I see a lot of discussions about the performance of the Wii U about how it will perform compared to the current HD consoles. For the most part people are foolishly assumptions that, even though Nintendo drastically changed their hardware strategy from the Gamecube to the Wii, Nintendo would obviously replicate the same strategy on the Wii U that they used with the Wii; and then they use this to draw the flawed conclusion that the Wii U would only be as powerful (or less powerful) than the current HD consoles. Even though I disagree with this reasoning, I thought I would address what that would really mean ...

The Wii U is being released 7 years after the XBox 360 and coincidentally the Wii was released 7 years after the Dreamcast; if Nintendo repeated the same strategy with the Wii U you would expect the performance improvement to be similar to the difference between the Dreamcast and the Wii.

Dreamcast:

Wii:

The point of this post isn't to suggest what strategy Nintendo is following, the point is to demonstrate that even the "Wii Strategy" would produce a substantially more powerful system than we have with the HD consoles currently.

Imo at dreamcast times graphics used to get better much more quickly, every year you could see PC games looking much better than the previous year.
Today I think no PC game has drastically outshined Crysis yet, which is from 2007. So my piont is you won't see much difference between X360 and WiiU but at the same time you won't see an huge difference between X360 and X720.

The problem with that is the Wii U tablet likely costs a hell of a lot more than a Wii remote (just a controller with some motion sensors in it + a cheap speaker).

So there's likely less budget to be spent on the chip.

Well what's being suggested is suicide. Wii was more powerful then Xbox. Not by much I believe the state was 1.5x the power of the Xbox. But that meant that WiiU could handle every Xbox game with ease and could very easily be supported. What is being suggested today is that WiiU will be weaker then 360. That would be like Wii having been weaker then DreamCast at launch. No I do not think Wii would have survived as long as it did with DreamCast graphics. Absolutely not in fact at a cheaper 200$ price tag I think the Wii would have had marginal success the first year it would have then needed a price cut during its second year and by the third it would have been off store shelves.

If WiiU is inferior to 360 it will suffer that fate. Even if it has developer support and great Nintendo software it will struggle to survive three years. In 2014 I could see Nintendo pulling it from shelves or selling it at 65$-99$ a unit and retailing software at 29.99$. The hardware would need to be so dirt cheap that customers wouldn't buy a used or clearance PS3/360 instead.

Now lets say Nintendo goes with the exact same strategy as Wii at 1.5x the power. Nintendo will face every problem it did with Wii. Come 2013 Nintendo would face developer desertion. Developers will want to sell their games on multiple platforms and porting to Nintendo hardware will be impossible. Reggie stated that Nintendo Wii's biggest fault was it could not receive ports. Nintendo would suffer this exact same problem. Now if retail is within a hundred dollars of Microsoft or Sony. Nintendo will begin to falter in 2014, it will have peaked and will begin its decline. Microsoft's Kinect 2.0 and possibly tablet based controller will eat Nintendo for lunch. Nintendo's exclusive software will be its only life line but much like what happened to Wii in 2011 WiiU will begin dying in 2014 I suspect it would be discounted heavily by 2015 and Nintendo's next console would need to be announced in 2015. WiiU would begin dissapearing from shelves in 2016 and need to be fully replaced. Nintendo would lose the generation, how badly I do not know. 2nd place if Nintendo is lucky but 3rd would be almost certain. iOS could possibly drive the final nail into Nintendo's casual market.

Come next generation launching in 2017 Nintendo would be in the absolute worst position it has ever been in. Regardless of which of the two above strategies it employed. Hardcore gamers would never want to return to Nintendo again, they couldn't release a system good enough in 2016. Casual gamers which supported Wii would be split most leaving for Kinect 2.0 and Microsoft's tablet based controller or Sony's system. Meaning Nintendo would have to rely entirely on its die hard fan base. But this time they will have pushed their fan base like never before. GameCube didn't push their hardcore fanbase as much, Wii did not. This would be a true test one I think Nintendo would fail. I suspect Nintendo would sell 16-million units with the successor to WiiU. The next Nintendo handled would be holding the companies survival in its hands its failure would mean bankruptcy or sell out for Nintendo they couldn't take four failed consoles in a row. Nintendo would go Sega or worse Atari by 2021 being unable to afford another generation of home or handheld hardware.

