OH, i recall coming to vgchartz back when the wii was released. I remember hearing similar arguments like this back then. Granted, the wii u is not selling anywhere as well as the wii did. However, I do also remember the disaster of a ps3 launch that too a few years to right. If the console is still not selling next year i might be more concerned. I haven't bought one because i was in the uk for a year and it made no sense to get a region locked system for a higher price. It's the same reason i don't have a 3ds. I figure i will look into getting a 3ds and maybe a U when i get back and have a job.

Honestly, i never cared about specs much. Game play and design are more important.

Loyal Nintendo fans haven't cared about specs since the end of the GameCube era. Either that, or they still care, but not to the degree that they're willing to forgo first-party Nintendo games simply because of the low horsepower of the machines.

I'm in the first camp. I just haven't cared about specs since the GameCube, since that was the last system they made to be competitive on a technical level with other companies' high-end machines.

Nintendo tends to be approximately one generation behind in horsepower compared to their competitors, but I'm completely fine with that. 3DS games look great, I don't care about the low resolution. You don't even notice it after a while. Wii U games look as good as anything coming out on 360 or PS3.

Who cares about graphics? 95% of the mass market doesn't know about technical specs of game consoles, and furthermore they don't care. They buy based on the attractiveness of the software and the determinable quality of the games. Games and whether or not they're good, that is all that really matters.

Doesn't this look great though?

You're a hypocrite then :)

It's all about the games, but lots of times you guys make it sound like stronger hardware is a bad thing.

Did I say it was a bad thing? I said it was not required. Plenty of SNES games still look snazzy and play well. So a newer Zelda looks better than an older Zelda. How does it play? Links Crossbow Training looked better than Spirit Tracks or Link to the Past. While I enjoyed LCT, I would say the game play in the other two is superior.

I haven't played Skyward Sword but I heard people were a bit disappointed with it. I will get it eventually, and hope it's good. Still, OOT is the zelda game I like to return to. TP was okay but one of the motion minigames annoyed me to the point getting burned out on it. I hate that cat and it's fish with a passion.

It does have its downsides; excessive graphical investment drawing attention away from gameplay or bankrupting developers sometimes, making the system more expensive, longer development times. Wii U's graphical upgrade over the Wii was the likely cause of Pikmin 3's absurd delays.

Of course I want my games to look pretty, it's just that I don't want that prettiness to come at too steep a cost. There are more important things than graphics.

But.....specs are fun!!

Well I for one enjoy the specs articles. It is somehow enjoyable watching people who base their entire self-worth on a corporate brand slog it out over technical trivia. Like watching Jerry Springer :).

Here's some nice looking games for the GBA. Note how I'm trying to avoid SNES ports.

So many RPG's... so few Western titles...

Not much has changed, has it?

Many NES games had additional RAM and even sound procesors on the carts. Same with the SNES but to an even greater degree with full on additional CPUs etc intergrated in the carts. The N64 despite some rather stupid design flaws was the most powerful console of it's generation with some built in hardware for things like texture filtering that the PSX and Saturn didn't have. All Nintendo home consoles before the Wii were at least as powerful as the competition and usually were better in several ways.

I don't really understand this post in the context of the thread

Honestly, I was just enjoying some retro eye candy and marvelling at how so much was done with so little. No antagonism, or any real conclusion, was meant by it.