That isnt completely true, it will take a while, quite a bit in fact, for them to optiomize unless they developers get new tools to play with, but most multiplats this gen will either be 1080p 30fps  or 720 60 fps making better use of lighting,textures,anti-aliasing on those two systems.

See the next gen systems are kind of a rip-off if you're a graphics loon. They're faux-PCs that will allow for ease of porting between 3 platforms(Porting things to the WiiU from that set up is also alot easier than porting between the 360/PS3 or the PS2/Gamecube)  for it to function it needs that ridiculous amount of RAM.with The WiiU doesnt need all that excess memory. Why? Because its core set up uses memory much more efficiently, it does more wtih less.  Its heavy customization also allows for bigger net gains, this is true.

It makes more sense to just build a PC this time around.

This is what John Lucas means when he says Nintendo trapped Microsoft and Sony into a "power struggle"  Meanwhile the WiiU got the PS2's head start, but it starting lagging after launch, like the DreamCast, but at least the Dream Cast had more games

Speaking of rip-offs the Xbox One is even more so, but despite its price it does have more traction in the US market imo,Sony has the nicer looking system and setup but Microsoft is giving you more with the machine. The people with money will buy that thing .

What people seem not to understand is that when you're buying the Xbone or the PS4, you arent paying for the systems hardware, you're paying for the bells and whistles. (Kinect, features,setup,the free game or whatever) With the WiiU, you're paying for the hardware, through and through. Thats why Nintendo is loosing money on it. That is why they're offering bundles at value. See the people on these forums think they're getting more with the PS4 because of the current situation with the 3rd party developers( and the power arguements) but the mass market? All they see is a price. All they see is the value on the shelves. Shit some people I know dont even KNOW you can play other games by 3rd parties on Nintendo systems.  ( which comes to my other gripe with Nintendo, fix your store presence, stop undershipping your games!)

X86 architecture will either improve in the coming years, so they'll be able to get more out of the cores or we'll get new cpu/gpu hybrid structures that will replace these consoles forgoing backwards compatibility once again.

You see, what matters most this gen is gamercraft and marketing

The market has shown over the past two years that its tired of being saturated with more and more of the same, take a look at the sales in 2011-2012, the only games that did well are those with hype, the franchises and those that were well managed(with budget pricing)and even then some of those have taken hits  in revenue.

Most of the mulitplatform games on PS4/Xbox One are looking  exactly like that, they need more exclusives if they're going to convince anyone to buy them.

Meanwhile Nintendo is delivering fresh experiences that evoke a sense of familiarity, while still retaining their entities as something entirely new, games like TW101, Xenoblade,Kid Icarus Uprising,Luigis Mansion and even Super Mario 3D World (Super mario World>Super Mario 3D World) Hell even the new Sonic game is doing that.  So yeah I can see why John Lucas thinks what he thinks but there are a bunch of outlying factors that can change this situation dramatically.

No I dont think Virtual Reality is going to do anything at his stage, the technology is still too nascent

Sony and MS won't replace them for another decade, neither of them can afford it. Even if the tech improves vastly in the next few years, which I don't see why it suddenly would, there wouldn't be any changing what Sony and MS already put out. They don't need to optimize, it's an open book. Every programmer should be able to efficiently use x86 by now. There's not much optimization to be done, if any at all.

By the way, PC experience is a lot different from consoles, they don't fit in the same space. They are their own things, same with phones which I don't get why we are still discussing. We already have a CPU/GPU structure that's 10 times better, it's in the Wii U. Do you understand the cost of making new consoles, especially too early in the life of another? Not just financial loss but also loyalty. Who's to say they won't abandon the new systems if they do it with these. That's it, the damage was done. These consoles are here to stay as they are, as long as the other two companies can stay afloat in the business, which I'm not convinced is long.

