The Wii U may not be a cutting edge powerhouse, but it's definitely capable of producing beautiful visuals; after all, the PS3 and 360 produced some absolute stunners with half as much RAM and older GPUs.

The thing is that nobody's trying.

Nintendo's priority clearly isn't on pushing visual  boundaries. Even the 1st party who pushed the Wii's limits, like Tokyo EAD and Retro, seem content to do Wii-graphics-in-HD on Wii U. And third parties? They're barely bothering to do ports at all.

The thing is, graphics are about more than just the hardware.

Games like Uncharted 2-3, The Last of Us, and God of War Ascension look as good as they do because they were built by teams of technically brilliant people for whom pushing technological boundaries was a very high proirity. Wii U simply doesn't have any such studios. 

well they hired some experience people from good teams who worked on HD.

Problem is Retro were given a game that will never really be pushed graphically. They need to have full freedom to create a real 3D game.

X looks better than The Last of Us.

The think about Wii U is hardware in the first place... the hardware is way behind PS4 and Xbone.

Neither Naughty Dog, Santa Monica or other studio can make Wii U, PS3 or 360 games looks like PS4 or Xbone.

Find out how much money Sony threw at the games you mentioned. I don't know what the numbers were but I imagine that Nintendo would balk at throwing that kind of money at a game. I would love to see it happen. Imagine a game with Nintendo's IPs and typical level of polish and Uncharted's production values (not taking anything away from Naughty Dog).

Then there's third parties who are throwing that kind of money at their games. They currently have no incentive to rewrite their game engines to make their games look as good on the Wii U as possible.

It will have great games but writing this still made me sad.

Who said anything about Wii U having PS4 graphics?

Yes, it does.

But it most likely doesn't push Wii U as far as TLOU/UC2-3 push the PS3.

Main graphical disadvantage = hardware... not studios or software.

No studio will fix that disadvantage... Wii U hardware is weak... that is a fact but that was not a big issue for others consoles in the past

But the Wii U hardware is very capable of producing great looking games, what's missing is the studios who would actually do it.

I shadown edited my comment to make more clear.

"No studio will fix that disadvantage... Wii U hardware is weak... that is a fact but that was not a big issue for others consoles in the past "

When you say "great looking games" you need a time comparision... for example I think Donkey Kong Country a great looking game for 1990 but not for 1995.

Wii U can make great looking games for 2010 but not for 2014... somethink like that... great Studios won't change that.

And graphycs didn't means that the console is goor or bad... if it will have comercial success or not.

Edit - TLOU visual are outdated... great looking game for the late PS3 life but outdated for what PS4/Xbone shows... so everybody is asking a PS4 version of the game