But aren't most new gen consoles only good compared to their competition? And Activision has hinted at BO2 running on 1080/60 frames on WiiU...

Hobos would surely pick 'em up anyways :D

But even ps3 had family games.

You mean new next gen consoles compared to existing current gen consoles? Not really, when the Xbox 360 came out everything else was blown away, the Dreamcast blew everything else away too. What we have seen from the Wii U has been great but it hasn't really blown everything else away, so I'm still expecting the next Playstation and Xbox to be a bit more powerful.

1080p / 60fps is a great achievement, but it is Black Ops 2, I wonder how the texture resolution and effects will compare to the PS3 / 360 and PC versions.

Remember we've entered a period of diminishing returns.  Last gen we had a jump from SD to HD.  That alone is enough to make your eye believe there's been a huge graphical leap, even though there may not necessarily be one.  For example, if you take Wii games and run them at 1080p on emulator, they look amazing and almost as good as anything on 360.  There is no such paradigm shift between this generation and the next.  Graphics approach photorealism on current gen consoles.  How much more photorealistic do you want it, and how much are you willing to pay to get it?

I firmly believe that neither PS4 nor Xbox720 will be significantly different visually from what the WiiU will give us, even if they turn out to be 4x as powerful as WiiU.  There just isn't enough room for improvement until 4k TVs become the norm.  I personally don't see THAT happening until the console generation after the upcoming one.

I'll agree with your first point, technology isn't advancing as fast as it used to be and the PS3 and 360 were already overpowered.

Why are you talking about HD as if it is some kind of decieving optical illusion? HD is HD, it taxes hardware and in turn makes games look a lot better. Native resolutions have always been increasing, the increase in native resolution is what made the jump from 5th gen to 6th gen even more noticable. Wii games do look good in 1080p, but I would still say they're a fair bit behind the PS3 and 360, and running the Wii in 1080p would have needed considerably better hardware.

Like I mentioned somewhere above, I think 1080p / 60fps is a great target for next gen. Photorealistic graphics are nothing without the clarity and fluidity of 1080p / 60fps. There is still quite a lot of room for improvement on top of what PCs are currently producing. Like I also said somewhere above, $399 is the sweet spot, all I want is for SONY and Microsoft to make the most powerful hardware they can for that price without taking a substantial loss.

I agree, I don't think the gap between the Wii U and the PS4 / Xbox 720 will be that big either, but I do expect it to be somewhere along the lines of Dreamcast vs Gamecube / Xbox. Believe me, there is a lot of room for graphical improvements, I'm constantly picking out flaws in the PC versions of Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2. 

Oh, yes that's what I meant =) Yes, last gen was a major leap - but much of that is thanks to HD really. And as far as I understand these things (which I really don't) most gens doesn't make that leap. Sure every new gen gets better graphics, but most often they're not major leaps. And considering that Dreamcast and Xbox360 lost their respective gen to weaker consoles I'd say graphics aren't everything.

Take a look here: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=136756&page=1 and look up Viper1's reasoning towards the end of the thread about why PS4 can't afford to be a major leap because of exchange rate. I'm with you: WiiU will be weakest this gen, but I don't think that's saying a lot...

I don't mean to imply that you don't need more hardware to make it happen.  Just that if HD resolutions are equal, the differences between 360 and Wii all but disappear.  Especially considering that most 360 games ran at 720p or lower (Halo 3 ran at something like 600p).  There is no such obvious differentiator for the coming generation, and its really going to take some trained eyes to see the differences next go around.  Thats all I'm trying to say.

Well, Sony fired their first attempt by making the PS3 even slimmer, and dropping the price to 269 and 299 for the 250 and 500 gb models respectively. Will this damper WiiU sales?

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/09/19/playstation-3-redesigned-again-launching-later-this-year/

I think not.

Remember when sony launched a white PS2 slim when the Wii launched ?

Trying to blend in with something perhaps. I see this working as that worked. 

Wii U has a demand on its own, doesn't matter what phones or other consoles are on the market, its a product that stands by itself on its uniqueness.

I believe there will be many people with the WiiU60 or PS3U combo this christmas for the sole reason of it being another diferent console.