thank you Shadow. People just need to accept the fact Nintendo didn't start with Wii. This "less powerful" thing is consequence of GCN sales.

There is only one company responsible for Nintendo's lack of third party, its Nintendo themselves, I love nintendo, but business means that they didn't take the necessary steps to get the games they wanted

Not exactly an unfair assessment, but the problem here lies in the context with which this assessment is being presented: as though this is the reason why the Wii U has failed.

The reality is, it has been SCE's policy to court third party development from the very beginning of the Playstation product line. Keep in mind when Sony entered the market in a field dominated by Sega and Nintendo, they had no solid first party IPs, no established franchises, etc. It was companies like Namco and Capcom that essentially carried the platform until Sony was able to sell consumers on their own IPs. Even then, the policy of making the platform a favorable home to third party developers never changed.

This is in stark contrast to Nintendo's policies during the NES and SNES generations. Remember the Nintendo Seal of Approval? Policies regarding payment for ROM chips and pricing based upon the amount of memory a developer's software could be written on, etc. etc.

So, third party developers jumped ship. Back in 1995.

With all the platform choices on which to publish, no one is strong-arming anyone, dealing dirty under the table, etc. to force a developer to support one platform and not the other. The worst case scenario? Paying for exclusive content, a period of platform exclusivity or paying added incentive for the development of a project which goes into making more content or improving content. Hardly sinister.

Granted if a company just wants to pay a developer for exclusive publishing rights, with no additional material to be made, said company is essentially buying whatever copies of software that could have been sold on a competing platform. Not the best business strategy, but this does provide some level of security for the developer if their game underperforms.

Yes, it's pretty asine to try and argue that PS1 hardware was even close to N64. It wasn't, in practically any way. There is a reason that you didn't see games on PS1 like Ocarina of Time or Banjo-Kazooie or Perfect Dark or Conquer's Bad Fur Day. Or for that matter, even games like Goldeneye or Turok 2. Because PS1 was not capable of pulling those games off, plain and simple. PS1 had some GREAT games. But to pretend that it was somehow on par with N64, is laughable. The only thing holding N64 back, was the cartridge format, which, in all blunt honesty, if N64 HAD used CDs, companies like Capcom, Square, Enix and Konami would very likely have stuck with them, because of their long history together, and all of the succcess their games saw on NES and SNES. Which means that games like Resident Evil, FF7/8/9/Tactics, DQ7, Metal Gear Solid, Symphony of the Night, etc, very likely all would have been on N64, and the generation would have gone a lot differently. And even so, even with the limitations of cartridges, N64 still did well, and had some of the best and highest selling games of the generation.

One of the problems that Nintendo has is that they make their money as a game company unlike Sony and MS.  Nintendo does not have the luxury to sell at a loss hoping to recoupe their losses with game sells.  Nintendo cannot go into the red and have other products or divisions bail them out.  The analyst is actually kind right.  When Sony entered the market they pretty much bought their way in just like MS.  MS and Sony give developers incentive to keep developing for their system by marketing their games and paying the cost for that or giving them money for exclusive (MS tactic that Sony now does as well).  

There are a lot of tactics that Sony and MS do today that Nintendo does not have the luxury to do and this is causing the platform to be considered the last one to support unless the userbase is large.  Its a real problem for Nintendo and they will have to come out with an answer since the WiiU isn't selling so support will not be as great.  

Anyway, with all the new games coming out for the WiiU, I am seriously thinking about getting one instead of the PS4 and X1 first.  I believe once more AAA games come out for the WiiU, they will start to sell pretty good.  This gen is way from being over and plenty of things can change but Nintendo does have to do some immediate changes to get support going properly.

I personally would not want to see Nintendo go 3rd party.  Nintendo really is  a game company and they are probably the biggest risk taker on hardware which is what I like.

Sony Europe made an agreement with Metro (e.g MediaMarkt) to confuse potential WiiU customers (in case they are not already confused by the consoles stupid name...) and convince them to buy a Sony product instead so the "analyst" is partially right.

Because no WiiU owners = no third party games

@ Shadow1980 & EricFabian

If I were like you, I would say "people just need to accept that no one ever shaved console power like Nintendo". But I am not. I'm willing to know the arguments of someone that claims both PS1 and PS2 were way less powerful than its competitors. I don't think so, but I may be wrong and I give you the chance to prove it. I couldn't be more open to different views.