I think the news of Ballmer leaving MS has been taken too lightly, and Sony's financial situation as it is, isn't good. Sony can't afford a screw-up, much less support a fourth system. PS3 is finally paying for itself but Vita and PS4 won't be, if they try again, without major success to back it up, they won't be able to take those losses. With a worth of less than Nintendo for their entire megacorporation, and constant losses, it's not looking good. It's a launch year so they'll be taking even more losses 2013. 11 billion isn't all going to SCE and as supporting a system takes a lot of money. If SEGA had kept the Dreamcast on the market for just a few months longer they'd have gone bankrupt, so they immediately stopped support and now look at them, they rebounded by making software. SCE can't take many more losses, they will continue to attempt to sell the systems they put on the market as long as they can, because they just straight up can't put out another one any time soon.

MS is on the way out as it is and won't even consider a new system without causing a ***t storm with the investors. I don't even know what to say about these guys, with Ballmer gone it's anyone's guess what will happen, but I will say one thing, I don't think a crash is incoming. Sure, we are on the way to a crash if things continue along the same path, but that path has left the competition crippled, and I don't think they'll be around long enough for a crash to happen.

I still count the mobile phone market as something completely separate and irrelevant so I refuse to even mention them, they have nothing to do with the dedicated gaming conversation. As for the 3DS being weak? I wouldn't call 30 million sales weak firstly, secondly in contrast to the DS it's still got 15-20% behind, but the DS launched 2-3 months earlier, so it's still not there. Also, by this time they already had Pokemon for a while, you know, the handheld system seller coming next month? At least wait the 3 months and then compare.

Bill Gates seems to be playing a more hands on role right now and he likes Xbox and they have money, so its all about how much they are willing to bleed.

Yup, that's the big question which is anyone's guess at this point. ValueAct has been clear they've wanted to get rid of Xbox and now they are on the board of directors. Anything can happen now. They are pegged for an additional 8-9 Billion loss with Xbox One costs which they can obviously take and at this point will, but how much longer after is yet to be seen. They did say they plan on breaking even from the get go but I don't see how that's possible. We are still in marketing mode though so I'll find anything hard to believe until boxes are in homes and review tables.

Also, Gates is getting involved? He's been off saving the world or whatever for years now, hasn't he been? 

Ah! I understand. The different expierence. That's why Vita is currently failing by the way. It doesn't offer the special "handheld expierence" that market need just like Scott Moffit said in an interview recently (http://www.gamespot.com/news/3ds-has-fundamentally-different-strategy-than-ps-vita-says-nintendo-6413822). They think their 3DS is doing it right by offer them the proper expierences. 

And now, let's move on to the consoles. If it's true, that PS4/Xbone just offer PC-like expierences then they automatically don't offer the necessary console expierence because they are different like nin10do said. Is this what you mean, nin10do?

So that would mean while WiiU is doing it right by giving the consumers fresh gameplay and console-like expierences, the other two are gonna fail just like Vita(not that extreme of course, but in principle)?? That's what you wanna say, nin10do?

And one another thing: What about that odd touchpad in the PS4 controller?!  I saw literally NO Game that is actually making use of it. So what did Sony think by building in that weird addition...In all the several presentation they had they showed NOTHING what you can do with it!

It seems that they only tried to have something special to have at least a bit of difference in the new controller and that they just have something build-in which can mimic the Wii U Gamepad functions AT THE LEAST.

All this staff doesn't seem very well-thought-out to me which strengthens nin10do's theory of the rushed consoles imo.

And what's with this share button and the social social social stuff PS4 offers? They seem to try mimic the Miiverse a bit. But yeah, we still have to see how well this will work out.  While Sony is focusing on the social sector, MS prefers more to go on the entertainment inside. You remember that TV-TV-TV-thing? Whether this is really necessary for gamers or not is an issue I won't talk about. To me, the interesting thing about this is the actually the fact that Nintendo COMBINES BOTH SIDES. On the one hand there is the Miiverse (equivalent to the PS4's share-button-stuff), but on the other hand there is Nintendo TVii! (equivalent of the XBone-Entertainment-stuff) Nintendo is indeed offering both, but they don't focus to much on them! Games are still on the first place! That's the difference here! So this makes the WiiU a nice-appealing console overall.

