Did Nintendo Miss Their Opportunity By Undercooking the Wii U's Specs?

[DaRev]

DanneSandin said:

Soundwave said:

In a way, I think Nintendo really let Sony and Microsoft off the hook here to be honest.

They're both very late with 360/PS3 successors because the last console cycle took so much out of both of them early on that they need these later years to milk profit from aging platforms.

Nintendo made a ton of money off Wii, they really could've screwed Sony especially IMO with a system that was reasonably more powerful than the current HD twins without getting too ridiculous in cost. 

Sure maybe Durango/Orbis would be more powerful still in a year, but in that case, I think a lot of devs would look at the Wii U and say "y'know this platform is a good leap above the PS3/360 and it already has 10-15 million users going for it, lets focus on that, rather than even more expensive platforms with a userbase of 0".

Right now a system that's somewhere truly in between a PS3/360 and the Orbis/Durango which are a year away and likely represent a large bump in development costs ... that's the system the Wii U should be. 

this, this is a very good point!

I concure - Nintendo probably should have kicked them in the nuts! But remember that even though 360 had a years lead on the PS3, the PS3 has still caught up and is just as successful. While Nintendo having the same factors but a vastly underpowered console still came out on top numbers-wise.  The bottlom line is that we really don't know how all this will turn out. What we do know is that each console developer has its own brand of problems in releasing its next console.

For example, Sony wishes it had at least 3 more years to make some money on the PS3 before having to spend money on R&D on a new console. Plus Sony is almost broke. MS on the other hand knows the value of coming out ahead, and has learned not to underestimating Nintendo (Sony doesn't care about NIntendo IMO). And they both are watching the current economic climate - remember 3DS vs Vita price point and price drop and/or lack thereof?

Yes its difficult for Nintendo, but don't think Sony and MS are just going to have a cake-walk with their new consoles.