While the fanboy assumption seems to be that developers desperately want to work with the most powerful hardware, I think the reality is that the Wii U and "XBox 720" are (potentially) so similar in processing power because their consultations with third party publishers and developers indicated that they didn’t want cutting edge hardware.

I'm sure there are probably some teams that desperately want to work on hardware that is 16 or 32 times as powerful as the HD consoles, I suspect most teams want to keep development costs and timelines at (roughly) the same level they currently are; and this would be (almost) impossible in the middle of a graphical arms race that is driven by the release of new (super) high powered consoles.

Relax man. We all know that my next PC will crush these system specs eventually XD

Just wondering, with these rumoured specs, can we expect to see a noticeable visible difference on launch titles?

lol, I'm sure we both already have next-gen beat in several component areas.

No. The difference between the WiiU and the Xbox Next is marginal. Similar in the difference between GameCube and Xbox.

Proprietary discs on the Wii U?
Ruh Roh

The way things are shaping up though, next gen seems to be less about graphical prowess and more about games. I could be horribly wrong in the end though.

Isn't this the opposite of what was generally expected by everyone?

I'm not sure. I just moved to my conclusion based on what has been said so far and my knowledge of AMD hardware components.

There are always conflicting rumors about everything. So, you have to either show it all or really read into them all to get a good idea on what seems the most logical and makes the most sense. Not what best fits fanboy expectations. (not trying to imply anything here one way or the other)

With this specific set of rumors, the cost of the technology, the specs and release time of each, the expectectations on what price and focus will be next gen based on what's happenend in this gen... all of this pionts to MS more than likely going for the 6000 variant.

We know they are focusing on a single CPU/GPU chip or SOC design. We can safely assume they won't push as big a jump this time as they did last time as MS and Sony both lost a butt load of money out the door while Nintendo was swimming in cash. Wii and DS both proved that you don't have to be the burning edge of technology to be highly profitable when it comes to traditonal gaming consoles. In fact, everytime a company has gone that far, they have been far less financially successful than their competitors. We also have a fairly clear idea on what WiiU will have and a 6000 series chip will give MS a decent boost above that. MS also knows Sony won't put out a $800 console again as well.

All in all, at this point the 6000 rumor is far more credible and logical. This is a living thread and as more info comes it will change. However, the point of the thread is to debate these options and run with it. If I had a ton of responses that all stated good arguements of why its wrong (as has happened on other items), it would change. But, I think most would agree with my summation at this point.

I really hope Microsoft end up going with a 7xxx card. Since the hardware has built-in support for texture tiling like what RAGE uses, games that really utilize that could see noticable performance boosts compared to a 6670, even if the 7xxx model is roughly as powerful.