Nintendo needs WiiU to be 2.5x - 5x the power of 360. It needs to be able to out perform every console on the market today by a decent margin. It needs to be able to handle the newer PC games like BF3 without severely downgrading meaning playing the PC BF3 at 1080p at 60fps which would be up to date. The WiiU will need hardware capable of handling ports better then Wii was. The online network will need to be everything Nintendo has promised open and free for developers unlike Sony and M's closed systems. The retail price will have to be 250$ and the tablet will need to be armed to the teeth. Nintendo will also need full third party support launch window. As well as the ability to maintain support for the full life cycle whether that be exclusives or multiplat either way Nintendo could not allow a repeat of Wii's third party failures. Nintendo needs to fix its mistakes last generation and perfect its strengths. If it fails to cure its faults they will struggle far harder then Wii did!

I generally find that this (basic) opinion is based off of a flawed understanding of what the Wii U tablet is ...

The tablet is just a dummy device, doesn't have significant processing power or memory, and wouldn't be that much different than adding a relatively small low-resolution resistive touch screen to the XBox 360 controller. This adds (maybe) $10 to $20 on the total manufacturing cost of the controller, which can add a lot to the sale price of high margin accessories but doesn't do much to the sale price of a system.

I'm not sure if you read the original post ...

The entire point was that the "Wii Strategy" would result in a jump in processing power over the XBox 360 similar to the difference between the Wii and the Dreamcast. Essentially, since the Wii came 7 years after the Dreamcast and the Wii U will be released 7 years after the XBox 360, it makes far more sense to use the Dreamcast as a benchmark than the XBox. The net effect would be a system that was somewhere between 4 and 8 times the performance of the XBox 360.

I think an xbox comparison is more fitting, The dreamcast wasn't half step in graphics from the previous generation and lauched at a very affordable price, so i assume it wasn't cutting edge at time of release. The Wii CPU is clocked at a slightly higher rate then the xbox but the xbox has bult in shaders, which can produce better looking games but both systems are very similar. You have to remember that the advances in graphics were much greater between 1999-2006, then they've been for the last 6 years.

But its still soo affordable to produce a system which surpases the ps3 that Wii U will definitely be graphics king when compared to the 2 HD consoles. The only exception is if they wanted to enter the market at $250 but i think a $299-$349 is more likely.

Why doesn't Nintendo just take a page from the hardware designs of the Famicom (NES), Super Famicom (SNES), N64, and even GameCube?

Add an Expansion Slot on rear of the Wii U, with a AMD style CrossFire port that leads to the main motherboard (should be no problem for AMD as this is pretty much standard for them).

When late 2014 rolls around and devs are actually starting to get the hang of "Next Gen" processing (provided they don't go bankrupt) first and if it's shown the PS4/720 are actually impacting Wii U sales/developers are fleeing ... release a processor upgrade for $70-$80 (be nice Nintendo, sell it for cost at first to make it easy to upgrade, as months go on it'll drop in manufacturing cost like all chipsets do and you can cash in then). Hell, include a short game with it with some fancy graphics.

By late 2014, small GPUs will smoke the 6670 even (the GPU reportedly powering the 720 and similar to the one in the PS4) for dirt cheap, so this wouldn't have to be some bulky add-on, it could be something small slides underneath the Wii U, like the GBA Player on the GameCube (added about 2 inches to the thickness).

So if you're a casual Wii U player who's just having fun with Nintendo games + party games ... you can just ignore this, but if you're that hardcore player that wants the same games the PS4/720 are getting + Wii U software ... well for $70-$80 more, you could get that without having to pay $400 for another platform.

..than they will lose the remaining core gamers.

Why compare the Dreamcast to the Wii instead of comparing the Gamecube to the Wii?

Gamecube:

Wii:

Wii U (projected):