve the situation? Or are they going to rest on their laurels due to the current phenomenal success of the Wii? Well, I'm happy to report that at least one company has seemingly provided a solution. They've built a proprietary game engine for the Wii that's capable of generating advanced effects and some very impressive graphics (see the video below).

Hey Nintendo, if you use this game engine for the next Zelda game for the Wii, I'll actually buy it this time!!!