Well, it's not like it's impossible to get a good-looking sword with 200 tris, and if they refered to polygons, being 400 tris, then even better
If it's for a 3rd person xbox rpg, I think it's quite a fair spec tbh. Then again, I never worked with xbox speccs, so I might be wrong.
Have look here:
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/co...bmissions.html