bonzobanana said:
They aren't obsessed with small form factor and low power consumption they are obsessed with hardware with high profit margins hence low performance hardware sold at a high price which so happens to be the type of hardware that is small form-factor and low power consumption. The wii u for example could easily have used 28nm fabrication chipset like the xbone and ps4 which would enable a smaller form factor and lower power consumption but instead they used 45nm fabrication which is more power hungry and produces more heat however because of the very low performance level of the wii u it didn't matter and not much heat or power was consumed. The wii u design could easily have achieved far lower power consumption and been more compact using components of slightly higher cost. You have to remember the wii u design is very low performance not even comparing well to 360 and PS3 for many parts of its specification.
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You can build low-cost hardware that is more capable. Gamecube was the perfect example of this (and it also had the other benefits.) Power consumption is a decision of Nintendo's, independent of cost. If Nintendo went x86 they likely would have had an easier time to get good performance out of low-power hungry hardware. Or even if Nintendo disregarded power-consumption and form-factor they could have made a more capable, yet cheap platform, albeit not as capable as the PS4/XBO. If Nintendo's goals were to reduce cost they would have never constructed the gamepad the way they had. I'm not too cerrtain that what Nintendo paid for in R&D and also what they pay in manufacturing costs is that much cheaper than what MS/Sony pay for their Jaguars (which are very cheap CPU's.) And the biggest advantage is that a better CPU alleviates GPU bottlenecks, and Nintendo would've been able to go with a better GPU for a similar price and power-consumption than they had. As GPU prices tend to be quite different from actual performance gained.
Also the WIi U is without a doubt more capable and versatile than the 360 and PS3. The only part which doesn't compete so well is the CPU. It still gets the job done, sufficiently, though if one tailors one's ports well.
