Wii U specs are surprising, says Sonic developer, specifically the GPU and memory

[Kynes]

lilbroex said:

The components that make up a gaming console are generally custom built with the first real exception to that being the XBox, then the 360 and PS3. They pretty much "are" desktops only with a different aesthetic design. Their chips were pretty much straight replica of existing chips.

Nintendo has always used completely custom built chips made specifically for there machines. This is no exception. People often talk of what the Wii U is based on internally giving references to things like the Power7 and 4850 but those are only bases.

The CPU and GPU in the Wii U are built to fit its specifications. Size is not a problem, nor is power.

That's not true, at all. X360 Xenon and Xenos aren't replicas of existing chips. Tell me the ATI equivalent to Xenos. Cell is as much custom as a chip can be. The only one that can be considered derived of a desktop chip is RSX, and even that chip has differences as an 128 GDDR3 bus instead of 256 bits in the desktop part, with half ROPs due to this half width memory controller, and an integrated XDR memory controller.