But when you insistently present insufficient arguments to back up the "way less..." claim, my suspicions grow exponentially (specially when you subtly change it to "less powerful"...of course one system will have to be more powerful but we are talking about significant differences).

One thing is the difference between PS3 and X360, which may be the same as between GC and PS2. Here I could make the same hardware analysis as you did with PS1 and N64, and find some 100% differences as you did too, and maybe the best looking PS3 games surpass the best looking X360 games (but not significantly). Another thing is the difference between PS3 and Wii or between PS4 and Wii U. Those are generational differences. Here we don't find minor differences anymore, we find huge differences in hardware (5x / 10x / 20x) and software.

And yet, I could find a game on PS2 with better graphics than any Game Cube game but you just stopped replying to that once I came with evidences (another suspicious behaviour from you).

So here is the bottom line:

- So far you have just presented the hardware analysis and there are no 5x differences as one would expect from a way more powerful console.

- You refused to address the software analysis, where we can clearly see PS2 does as much as or even better than GC.

- X360/PS3 are indeed way more powerful than Wii and both hardware and software tell us that. Wii hardware is from a lower order of magnitude and there is no Wii game that rivals with the best looking X360/PS3 games.

And here is my conclusion: you didn't convince me at all. Actually now I am more sure that 5th and 6th gen were generations without big hardware differences.

The matter here is the change of paradigm: before, all console makers attempted to do the best they could (any hardware differences were due to differences in talent or whatever you want to call it), now we have a console maker that chooses to launch 7th gen tech on 8th gen time period, arrogantly thinking they could be as successful as their competitors. It's like the 100m olympic sprint (they all run very fast, some eventually faster than others) but now we have a participant that runs as if he was in the 1500m.

This is not about performance differences anymore. This is about different strategies and different attitude. Nintendo refuses to build a powerful console, that's it. And they aren't copying this strategy from any company (other than Zeebo). PS2 was not meant to be a less powerful console. Same thing for the X360. They all did the "100m sprint speed".

Right. Wii is a Game Cube with motion. And these are not just my words.

And, by your personal nomenclature, Zeebo isn't from any generation.

Also, by your personal nomenclature, N64 (1996) is from a different generation than Dreamcast (1998) which is from the same generation as Xbox (2001).

Also, by your personal nomenclature, Atari should have more than 1 console in some generations, since Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800 and Atari XEGS came all in the 3rd/4th gen period (but you conviniently don't mention some of them).

Your criteria is neither based on tech nor on years nor on companies. You just don't have a solid criteria. It's just your opinion twisting according to your personal wishes.

I just have 1 question for you: if I picked up your text and replaced "PS1" for "X360" and "N64" for "PS3" (then of course I would change Ocarina of Time, Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Conquer's Bad Fur Day for MotorStorm, Killzone, Heavy Rain and Gran Turismo), how would you prove I was wrong?

ok man. You already know N64 >>>>> PS1 (but media capacity of  PS1 is superior)

now let's talk about PS2 and GCN

PS2 CPU:

Clocked at 299MHz (294, firts ones)

FPP: 6.2 GFlops (0.64 FPU + 2.44 VU0 + 3.08 VU1)

150 millions polygons/sec (VU0 + VU1)

Cache Memory: Intruction >16KB -  Data > 8KB + 16KB (ScrP)

NGC CPU:

Clocked at 485Mhz

FPP: ~9 GFlops

~200 millions polygons/sec

Cache Memory: 64KB L1 / 256KB L2

PS2 GPU:

147.456Mhz

4MB to video

NGC GPU:

162Mhz

3MB to video (1MB for texture cache + 2MB for Z-buffer)

PS2 Memory:

32MB

GCN Memory:

43MB

And Gamecube had a superior and modern arquiteture. No matter where you look, GCN is superior. As Original Xbox is more stronger than both lol

You said GT4 is the best looking game on 6th gen. Is ok. Your opinion. I still think Mario Galaxy 2 is one of best looking game of all time and it was on Wii. I can't find any decent videos, but Splinter Cell on Gamecube is better than any PS2 game.

And no I don't refure to adress softwere analysis. We all know PS2 is the King of Games (and I'm talking about all time).

Wii as just a better Gamecube, and Nintendo did this because while PS2 sold more than 150mil, Gamecube only sold 22mil.

Wii U is 8th. Nintendo tried to back to "power racing". You can say, and I will follow, that is weaker than PS4/X1, but if you compare to Wii the leap is bigger than PS3/PS4.

wow never thought that playstation can cause nintendo that much damage guess i was wrong