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MarcellusMighty on 10 November 2013
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I have a few points to make here that seem to usually get overlooked when people examine the Wii U in detail:

1) It seems like the millionth time I am saying this, but the Wii U uses FLASH memory, not a hard disk drive. This drives down power consumption immensely, increases performance, and enhances reliability through the roof. This memory is pricey and Nintendo chose to use it for the aforementioned reasons, as opposed to shoving a gigantic hard drive in that had more negatives than positives.

2) From what I have seen of 1st-party Nintendo titles on Wii U, they are using 2x AA by default and V-Sync across ALL games. The V-Sync is HUGE, especially noticeable on multi-plats because 360 and PS3 have quite obvious tearing in so many games.

3) Though the CPU is slower than XOne or PS4 due to fewer cores and slightly lower clock speed, the chip itself is actually a better architecture and more powerful per core; if Nintendo were to use six cores and match the speed of XOne or PS4 (either or), it would be a MORE POWERFUL CPU. The developer of Nano Assault Neo (and some others, can't remember off the top of my head) have stated they don't even use one core fully, and there are THREE. The PowerPC chip they are using is pretty robust and many people are quick to jump on the low clock speed or smaller amount of cores when they don't think it through. Remember that XOne uses Kinect and PS4 uses PS Eye, and both have MUCH larger OSes.

4) Wii U has 2 GB of RAM compared to the 8 GBs each found in PS4 and XOne. It is also slower than the other two consoles. This being said, the actual amount deficit isn't as great as it seems on paper. This is because 1 GB (and sometimes a few MBs more for 1st-party software at minimum) is dedicated to games on the U, where maybe 3-3.5 GBs are available at any time for the other two, whether due to Kinect or OS use. It's a deficit, but not catastrophic.

5) Clearly, the Wii U's GPU is beefier than everyone has realized. I mentioned V-Sync and AA earlier, and I wasn't kidding about the always-on V-Sync. The only people used to V-Sync are PC players like myself, and it's awesome to not have to worry about screen tear. It's sweet. Plus, from what I hear, the RGB lock on certain colours has been lifted with the latest update, so it doesn't restrict colour output.