"I'll put it to you this way. Honda, Toyota, Ford all make 7th Gen vehicles. Honda & Toyota build quite powerful vehicles. Ford builds a less powerful vehicle that has a very popular feature - let's say it can drive itself on the highway.
8th gen rolls around, Honda & Toyota decide to build even more powerful cars. Ford abandons its self-driving on highway ability and simply builds a comparable car comparable to the power of the 7th gen Honda & Toyota. In addition, it offers a feature that may have some pull - Siri in the car.
The feature proves to be not revolutionary in any regard and is largely neglected as a feature at all. This is the case with the Wii U."
Features aren't that important like the example of 3DS show us. Wii didn't sell well because it had motion gaming but because it had Wii Sports which uses motion gaming in a very fun way. WiiU will have the next Wii Sports and PS4/ 720 won't have any more unique features leading to unique fun games for casuals. Hardcore gamers also don't care that much about graphics as the PS1, PS2, even NES, DS, 3DS... have shown us. Games is what matters, features or graphics on the other hand are certainly not a high selling argument as pretty much every generation of consoles and handhelds have shown. I again don't understand how people can think otherwise because there is no proof of this aspects to be that important in terms of hardware success.
"Based on nothing? There was massive hype for the Wii, EVERYONE and their mother knew about it. Go ask a casual if they even know about the Wii U - odds are they don't."
The main casual IPs aren't released yet and the console is too expensive to really aim at casual gamers right now. Measuring the hype of a product from a specific target is also something very difficult and I don't see any strong data nor evidences that show that these kind of gamers won't buy the console when games and prices will be right for them.
