In an interview with Blitz Games Studios design director John Nash, he talks about the Wii U and something caught my attention:

“It’s very easy for people to get hung up on hardware specs and technical specs. It’s great to have a massive processor that’s got a graphics pipeline that uses DX11, but what people need to focus on particularly for games going forward, is, what kind of experience can you build in the space of possibility afforded by the hardware in terms of features? Not in clock cycles. Does it connect out to the internet well? Does it connect to mobile well? How does it connect to your other friends and involve them in that experience? That’s where games are moving forwards.”

Hers's is the full interview: http://mynintendonews.com/2012/09/01/developer-says-wii-u-isnt-about-power-but-about-the-experiences-it-offers/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

No, because they're not Microsoft. He means the (AMD) GPU was designed to support DX11 features, which can be taken advantage of through OpenGL or a modified Nintendo version.

Open GL 4 which can do everything direct x 11 can do.

"It’s great to have a massive processor that’s got a graphics pipeline that uses DX11, but..."

equals...

"It's great to have the latest and greatest, but that's not what Wii U is about."

Don't get people too excited with threads like this. DX10 is confirmed, but that's where Wii U's capabilities end.

No, it is a Microsoft exclusive...

"Does it support heavy tesselation which makes DX11 shit so pretty?"

Yes, we just don't know how heavy will it be.

Concerns about dynamic lighting can also vanish by looking at the Japanese Garden and Zelda tech demos. If you know where to look...

for me the interview sounds as if he is saying wii u doesn't have it. he said "it's great to have that but xyz"  so he is saying wii u doesn't have it but that's not a big problem because there are more important things.

I think he means it has the power to run it, but as others have said, it's a Microsoft thing, so no.

It uses an R700 GPU, so DX11 is confirmed, or at least its featureset is present on the hardware.

Weren't the HD 5xxx series of cards the first ones to be DX 11? The HD 4xxx series, the ones that used the R700 chip, were DX10 cards.

False. Only DX11 was ever mentioned in the hardware releases. To be specific, it said a DX11 tessellation unit.

That would only be true if it were using a stock GPU base like the 360 and PS3, but even then, those two had some augmentations to do things the stock cards could not. Nintendo has never used a stock CPU or GPU. They've always used completely custom made components.

The Wii U can have whatever they specified.