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The Wii U is less powerful than the PS4 and Xbox One. Only the delusional would argue otherwise. Many would argue that Nintendo has fallen behind on the race of console power. However, are they really doing anything new?
Below is a logarithmic line chart of the increase in the RAM of consoles by Year. Nintendo and Sony have their own lines, while Sega and Microsoft share one. Data points are determined by the KB of RAM each console has on the year of its debut. In cases where no console was launched that year, an average growth YoY between the previous and latter consoles are used to create an interim number.
First of all, the most important thing to take from this graph is that Nintendo has always been behind in terms of RAM since 1990. You have a few special cases where Nintendo's consoles slightly outperform consoles released a year or two earlier, but considering the typical RAM expansion, Nintendo is virtually always behind. The only time they had the strongest console on the market was at the end of 1998, if you include the RAM expansion pack. Otherwise, they are always behind.
Second, growth is fairly constant for all three lines, with the Wii being the main outlier. In general, both Nintendo and Sony systems grow at 50% per year on average, while Sega/Microsoft grows at an average of 53% since 1990. All in all, Nintendo has usually been in about the same place.
Third, note when Nintendo is at their weakest and strongest on this chart. When Nintendo nearly reaches the competition, in the N64 and GameCube eras, they were doing the worst in terms of sales. In contrast, look how well they did during the SNES and Wii's lifetimes.
My Conclusion: The Wii U is not particularly weak for a Nintendo console in its time and place. It's wekaer by 2013 standards than the N64 and GameCube were in their own times,but is more powerful in 2013 than the Wii was in 2006, and is similar to the SNES once you factor in Sega/Microsoft's slightly greater rate of growth.
Seeing as Nintendo's weaker consoles seem to perform better, is it any surprise that Nintendo only went with 2 GB of RAM for a 2013 console? Even if they waited till 2013 to launch the Wii U, would it make any real sense to include more than 3 or 4 GB of RAM? After all, when Nintendo tries to reach the sun in terms of power, their wings burn.
Any thoughts?
