I agree that next gen should be pretty exciting.  But looking at the Wii, it actually had more 3rd party software sales than PS3 or X360 did.  3rd part support doesn't necessarily mean 'the biggest AAA titles'.  Wii didn't have GTA, Bioshock, or countless other big name titles.  But it had plenty of other less 'popular' titles (which catered to the style of the system) that sold even more.  3rd parties will continue to make even more unique brands of software for the specific control schemes of each console.  They'll be taking into account the Wii Game Pad, Smart Glass, and whatever Sony comes up with this time around.  It may be the lesser known, console-specific, titles that create success more than anything else next-gen.

I think this is something that many/most people miss ...

Even if Sony and Microsoft produce dramatically more powerful systems than the Wii U, third party publishers will have to make a choice whether to produce better visuals or target a larger userbase. They can target these high end consoles and high end PCs few people own, or they can release games that can be bought by almost anyone.

I'm inclined to believe that for the first few years of the generation most games will be released for the current HD consoles with the lowest detail settings while running at 720p@30fps and will be designed to scale to run on higher end consoles and gaming PCs. New(er) game engines are actually being developed to take advantage of tessellation to achieve this, and it is not unreasonable to expect that (in the not too distant future) most big budget games could easily manage the multiple levels of detail to make this possible.

People, I´ve just read some pages and I´m getting the conclusion that many people here are not considering a key fact on next gen consoles success: consumer economy.
Taking the example of the Vita, and past examples like Dreamcast and 3DO, it´s clear that it´s not just power that matters. Vita may be a powerhouse but it still doesn´t have what it takes to convince new consumers to spent heavy on it. Everyone is talking about power matters, power matters, graphics, graphics, graphics and to tell you the truth, it´s kind of boring talking about the same thing over and over again.
If Sony and Microsoft can´t sustain a new high-tech-high-performance-high-price console, we won´t see it soon and they will have to come with something not so powerful but instead with something that´s acessible and with an affordable price for consumers. Or they will have to take the most advantage possible from their actual consoles in therms of consumer approaching before taking a step on new grounds that are not acessible to customers today.
How risk would be for them to come with a $ 600 console right now? Would people buy it or only their fans? How long would Sony sustain another product with a loss, like they´re sustaing Vita today? Are consoles sales continue to fall in 2013, 2014 ? Nintendo´s bet is, at least, a cheap one, one that is acessible to people and at the same time has some innovations, it may be a hit or not, but it seems like a safe bet for the next three or four years, as much as PS3 and Xbox still have good sales potential worldwide.
Those are not easy questions to answer, but after the case of Vita, production costs and consumer costs will be very, very important not for Sony and MS but for the future of the console market itself.

Processing power needed for the gamepad is pretty minimal, especially if it is just menus.

The Vita does not have top of the line hardware. I would say SONY did learn their lesson, before the 3DS dropped its price the $249 price point of the Vita was praised.

If Bethesda were competent it could run Skyrim properly.

If the PS3 had more system ram (or graphics ram) available, Bethesda could get skyrim to run properly.  The problem is fixed vram and fixed system ram, at 256 mb each.  I imagine the cell architecture is givnig them fits as well.

There are RAM limitations and obviously the PS3 suffers more than the Xbox 360 and PC, but it's not like it's impossible. Many other developers achieve greater things than Skyrim on the PS3.

That's one thing I'm looking forward to with the Wii U, RAM, and lots of it.

The PS-Vita's price was praised by the same people who thought $600 was reasonable for a PS3 and $250 was too much for a Wii ...

Essentially, people who look at these in terms of value as hardware rather than value as a system.

Is that unreasonable?