The model for coins in Super Mario Odyssey is simpler than in Super Mario Galaxy
"Simpler" is maybe a bit of a stretch, since what's happened is that a lot of the data which previously existed in vertices has been moved to substantially higher-detail storage in texture maps.  If you weren't using the texture maps, you'd have to have a lot more vertices to compensate and get an acceptable look.<p>In modern games, you often can't really separate the model from the textures the way that you used to.  Hell, I have a couple models I render in my game which take their geometry <i>entirely</i> from textures and don't use traditional model vertices to carry their mesh at all.  These days you kind of have to consider models and textures to be basically the same thing;  just different data sources that get fed into your shader and accessed in different ways, and you can often move data back and forth between them depending on the exact effect you want to get.  But I wouldn't call my no-vertex-data models "simpler" than a version which was drawn from a static mesh;  all that complexity is still there, it's just being carried in a texture instead of in a vertex buffer object.