No, you're not reading it wrong. 1.5GB is good for a console. Keep in mind most PCs had 2-4GB when PS360 launched and they only have 512MB total RAM.

There are two GPUs with both actually not being too bad, especially after considering they would be heavily tweaked for Nintendo. However, the newer rumor says the latest/final dev kit has the 6000 series card so it can eventually run Unreal Engine 4.

Basically it looks like next gen will be like one of these two scenarios:

720>WiiU>PS4

or

720>PS4>WiiU

This of course still has plenty of room for change as each company finalizes the details (especially MSony), but I expect them all to be relatively close in power capabilities. Meaning that it will be similar to PS360's relationship. Similar 3rd party games and results. Tweaks here and their, but mostly the same.

I think most people forget that even today, pretty much every "Megabomba" PC game plays on 32bit WindowsXP. No matter how much memory you pack into such a PC, the game runs in 2G minus(!) texture duplication. So most games on the PC have around 1.6-18G to burn through. A 1.5G WiiU has more than enough ram (assuming the OS print is extra).

I don't think the WiiU 512M OS ram is extra flash memory. Adds extra costs to manufacturing and would still leave a strange 1.5G memory layout.

Yeah as I've thought and read more about it today, I think my initial placement was right. I think it may actually be 2GB total with 512MB carved out for OS and it only has the 8GB of flash memory internal.

It Will not be 720>WiiU>PS4 . Why would the PS4 be the weakest when they are launching a year later (likely) and are gonna be more expensive than WiiU? That just makes no sense whatsoever.

Launching a year later proves nothing. It only suggests Sony started ramping up for next-gen well after Nintendo. Wii launched a year after the 360.

No one knows anything of price for anything yet. What if they are the same price?

Its more likely that Sony doesn't want to repeat PS3's massive losses and Vita's dead start. They do like to make money you know.

Also, did you actually read the first to posts in the thread? Its pretty blatant that the rumors based on off the shelf specs show PS4 as being lower spec'd to WiiU. I actually think it will be slightly better, or nearly identical overall in the end. neXtBox will be the only one to have a realistic difference and even that won't be much. (as long as these rumors are based on real dev kits)

Yeah I did read the rumo(u)rs. I also read the Gakai rumour about Sony announcing cloud gaming at E3. Forgive me If I a take them with a large bucket of salt. I'm sure Sony can still be the 2nd most powerful next gen whilst not using a loss leading stradegy.

Of course rumors can be wrong. But, when you get many of them all pointing to the same thing... its probably right or really close.

If Sony goes Fusion with one GPU... it'll be weaker than Wii U. Simple as that.

Ok fair enough Superchunk. Anyway, lets just say for arguments sake they are correct. If so then indeed PS4 may be weakest. However i'm sure the final specs aren't near to being finalised. PS3 didn't get it's gpu added till very late on. I'm confident that if these rumours are true, Sony is just beta testing them for development sake and the finalised specs will be more powerful.

http://www.psx-sense.nl/89207/exclusief-talloze-informatie-over-de-playstation-4-inclusief-specificaties/

So...
4-core AMD CPU
GPU around 1840 GFLOPS
2 GB RAM, could be 4 GB

Sounds reasonable. That would put Orbis more or less on par with Durango (less RAM but more powerful GPU) according to what some are saying.

Just thought I'd better point out that not even Nintendo themselves know the clockspeed of the GPU, CPU or RAM yet. The individual hardware components themselves were probably finalised last month, this tends to happen around 6 months before release, but Nintendo will be tweaking clockspeeds, power and cooling until a month or two before it launches.

And I'd put money on the RAM being highly clocked DDR3 rather than GDDR5 with the eDRAM on-die for the CPU and GPU taking care of bottlenecking issues.