That's kinda interesting ^^

Hell, Nintendo's doing TV 10 times better than XBO ever will. All they talked up with a voice controlled TV Guide, for which you need to connect your Cable Box and pay Gold for. As for the touchpad, I don't see many games using it, but it will be decent for browser surfing and chatting, using the touch to move the cursor over using the sticks, and of course there's VITA TV, that'll use it for the VITA games that support it.

As for the VITA, I perfectly agree. They are trying to give a console on the go experience, when handheld gaming isn't about that. You don't want home console experience on the go, you want a separate handheld experience on the go. That's their first and biggest mistake.

Not to mention their extremely poor game library, sure Indies are there and they are currently the ones keeping the hardware alive but they cant do that forever.

About RAM: what you say is true for what concerns the executable files, but data files like the games levels aren't made slimmer by a more efficient architecture. A talented game programmer and designer can devise protocols and ways to describe an environment that makes level files slimmer, but this is almost independent from the system architecture. Basically, given the same size and level of detail and the same number of interactive and non interactive elements of a level, the level file will have almost the same size on different platforms.
So, when deciding to save money on RAM, a system designer shold cut only the amount of RAM that can be saved thanks to slimmer executables and libraries and, if it's the case a slimmer OS than the competition. Cutting too much RAM can force devs to rewrite the way the biggest levels in multiplat games are loaded and possibly to rewrite the level themselves too, for example splitting them in more parts. This happened to many PC/original XBox multiplats, and it crippled them forcing compromises that weren't necessary on previous PC-exclusive titles of the same franchises, and MS managed to get away with it only because many publishers overestimated the future XB success, had they predicted its early death and lower than expected sales, they would have given MS the finger, or possibly pretend to be moneyhatted to make XB-specific crippled versions to fit in its small RAM, without affecting the PC versions (that despite crippled, sold much better than XB versions, but that would have sold even better without the bad word-of-mouth due to the unnecessary flaws forced into them to make them fit in XB without big changes).
Slimmer OS and efficient executables and libraries tell us that Wii U could have been fine with 4GB RAM, even better with 4GB main RAM + 0.5GB or 1GB graphics RAM, but just 2GB plus some tens MB eDRAM could be a little too stretched and cause problems to port the biggest multiplats if their original version was originally developed on PC or PS4 or XBOne.
Obviously exclusives will be able to squeeze out all Wii U's power, but 3rd party multiplats will need moneyhatting or the warranty of very good sales on Wii U to obtain a version tailored for it
I suspect Nintly wrongly predicted PS4 would have been equipped with just 4GB RAM and it was caught by surprise when faster than expected production growth and price drop of GDDR5 allowed Sony to double that amount.

I see but the point still remains point is their hardware isnt strong enough to make that difference alone where they can use the RAM to make those improvements, the entire design hinges on the RAM to be effective, also allowing them to optimize less.

These consoles will be utilizing APU and GPU/CPU set ups to do most of the grunt work anyway, so either the WiIU will need a RAM pack or it wont, I'm suspecting it might not. We'll see in 3 years

^^

Quite likely, as I wrote, RAM will make the difference only in 3rd party multiplat games with the largest and most detailed levels and worlds, but if Ninty is right, raw compuiting power shouldn't make a big difference as real world computing power should be closer to competitors.
Most surely, coming from a previous console with much less powerful CPU and GPU and just ~100MB total RAM, Ninty devs and also 3rd party exclusive devs should be totally at their ease with Wii U RAM and computing power.
Most games with a Windows 32-bit version should be fine too, as except the biggest ones, they have 2GB or less minimum RAM requirements on a platform far less efficient than a console.