Yeah. An immeasurable one - 8GB hard drive. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/352365/full-wii-u-specs-allegedly-leaked-at-e3-tri-core-cpu-15gb-ram-8gb-flash/ though unofficial they still aren't buzzwords as you mention.

Thanks, I have a Radeon HD6870 and I'm very familiar with what it can do. No, it's not the absolute top of the line, but it's not far off, and it IS quite a bit more "powerful" than what's in the 360. But the visuals as of yet released that are capable on it are NOT anywhere near "a generation+" the way you describe it. This is a widely known and documented fact, and one that has also been mentioned a variety of times in similar fashion in other threads recently.

Yes, they're decently better, but not so much so that developers will be all that motivated to worry about it, and not so much so that gamers will be that concerned, either. The biggest difference from here on out isn't how many polygons or teraflops or how detailed the textures are, but how many models are possible and how many textures it can push. Those each are affected the most by the things that the WiiU has upgraded the most.

Did you read past that sentence?

If I hadn't, I wouldn't have bothered to quote.

Based on rumoured specs, the Wii U is not a "power beast". If you look at Moore's Law (number of transistors able to be cheaply put on a chip doubles every 2 years), and its generalisation (says that overall speed, which includes both clock speed and transistor count, doubles every 1.5 years), and then look at Nintendo consoles starting with the NES, an interesting thing becomes apparent - the NES, Wii, and Wii U all lie on the line described by that generalisation, but the SNES lies a bit above it, the N64 further above, and the GC even further above again.

What Nintendo did with the Wii was revert back to the sustainable power level, and the Wii U has sustained it.

The reason why the next generation of Xbox and PS will not be significantly powerful compared with Wii U is that releasing such a powerful system is not financially sensible, and neither MS nor Sony are in a position to waste money on raw power, especially given what Nintendo showed with the Wii. In order for Sony and MS to retain a comparable lead vs Nintendo in terms of power, they would again have to risk faulty systems (like RROD), sell their systems at a loss (and still be overpriced), and they would have to up the cost of development to massive proportions.

Simply put, if third parties have to spend $100 million+ on a game in order to have it even perform OK against the competition, they're not going to take any risks, and they're not going to release many titles. It doesn't make for a thriving development ecosystem, and so neither company will risk trying to retain "power beast" status. They will instead follow Nintendo's lead and focus more on user interface issues like the controller (they're already doing this, with Kinect (and now, Smartglass) and Move). Indeed, this is precisely why we haven't yet heard of their "next-gen" systems - because they can do a fair bit to alter the interface without changing the system itself. They will only release a new system when they experience dramatic decline in sales, because of a lack of motivation otherwise.

Whether the Wii U will cause such a decline in the 360 or PS3 sales patterns is yet to be seen. It will probably take a reasonable chunk out of them, though.