You make a good point, but I don't really consider this game to look next-gen at all. Games like
EA Sports Fight Night Round 3 (Xbox360),
Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3), and even
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Gamcube & Wii versions) look
way more next-gen than this new Pokémon game. Then again, those games don't have to worry about modeling 493 Pokémon, including all the varieties of Unown, four different versions of Deoxys (unless they use the normal form for all of them like in Colosseum), male and female Pokés, and all the recolors for shinys and Aruseus forms.Then there's the trainer models, attack effects, animations, backgrounds, and fancy lighting effects to worry about. In the end, PBR's visuals will be more about
"quantity" than
"quality". The game won't look terrible, but it won't really look next-gen either. =P
The only way that this game will "wow" me is if they give Meowth's model a 3D mouth (like his trophy in Super Smash Bros. Melee and the Meowth reporter in Pokémon Channel) instead of a texture for a mouth (like in all the other 3D Pokémon games).
