Power is relative to the configuration of the hardware, for example, consoles reached their limit awhile ago vs PCs, not because of their processing power alone, but uh, memory. As long as they don't fuck up and create a huge bottleneck like they did this gen, it will be fine. PS3 has it a little easier because they can do pagefile due to the standard configuration of every PS3 having a HDD but that's also slow as hell. For example, if the WiiU comes with, say, 1.5GB of fast ass RAM at least (though I personally say they need 2 to 2.5GB for good measure.) It will have the ability to absolutely rape the 360 or PS3 even at the same processing power (and I expect the Wii U to have much higher raw processing power overall at this point in time.)

How come there's no option to be weaker than the Wii U? =x

I don't think they can vastly pass the Wii U, personally. Sony said themselves that they can't get that much farther than the PS3 (I think? Don't quote me on this). I don't think Sony should concern themselves with making it the strongest console this time around anyway. The problem is, whether they can't do it or they just choose not to, what can they offer that the PS3 didn't already? PS3 has Move which didn't do much, and the PS3 is already a power-house. They need some innovation here beyond a stronger playstation with the best online. People don't seem too impressed by the Wii U either, so I don't think taking any ideas from Nintendo is a good idea at the moment.

Both will either 1UP the Wii U in hopes of denying nintendo the hardcore fanbase, or will have to innovate to convince consumers the upgrade is worth while. Without a major graphics upgrade, any of the new consoles are going to be giving themselves in uphill battle to justify the cost. By 2013, we will have had 2-3 new iterations of graphics cards and things that are up there now (GTX 580) will be in the lower 200s or high 100s range, making it plausible for MS/Sony to get a mass market discount and put em in their consoles.

But a modest step in power will make consumers ask "How is this different than what I own?" I do not believe MS/Sony will risk investing in a console that has such small limits.

What PC games were you playing?

Quake III, Unreal Tournament, Theif, System Shock II, and Half-Life were released in 1998 and were fairly close to what was released for the Dreamcast in 1999 and most early PS2 games.

It won't be hard to go over the power of a PS3 tag team.

Like I said, the PC version of PS1 games... I played Tomb Raider 1, 2, 3: The adventures of Lara Croft, 3: The Lost Artifact, 4: The Last Revelation. I also played Megaman Legends 1 on PC and Metal Gear Solid 1. The PS2 had stuff like MGS3 which had way better graphics than MGS1 on PC... none of those PC games came close to stuff like God of War II, Silent Hill 3/4 and Final Fantasy XII on PS2.

Another point to make is there is no reason to keep it at Wii U levels (granted we don't have solid evidence of what this is) if they are releasing a year+ later. If Wii U does begin to get adopted, and the next systems are shown as being the same, people will migrate to what is already on the market.

Yeah like a marketing and business guy like that knows anything about tech, he probably doesn't even play games and is just towing the company line that the PS3 is extreamly powerful while adding some marketing spin. You got to remember higher up people than this guy was saying that the PS2 was going to produce Pixar level visuals, they wouldn't know their pixels from their polygons. 

Lets compare the GPUs of the xbox line and the top GPU of it's day so we can see where the next box will be if they went for a tradtional power jump

as you can see traditionally MS have matched the high end PC GPU at the time of launch and due to the short life span of the OG Xbox only quadrupled the power. And even today GPUs exist that are up to 10x that of the power of the 360 in terms of the amount of textures and 7x the possible resolution/AA so even if MS go for a lower than traditional GPU for their next console by using a GPU that matches what will be a 2 generation old GPU by the time the next box releases they will have a console that is over 8 times as powerful as the current generation. If they go all out (not likely) they could have a console with a GPU up to 12x the power of the 360 in 2013. So if you think about it 6-8x is probably conservative.

Also considering that the Wii U is aparently 50% more powerful than the PS3 and that early dev kits are aparently heavily underclocked and have less RAM than production hardware even the Wii U may be twice as powerful as the PS3 in the end.  

Wii U has the added appeal with it's controller. If PS4/XB3 had graphics on par with Wii U then Wii U would offer a more complete experience. So naturally PS4 and XB3 should be noticbly more powerful then the Wii U. Maybe not as extreme as this gen, but they should show a noticable jump in graphics.

Most gens come with graphical jumps of 100%, but lately developing games has become a much more costly buisness. If we jump 100% again we may see something similar to the drought of games PS360 had untill fall 2007, and even then it was only 360 getting good games. Remember how PS2 and Gamecube had great games from day 1?  Soo 100% and 50% are out of the question.

I voted 80%. Most people have LCD TV's capable of 1080p resolution, and if they don't they at least can run 720p. We need something that can run 1080p with 60 FPS minimum, day 1. ideally we want games running at 120 FPS now, so we can actually put some use to the resolution of many $500 tv's.

With an 80% jump in graphics, PS4/XB3 will be noticably better looking then Wii U, yet not too expensive to develop for, and at the same time run a smooth 1080p 60 FPS from day 1. This is why we bought HD TV's, lets put them to use.

P.S. I find most next gen games look like the cinematics to prior gens. So PS1 cinematics look like PS2 games (take FFVII cinematics, not that far off from FFX gameplay. Same with Driver 1 and 3). If this holds true, that 30 second teaser trailer of Halo 4 should be what we should expect Halo for XB3 to look like. Same with Final Fantasy, and Gran Turismo.

For sure! Don't PS3 and 360 have something like only 500MB of RAM?