The Wii U game developement starts where the other two consoles cap out. Once middleware makes use of the next gen features there will be a noticable bump in graphical fidelity. Fake or not, I'm cool with what the console does.

this are clearly better specs than the Xbox360

DO THE MATH!

It should easily outclass the 360  that is for sure. But it's also in the same ball park, unless it's clocked really high. Once devs get up to speed it should produce some really nice resaults there is no doubt about that.

But it should be kept in mind the average Wii U game will be doing a more than an average PS360 game due to the screen on the tab, and i imagine the rich OS features that the console will likely have. Having a UI that pulls up instantly and lets you chat with freinds etc will be a nice feature as well.

The advantage of using dated GPU and CPU tech would of course be that licencing will be a lot cheaper, and low power/heat, and they will definately be using modern mature manufacturing proccess (45nm for CPU/GPU from the sound of things) which should allow high yeilds. If they are using a system on a chip design (like the redesigned 360) they can cut board complexity especially with 1 pool of unified RAM. That and the small power effeciant design that should allow them to keep costs really low. The tab shouldn't be all that expensive to make ether with a rather low resolution small resistive touch screen in addition to a normal controler, I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to get change from $250US TBH, especially as they aren't using a mechanical HDD and no movie playback licensing fees. MS can make a profit off the Xbox 360 S 4 GB – $199.99 with 3 pack in games from different publishers, Nintendo breaking even on the Wii U at $250 doesn't seem all that outlandish to me.

LoL man that commercial brings back memories of the good old days when gamers actually argued about stuff like that.

By the way, how many bits are we up to anyway??  Last gen was the "128-bit" gen... are we up to 256 bit?  Still on 128-bit?  Or did we go back to 64-bit? lol

We need to understand too the Wii U has a lot of the same costs of a handheld system and many of the costs of a home console too.

I suspect Sony is barely breaking even on the Vita at $250, maybe losing a few bucks/unit.

The Wii U compared to Vita at $250 has a larger LCD screen, probably a larger battery, more RAM (including a larger pool of expensive eDRAM), better CPU, better GPU, requires a seperate external power supply, on board flash memory, disc drive (probably a Blu-Ray derivative), and probably higher packaging/shipping/plastic costs (these may seem trivial, but they're not free either).

My guess is

$249.99 SKU - small loss (with smaller allotment of units, which fixes the amount of losses). Becomes profitable within 4-6 months.

$299.99 SKU - small profit

$349.99 SKU - decent profit, but requires extra throw in to the package.

You can also see why Nintendo would favor a multi-SKU setup for launch as well. Sales of the higher SKUs would cancel out any losses from the $250 model. And say you're manufacturing 1 million units, and 750k of those are the $300 or $350 model, you're basically gaurunteed to profit from the hardware.

The Wii U has a very small box which is only 1/3rd larger than the Wii by volume. It isn't going to be extremely powerful because it is extremely small.

The Vita uses an expensive 5 inch OLED display and two multitouch panels, and it's tech specs are nothing to sneeze at for a portable system ether. It uses a pretty heavy duty battery as well.

Teaser