There is some truth to what Bethesda is saying here. Because MS and Sony are not in the games business to make money, 3rd parties can go to them and say "make a system with these specs!", and they will do it, because they don't need to make money and do need 3rd party support for their division to stay relevant. Nintendo, on the other hand, can't and won't lose large amounts of money on hardware so that 3rd parties can have the specs they want. Whether the audience will buy their product is another matter - I think it will but certainly the early Wii U sales indicate a younger audience has been the early adopters.
I think Nintendo did anticipate slightly weaker offerings from Sony and MS. It was widely known that 3rd parties were asking for upwards of 8gig of RAM. Usually hardware makers give them less than what they want, so I think Nintendo was expecting 4 gigs on PS4, keeping the 2 gigs on Wii U reasonably close. I think this is a result of Sony switching to the paid online model like MS. Nintendo really needs to adapt this model as it has allowed Sony and MS to hide the true cost of their systems in yearly fees. The PS4 and XB1 would be money-losing disasters if not for the extra $50 owners will be paying each year. If Nintendo also had such revenue it could have up-spec'd the Wii U considerably.
