Just as an observation, when the Wii was released it was a system that was (roughly) as powerful as a typical console would be after it was 4 years old and the XBox 360 is 4 years old (this year) and next year the PS3 will be 4 years old ... Being that neither the PS3 nor the XBox 360 will be as small and energy efficient as the Wii is, and they both will have difficulty reaching a $250 price for their fully featured consoles, it seems odd that so many people bash its technical capabilities. Do these people who see the Wii as an insult to gamers think that keeping the HD consoles on the market for the next few years is an insult to gamers as well?
Now, to the topic at hand ...
We're have hit (or are hitting) a point in time where the graphical capabilities of hardware are far greater than most people care about, and games that take full advantage of the capabilities are too expensive to produce anyways. When you consider that at the end of 2012 a modestly priced console could (potentially) have capabilities that are similar to the best PCs on the market today, it is difficult to imagine any console manufacturer releasing a system which is both expensive and loses money in order to get increased hardware performance.
