This gen is relatively weaker than last gen, and diminished returns are starting to become the reality. Then again if you remember the PS3 was $600, and the good (more hard drive space) XBox 360 was $500. Both were packed with nothing but the console and 1 controller, nothing else. It shouldn't surprise anyone that $400 systems aren't going to be the real next step.

SPOILER ALERT: VR is not going to be it either. 

Given their price and purpose, the PS4 (and to a lesser extent the X1) are powerful enough.

Consoles are never going to be able to rival high end PCs again, and with exception to a minority (primarily PC gamers, ironically enough) no one wants them to. Having shorter generation cycles with weaker but more accessible (and easier to work with) hardware is a much better way of doing things. It's not like the PS4 and X1 aren't producing good visuals either. Sure they can't run games at 4k, but titles like inFamous, QB and TO:1886 are all sitting in the top 5% of 1080p PC visuals. That's perfectly acceptable in my book ^^

The WiiU's hardware is a bit of a joke though :p But given that we've never had HD Nintendo titles before though, i think it's adequate.

The CPU of the PS4 is a complete let down for me, because the PS3 CPU is more powerfull...

I wouldn't say that current gen consoles are weak just yet. At least for both the PS4 and X1 ...

I still think there's more potential in them to be capable enough to pull off interactive photon mapping which will profoundly increase lighting quality in games.

Both the Xbox one and ps4 will blow away horizon 2, infamous etc in 3 years. Titles like uncharted 4, quantum break, halo 5 gears 4 will destroy games out now.

This gen is no different than previous gens. Resistance 1 and perfect dark zero looked hardly a gain at all on previous gen. Consoles have never been PCs

I hope so. Devs will finally have engines made and practice with new development techniques just in time for Nintendo to release their next console, which I'm guessing will hit in 2017 (or 2018 latest)

It's funny that someone would mention this today because I was just listening to reviewtechusa and BLACKB0ND this morning talking about this subject (well the convo actually starts out with Ubisoft). It's here if you want to listen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSY8myWpOiM I found their conversation entertaining.

As for me I do think this gen of consoles is relatively weak when compared to the leap in hardware advancements from the PS2 to PS3 and the Xbox to X360. Since technological advancements move so fast now it's hard to have a static piece of hardware, that can't upgrade, and still be technologically relevant.

But as long as the devs are creative and focus on actual gameplay rather than graphics, it won't matter how weak it is.

I am not sure i buy into the "it'll blow them away" theory about later genereation games.  Last gen, that was the case becasue the totally different architecture of the systems.  This gen, the X86 architecture is very similar to last gen and the video cards and processors are nearly identical to their off the shelf.  I don't see the games getting a lot better over time.  Sure, the first party Sony titles will look pretty good, but that will be a design decision more than anything.

I dunno. I look at Uncharted 4 running at 60fps and it seems like proper generational leap to me.

I never understood this claims, the only time consoles did a big jump was in the ps360 generation when shader become available.

Console have always been about delivering the highest graphical power per dollar, not about the highest graphics, PC has the lead there but also has a the lowest graphical power per dollar. If you take ps1 and ps2 as example, since those were dedicated machines the developers achieved outstanding results because the could optimise in a why that is not posible on PC. Also don't take the games that come out at the start of a generation as a point of comparison, they are alway terrible, just take a sample from each generation.

About the new consoles being .5 versions more, that is absurd, the ps3 has 256 MB of ram, last time I saw a PR with that ram was in 2001-2, today the ps4 has more memory that most current PC, event if the CPU and GPGPU are not state of the art they will output some great stuff because they are dedicated hardware.