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A lot of people are still over analyzing the graphic capabilities of Wii. The basic consensus is that Wii is just a little more powerful than the original Xbox. However, the original Xbox had features like specular highlighting and bump mapping.
Can the Wii do these? Super Mario Galaxy seems to indicate yes, as where all the current games don't feature specular or bump-mapping.
Matt responds: Wii can do specular highlighting and bump-mapping, sure. Both of these graphical feats were accomplished on GameCube - and with launch titles like Rogue Squadron. If, on the other hand,
you're asking whether Wii can do normal mapping and other advanced texture filtering, there is no way to say for sure just yet. The developer consensus - at least based on every software house I've spoken with - is no. Wii is more powerful than GameCube, yes, and in many ways it's more powerful than Xbox, too. But not everything about it is immediately superior to Microsoft's old hardware. Xbox had built-in shaders and Wii does not.
To really be blunt, it is basically an overclocked GameCube with more RAM. If you don't want to hear that, I'm sorry, bit it's the truth. There are some people who believe that the architecture is capable of normal mapping due in large to the increased CPU speeds and greater RAM, but I personally don't think we'll see many games on Wii that sport the graphical effect. I'd love to be wrong, but at this point in time I've seen no indication otherwise. Super Mario Galaxy has some brilliant effects in place, particularly for textures and particles, but I don't see any full-scene normal mappin