Since you brought this up, and I have done something along those lines, I guess its time i posted this.

Using Melody to create a normal map, I took a 3ds model from RenderMonkey that was 63k polies, and reduced it to around 3k polies. I created a normal map from the 63k poly version and applied it to the 3k one. The skins for this model are a solid gray skin for skin 1, and the normal map for skin2. I then used a shader from this forum called mat_diffuseperpixel (not the best one for it, but a pretty good start).

Here is the screenshot of the model with no normal map:


and here it is with the normal map applied:


Now its far from perfect, but should give you some idea of whats capable. You cant really tell from the screenshots, but when the model rotates, you can see how the lighting is affected by the per pixel normals. There are still some issues to work out, but it just goes to show that the A6 engine is more then capable of doing this. Its just a matter of the shader experts to come up with the best way to make this happen.