From what we know? Last time I checked, there was no  rumour of 720 being based on a 7970. I do remember a rumour being based on the 7000 series though. That series comes with a wide range of GPUs. I also remember a rumour that  current 720 kits were 6x 360 and MS were targetting 8x.

With the 7000 series rumour, a realistic person would assume one of the mid-end GPUs, like a 7770/7850 . A person with an unrealistic expectation would just assume the highest end card while ignoring price , size and power consumption.

Millenium said: Just to throw something out there, this Samaritan Demo ran on 3 (Yes, 3!) GTX 580's, none of the next-gen consoles are gonna have that.

No they're not but Cliffy B said the demo could be optimized to run on two GTX 580s. Now the Nextbox and PS4 won't have that either but those 580s are running on a PC and John Carmack always talks about how amazing it is to be able to "program directly to the metal" on consoles.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/08/get-with-the-programmer-carmack-speaks/

He uses the words "significantly more powerful" to describe how much you gain from programming on consoles "directly to the metal" instead of having some interface on the PC swallowing resources. That "significantly more powerful" must mean something. Not 20% or 30% but probably something like 50%. So if the GPU in the Nextbox being equivalent to a Radeon 7970, which is already 20% faster than one GTX 580, can be utilized by this direct apporach in programming to be 50% faster then you would end up with rendering power in the Nextbox that matches those two Samarithan GTX580s.

No I dont remember it for sure. But I think the Xbox was roughly twice as fast as the PS2, correct?. So what does that teach us? It teaches us tyhat developers won't cutoff multiplatforms for a console that is only twice as slow.

But it remains to be seen (hopefully) what developers will do if two consoles are 4 times faster than one family oriented console.

It was twice as fast. What I'm saying is that power gaps aren't going to be enough, here, if the architecture is similar, and we have no reason to expect the Nextbox to be four times as powerful as the Wii U.

Well I still firmly expect the Nexbox to be four times as powerful as the Wii U.

The Wii didn't get ports because the hardware was very-old architecture. Games couldn't be ported to it because it would require being built from the ground up, like with COD.

Wii U is using modern hardware, so even in your scenario where PS4 and 720 are 4 times more powerful, games can still be ported to it because it will support the same featureset as the others. The games will just have to be downscaled with reduced assets/effects/resolution.

Not sure why you have this weird desire to see one of the consoles skipped for multiplats, though. How does it positively affect you?

I'm just going to assume it has something to do with your avatar or extreme fanboyism.

Your belief seems to depend almost entirely on your mood. Remember how casualized you think the Nextbox is going to be? Remember that? The Kinect focus, the tablet controller, the importance of reining in hardware reliability? Remember all of that?

Most likley they will copy what they did last time with the X360 which was based on the then released and most powerful GPU, the Radeon X1900, and made it custom built even getting some technology from the then unreleased 2600-series. So this time you will have a near max Radeon 7970, custom built with some nice features from the future 8000-series.

Yes. No but indeed have big fears that the Nextbox will turn to shit because of those things you listed and there is a big risk of weak hardware too (if they choose a GPU based on the mid-segment of Radeon 7000-series). But there's still realistic hope that they'll utilize all the potential that is there with high end of 7000-series paired with features from the 8000-series.