How powerful should Nex-Box and PS4 be?

[HappySqurriel]

First off, what is meant by 50% or 100% more powerful? Are we talking about a perceived increase in processing power or an actual increase in processing power? If it is actual processing power who, beyond an analyst that has no technical background with an unnamed source, has made claims about the actual processing power of the Wii U?

If we're talking about perceived processing power, I think both Sony and Microsoft's next console with struggle with seeming only slightly more powerful than their current generation systems, There are three factors at play:

1. Sony/Microsoft released bigger and more expensive systems which have far higher energy consumption than consoles typically have been in order to increase processing power this generation, and I expect they will return to a more standard console in the next generation. If they're looking to release a system for $400 without bleeding money, that is more in line with their slim versions of their current systems, it will certainly not be as much of a technical powerhouse when released.
2. Diminishing returns eat away at how people see the improvement. When you look at the better looking elements of many of the better looking games they're about as high detail as we can really expect something to be in a videogame, and most of the graphical effects we will see in the next generation of consoles are already being done on the HD consoles, so what the improvements will be focused on is increasing detail on less important objects and stacking effects ontop of one another. While you will be able to see a difference, it won't really be groundbreaking.
3. Limitations of game development costs. Even if developers have all the hardware resources to implement whatever they can imagine, if you need to put 4 times the manpower into creating games to give your graphics that generational jump beyond what the HD consoles are doing few publishers will pay for that. The average cost of a HD console game is in the $20 Million range, with many big budget games being $40+ Million, and if the costs increase this generation like they have every generation since the NES the average game would be closer to $80 Million with big budget games approaching $200 Million.