As long as profit is made after port costs, what does it matter if it's the verson that pays for development? Some money's better than none.

In terms of power, Wii was similar to 2001 hardware, Wii U was about equal to what a 2007 console would have been, and if Switch is around three times as powerful as Wii U, that would put it around par with what a mid range 2011 system could have achieved. So all three are around 5 years behind the curve.

And no, "modern hardware" doesn't change that. If Switch is x3 Wii U, then it is mid range 2011 power.

I think it's

Wii - 12 GFLOPS

XBox 360 - 250 GFLOPS (20x a Wii)

Wii U - 176 GFLOPS (but more modern architecture than 360)

XBox One - 1.3 TFLOPS

PS4 - 1.84 TFLOPS

Nintendo Switch - 600-750 GFLOPS (?)

The gap between the Wii and 360 was ridiculously stupid looking back on it in hindsight. The Wiimote wasn't anything expensive to manufacture, they could've made the Wii a lot more powerful and had far better third party support that generation. 

If it's a game that they were going to make either way, it wouldn't matter.  If they were factoring in potential Switch sales when considering to make the game or not in the first place, then it would matter.

See my edit; all three remain a fairly consistent 5 years behind the curve in times of power.

It's actually curious to think what level of support the Wii could've gotten had it been 100 GFLOPS even. I think virtually every third party would've supported it with their major games. 

I have to agree; Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, Trine 2 Director's Cut, and Yoshi's Woolly World remain some of the prettiest games I have ever played.

I also thought Kirby's Epic Yarn and Muramasa the Demon Blade on Wii were some of last gen's most beautiful games.

Hindsight is 20/20 I guess; given the enormous gamble they took with the Wiimote, I can understand their decision at the time to stick with cheap, proven chips.

The GameCube was a $99 piece of tech though, probably even less than that, they were selling it at $99 for two+ years by the time Wii launched. 

Even the DS was a giant sized upgrade on the GBA. Imagine they just reused the GBA chip (or GBA x2, one for each screen) ... the types of games on the DS would've been dramatically limited to 2D sprite games and things like Dragon Quest IX likely would not have been possible. 

Had they chosen a cheap but more modern chip for Wii they could've received some really impressive third party support given the sales that were waiting for them.

You dont need to look years at all and they are really not important, it's way more important direct gap between consoles in same gen, just compare directly Wii hardware with PS3/Xbox360 and Switch with XB1/PS4, and you will see that gap between Switch and XB1/PS4 will be much smaller than Wii was compared to PS3/Xbox360 (gap is around 20x).

Modern hardware and tech do not change power gap, but its important from development perspective because supporting modern techs, engings, APIs, tools...make things easier for developers and they can do more with it, compared to some old hardware and tech, and Switch will easily have most modern hardware and tech for any Nintendo hardware from GC.

Exactly, not just Switch will be somewhere around of half of XB1, while Wii was weaker than PS3/Xbox360 around (15-20x). And not just that, Wii was basicly GC hardware and tech, while Switch will have even more modern tech and hardware than XB1/PS4, and that important from developers perspective because makes thing easier from them.