It seems they are trying to port the PS360's tesselator which is done in the CPU as their GPU's don't support it. The Wii U has a specialized tesselator in the GPU.

Lazy ports are lazy!

So the Wii U's CPU, for launch titles, is roughly as powerful as that of the 360 and PS3 at the end of the generation. Given that they have yet to learn the optimisation tricks available to make it run faster, I'd say this is proof that the Wii U's CPU is stronger than the 360 and PS3 CPUs, albeit not dramatically stronger. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if optimisations for the 360 and PS3 actually slow it down on the Wii U, because on 360 and PS3, they're working to bypass bottlenecks that aren't there on the Wii U.

Nintendo has always taken the approach of "reduce the bottlenecks" rather than "brute force it". That's also why you can get a game with graphics and physics like Super Mario Galaxy out of the Wii within a year of launch.

As rubido above me pointed out, there are things that are done with the CPU on 360 and PS3 that can likely be handled by the GPU, or by other units, on the Wii U. But it will take time for developers to adapt to those abilities - expect use of them in the second generation of Wii U titles, releasing late 2013, once they've had a chance to get used to it all. And expect Nintendo themselves to be using them even earlier.

I'm more worried about Snoop Dog being in the game.

Ummm, because "next" gen should always out muscle "current" gen? If a console isn't more powerful than what's already on the shelf (PS3/360), than it's not a next gen system and that's kind of a big deal.

The PS3 has no tesellator to my knowledge. They have an Nvidia GPU and Nvidia didn't start producing tesellators until their DX11 cards if my memories are correct.

Slower =/= weaker. Some of Intel's Core i7 run at 2 GHz or even worse speeds, that doesn't mean they're weaker than a Pentium IV.
The Wii U's CPU has an advanced achitecture (Power 7), probably they lowered the speed to decrease heat and consumes...which makes it difficult for straight ports, since what you can't get from the clock, should be got from other features (out of order instructions for example), but you should change the code of the original game for that. In the end, it's all a question of whether the developer takes his time to make a good work.

The Wii U isn't some graphical powerhouse.

It's a little better than the 360/PS3 in some areas, and a little worse in others.

Get over it already. It won't make a lick of difference for games like Mario/Zelda/Mario Kart anyway, those will all look great.

And really honestly, the people who thought the Wii U was somehow going to compete toe to toe with the PS4/720 for third party games were getting way ahead of themselves.

There's still plenty of horsepower there for some decent 3rd party content, if you need to play the latest, greatest Call of Duty or Crysis or whatever next big Western third party IP there is, buy a PS4/720/PC. Simple as that.

Why should a "next" gen system "out muscle" the current gen?

The next generation of consoles needs to be able to do things that the current generation cannot do. Was that true of the Wii? Yes. Is that true of the Wii U? Yes.

If your attitude were taken to cars, then all that would be made is cars that have more power, go faster, and have a more "stylish" look. By your reasoning, a hybrid car or an electric car could never be a "next generation" car, because it isn't as powerful as a petrol-based car.

Any reasonable person would agree that there are many ways to improve on what came before, and the unhealthy obsession with raw power in the gaming industry is what has been killing it over the last 10 years or so. But hey, some developer commented that the Wii U CPU, specifically, seems to be similar to the PS3/360's CPU in terms of ability (while the GPU is significantly stronger), so it's not at all possible for the Wii U to be "next gen", right?

I'd respond to your comment by noting that anti-fanboys like yourself seem insistent on claiming that Nintendo is doomed on the basis of such absurd logic, and have been doing so since before the Wii launched (indeed, most of you said that it would be Nintendo's last console, fewer than 10 million sold, etc, etc)... but then, that wouldn't exactly be news, either, would it?

What you're asking me to do is suspend more than 30 years of gaming hardware trends and redefine what it means to be "next" gen. See, I've been gaming since the 2600 and every generation meant better hardware. Even Nintendo did this from the NES>SNES>N64 and then Gamecube. Every console doubled itself in power. They were into making core gaming machines until the Wii. So now that they decided to change and do a 180, I'm suppose to redefine what I believe next gen means simply because they said so?

Next gen has always meant getting more powerful hardware capable of rendering physics/graphics/AI unachieveable in the prior gen.

But Nintendo DOES double up this time again. The Wii is really the only instance where they didn't really increase the power that much. But Wii to Wii U transition is a significant leap. People keep measuring the Wii U against PS360 which is wrong imho. I would go as far as saying that Sony and MS went to far in 2005/06 with their arms race. They cranked up the numbers to an extreme level and went cheap everwhere else to cut costs (Look at the 360 disc drive for example, this thing is a disgrace. Or the overall size of those consoles due to heat issues. I bought a PS3 SLIM just this year and the size/weight is still ridiculous for a console imho.). SInce they put everything in quantity and saved on quality their consoles couldn't even sustain their own power so they had and have issues to this very day, such as overheating and overall system breakdown (YLOD/RROD). I would go as far as saying the PS360 generation didn't really start until they released their slim modells. Everything before that was a Beta Test on the wallets of their loyal customers. They fucked their customers over on so many levels, it isn't even funny anymore, at least to me. It blows my mind every day that after what was going down this generation with so many people having to double dip on the same console of the same generation that people are still supporting this approach for the next generation. I NEVER bought the same console twice to this very day and I will never do so.

Call me a crazy fanboy if you want but I support Nintendos approach over the other two, the leap Wii to Wii U is very significant and that is all that counts TO ME.