That was done in 2006.

Since then, games want more memory, 4gb should be the minimum these days for PC's. Heck I noticed a small difference between moving from 4gb to 8gb of ram when alt-tabbing out of high-end games, didn't notice much with 32gb of ram though.
However, the PC is also allot more versatile and has to do allot more things in tandem, so the need for more ram is there.

http://blogs.bettor.com/Battlefield-3-developer-wants-8GB-of-RAM-in-the-PS4-and-Xbox-720-a135671

Seems every developer is screaming for more ram in the next lot of consoles.

However, the tricky part is the Video card often has to use the consoles ram for Video memory, So fast memory is just as important as lots of memory... Which is just like with IGP's in the PC space, which gain allot more performance with faster Ram.
And fast memory (Talking about faster than DDR3 here folks) is expensive as it isn't on the same level of being mass produced as the PC's DDR3 memory, so Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony need to balance the speed vs performance of the ram in their consoles to fit in a certain price budget.

Idk but what I do know is that it is a dedicated superfast RAM that is not cheap. I think it's at least 3x more expensive than the one you buy at stores.

It sounds very likely.. And just 14 days left.. then we see the full picture

Bring on E3 for the full reveal.

Given that those 512 MB for OS come from a rumor, and that we are talking about Nintendo (a company that has the good/bad habit of going their own route), it's hard to guess the amount of memory it will have.

However, given that Nintendo has taken into consideration 3rd parties this time, and apparently has taken its opinions and suggestions more seriously, my guess is that they will go with no less than 2GB of RAM, not including the 512 MB for the OS.

Nintendo haven't talked about tech specs of their consoles for some time, I doubt they will start again anytime soon. We won't get the full picture until it's out and people do a terdown of the console.

The leaks we are receiving are from development kits, which usually have far more memory than the shipping units. Also, it is possible that the system reserves some memory to buffer the transmission to the tablet, which could justify such need.

While Nintendo won't say anything about the specs, 3rd parties will share some of them while showing the games they have in their booths. You know, something like

Developer: "Given that the console has more RAM than the Xbox and PS3, we are able to do bla,bla,bla..."

Press: "It looks great, and how much RAM does it has?"

Developer: "About xxx "

Being xxx a number (2GB) or a multiplier (3x Xbox360).

This is starting to sound like WiiU could be Nintendos best console yet! And if only of these rumors äre true it'll be epic for sure!

Well, it's Nintendo's newest console, so it better be... better than the last one.