It depends on what Nintendo wants this console to be. Are they abandoning third party support for the most part and trying to support this console all by themselves, sort of abandoning the market playstation microsoft and PC are all competing over and carving themselvelves further into their nieche? Are they creating another nintendo box?
Then the specs don't really matter that much. They need to get the price down to a point where more mainstream gamers will consider it as a secondary console, parents will pick it up for their kids etc.
Are they trying to hit Wii sweet spot again and wow gamers with innovation, as well as draw in new crowds?
This option is hard to gauge. Depending on what the gimmick is, they might actually need better than ps4 spects to pull it off. The WiiU imo partly suffers, not only because the gamepad is too expensive in production, but also because the console is just not powerful enough to really use it impressively. It lacks that final punch to render games twice in real time without sacrifices in framerate or graphical prowess.
Also initially they promised the ability to have multiple gamepads supported, which could have really opened up possibilities in regards to party games, original local multiplayers etc. (Splatoon could be even more awesome with a genuine local turfwar, for example). This was quitely scrapped, making the wiiU a more imbalanced local multiplayer experience than the wii was. This leads me to believe the WiiU isn't really powerfull enough to fully utilise its own gimmick. (And I say this as someone that absolutely loves off-Tv play, the convienience of the touchscreen for menus etc. I think the gamepads great!)
Regardless of all of the above, this option seems the most likely to me. Miyamoto has said that they want to continue to innovate, go different directions and hope that the NX will wow gamers.
The last option is Nintendo talking to third party developers and asking what they need, to try and win them back to the console. This puts them into a more direct competition with sony and microsoft. They would be making a 'traditional' console in this case. If they do this ps4 level specs wont nearly be enough for them. They're releasing mid- to endcycle of the other two consoles and the NX has to simultaneously compete with two, likely by that point cheaper, consoles as well as their more powerfull successors. Releasing two years ahead of the competition like that could be an advantage, time to establish market dominance, it could however also serve to cut the consoles legs short, once Ps5/newXbox release.
If that's the strategy they're going with, they need to at least double the ps4s specs, while keeping the price down as much as possible and also have a killer first and thirdparty lineup for the first year imo. That's going to be hard to achieve.
Phew, this post turned out way longer than planned!
