I don't think he is doing damage control. He is restricting himself from saying, if you guys were not cheap and where willing to pay $599 for a console than we would have jumped higher.

Look what happeend with 3DS and now vita. The price was/is a killer.

Sony may be able to get away with a $599 price point next generation as they sorta catered to a hardcore crowd who may be willing this time round to pay that much just to get the better graphics. But vita sales indicate maybe a bad idea. Can SONY afford to sell at such a huge loss again?

Microsoft could do it as they can afford to take a hit. But would they want to go deeper into the red when they are almost breaking even after two generations?

Nintendo cannot take that risk as mentally the so called hardcore gamers do not see the same value in a Nintendo console as much as they do in a playsation or xbox. So all they can do is be smart and target the cost at a reasonable entry level.

All this I find funny as people are willing to pay good money (more than home consoles) for an ipad every year and it has bugger all upgrades to it.

People who say pretty visuals add to the experience of a game, yet bash the 3DS for the "gimmick 3D" I would like to point out how ironic that is. Also, there's not much more you can improve on in terms of graphics like you could have between the PS2/Xbox generation to the PS3/360 generation as graphics have become much closer to things where it becomes harder for us to tell the difference. Power, on the other hand, is different. More power means more capabilities, and a lot of the time power and graphics go hand in hand, but that is eventually going to go away as graphics will become as good as we can perceive it. However, new ways of gaming is almost just as important as more power to a system, and bringing both is even better.

People saying that Iwata is just saying that for PR or whatever, I would think that anything anyone says in the company is PR. Sony bashing Nintendo's 3DS calling it a kid's console is PR talk. Seriously, I keep hearing the same things blathered about this over and over again.

From a cost-benefit analysis perspective I would say they're correct ...

To take an average game and add/polish gameplay to see a significant increase in quality may increase the development cost of a game by 25% to 50% for most developers. This cost would be spread between having more developers, paying them more to attract better talent, and giving them more time to fix issues in the game. In contrast, to take an average game and improve graphics to see a significant increase in quality may increase development costs of a game to 2 to 4 times their current level. Most of this cost would come from producing more graphical assets at a higher quality level.

If you were a developer and you spent twice as much to develop a game you would get far more bang for your buck by spending that money truly making the best gameplay experience across multiple platforms than by improving the graphics. A game that maintained current HD quality graphics (or moderate enhancements of that) that really pushed the gameplay forward based on unique user interfaces of each of the consoles would be far more impressive (and probably sell better) than a game that used that money to push graphical hardware.

*looks at witcher 2 max settings 2.5k*
* looks at battlefield 3 max settings 1080p*
...
...
*looks at uncharted 2 which is considered one of the best looking console games*
yea no contest graphics can get 50 times better.

So you can build a pc that runs a game matching the samaritan tech demo, in terms of tech, features and graphics for $500... you mind if I ask where you buy components from because they have to be the cheapest store in the world. Bearing in mind ofcourse that Epic specifically optimised that demo, that was ultimately just an in-engine cutscene, to run smoothly on a GTX680 (down from the original demostration that required 3 GTX680's) which by itself is $500 or so. If that is the case then to run an actual game at that level would require far more due to the fact that they wouldn't be able to optimise it for all systems and the interactable enviroments and random actions taken by the player etc...

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OT: Simply speaking NIntendo are wrong 'innovation' isn't all that is needed to create great experiences just as great graphics aren't either, ofcourse when I great graphics that doesn't necessarily mean realistic at all, they are both important whilst at the same time just being parts of the overall experience which is unfortunately often overlooked. More power doesn't just mean better graphics capabilities but also improved lighing, improved physics, improved AI, larger game worlds and so on and that is why people desire more powerful hardware. So yes new ways of playing games can be wonderful and even welcomed but that shouldn't be at the detriment of hardware capability. The good news is that whilst the WiiU may not be a trailblazer when it comes to 'power' but it looks to be a noticable increase above the Xbox 360 and PS3 so it should be able to see improvements in all the required areas.

In that case can you please answer Sal's post because I'm not sure who's correct anymore. Is it still true or have the middleware gotten rid of this issue?

I keep hearing the same thing over again but to no conclusion.

Amazing visuals only matter to Graphic Whores. Good looking games is good for the eyes, fun playing games is great for the soul.
MGS4 was a beautiful game, but in my opinion MGS was 10x the fun and intrigue all while looking less stunning.
That is the first game that comes to mind, but I know there are countless others to compare.
Nintendo are on the right track as usual.

You were right about that Zoo comment a while back. (that is all guys, I won't spam I promise)

Unless gameplay is good, graphics wont help

That is true and I 100% agree with Nintendo philosphy on focusing on the gameplay first

That said, once they get gameplay right, there is no excuse to not make it better by wrapping the experience with deservingly high production values for sound and graphics.

We don't pay for prototypes... we pay for polished final products that are up to industry production standards and we do expect sound/graphics etc to keep improving on the technical aspects even if we expect Nintendo to prioritize on more timeless aspects like gameplay and art direction.

Middleware reduces the amount of work required by programmers to produce a game, the vast majority of work required to produce a videogame is in creating the artistic assets ... It isn't just the increase in time it takes to create the core assets, you suddenly need far more "filler" assets and these need to be produced at higher quality, and there is no middleware that generates this content.