It's more a case that you don't want to believe the 360 is more powerful, but you need to understand you're basing your opinions on a sub-hd video stream, if you take any half decent looking game and shrink it down it looks incredible, additionally at this point it'll be running on an SDK and not the retail hardware, in which case the graphical quality doesn't represent the final quality.

It's hard to swallow, i know, but it just doesn't have the raw power to outclass the 360, so the chances of it holding it's own against the next sony and microsoft console, in the graphics department are none.

Yeah, the more I'm hearing from you the more I come to believe that Wii U will be left in the dust by the PS720, and out in the cold by 3rd parties...

Why is Nintendo doing this to us?! :,(

The success of the Wii is working against it, as others have said - but the real problem is that the 360 and ps3 are approaching the end of their lives but are still pumping out some truly amazing games, providing robust and extensively tried and tested online functionality, where WiiU is basically doing 'babbys first multiplayer' with regaurds to a conherant and structured online system.

The controller confuses people, and frankly the games Nintendo are using to advertise it, don't look that different from those offered on the Wii.

Yhen you need to consider that when the Wii launched in 2005, lots of children bought it, lets say a 7 year old and a 12 year old bought it, those same kids will now be 14 and 19 conversely, and now be moving on to platform that offer a more adult experience, where the adults that were initially buying into the control system offered by the Wii have long since bored of it and moved on - Wii's success was based purely on the novelty of control input and its appeal to children, but the same age range of children that wanted the wii when it released, now would rather have iphones, ipads and other devices.

Basically, Nintendo missed the window for releasing a new console by about 2 years, and ditching the very input method that was what pulled in the punters originally, for the input method offered by the new controller with a screen just messes up the minds of those who were already on the brink of moving on.

I'd like to ask you to do the following, hit youtube up for the xenogame trailer, set it to 720, watch it and pause often, really scruitinize the environmnts and effects, the ground textures and sprites, popin and pixelation on things like trees in the distance (alpha blending messing up, can be seen in the section of video where the player runs towards the monster with water to the right), take off the rose tinted this looks awesome glasses and truly look closer, and you'll notice things that make you think 'actually yeah.. it isn't really as amazing as i thought'. - Also it's running at 60fps, in the video, if monolith stick with this it's going to hav trmendously anouyng frame drops when in really complex environments or busy fights, when running on retail and not the overpoweed sdk.

As a side note i'm sat in a bar in downtown tokyo writing my responses on my laptop in between drinking sake, so if i start messing up spelling of things it's not entirely my fault.

Relax, predictions always have a chance to be wrong (and it happens more than correct ones). I'm Patcher is well and with a lot of money even if he is wrong a lot of times and makes absurd predictions :D

I think that the only thing you missed is that if PS4 was on par with Wii U, it would be a small jump from PS3. Sony would expend money in R&D and would have to convince everyone to buy a new console for 50~100% more without any improvement. Imagine Uncharted 4 on PS4 looking equal that Uncharted 3, or GT6 exactly like GT5. It would be a pathetic E3. If they couldn't afford a jump, they would quit the videogame market.

Despite their financial problems, Hirai already said that games, mobile, medical equipments and cameras are the main bussiness from now on. So they will kill the budget of other divisions and keep the money pumping on the important ones. The TV division is way smaller now and maybe they even close it, since it is the main problem. A console is a one shot bussiness. If you screw it, you will have to wait 5 to 6 years to try again, so you always have to go with full power and do your best or simply quit it and don't come back.

I really do agree that Nintendo has made a fucked up job in advertising the system; they don't know WHAT to advertise it seems. And they really don't know how to advertise the controller; to me, it looks like a really great addition, and a natural progression to add a screen to the controller, but it seems as if Nintendo don't know how to market this feature. I don't know if they're 2 years to late for releasing a new console; but they're not giving us much reason to upgrade to Wii U, that's for sure.

Yes, I've seen quite some less than encouraging things with the trailer; like grass appearing out of nowhere, and the sharp water edge, and things like that. But as I've said before, this is probably quite an early built, and things will improve. I'm sure Monolith didn't want to show this footage yet, and that's probably why it wasn't featured at e3; but Nintendo got nervous over the poor figures of the Wii U and wanted to reassure us that games will come. And I'd be perfectly happy if it ran at 720 at 30fps...

Well, good for you, I'd say!! I've never tried sake (though, I'd like to), but I know for a fact that alcohol has a way of messing up the typing! Damn you delicious alcohol!!! 

It's been such a long time ago that I don't even remember if I said PS4 would be on par with Wii U; in that case, I'd just be plain stupid. PS4 will be more powerful than Wii U, I just doubted that we'd see a Wii-->PS3 gap...

Making the gaming division a core business only puts more pressure on PS4 to generate money, as the whole company will rely on it...

Hehe looking back at this prediction right now (especially after having this lng conversation with Tachikoma) makes me very doubtful ^^ hopefully this thread will be dead and buried by the time we know the final specs of PS720 :D

Yes it is, $50 is not much, its nowhere near the money Sony wasted on selling the PS3 at a loss which was close to $300, OR the more than $100 Sony lost on selling PS2 at launch. Sony does have money, otherwise they wouldn't be able to purchase Gaikai, invest $645m in Olympus or buy out Ericsson and fully own Sony Mobile.  The WiiU is being sold at a loss, with 1 game purchase the system is profitable.  GameCube and Wii both have been profitable from day 1, With the WiiU Nintendo follows the same strategy Sony did with PS2 and PS3.

Unfortunatly for Nintendo WiiU is not doing good, in America its selling worse than the $600 PS3 which was supply constrained aswel. There is no hype for the WiiU, the weekly sales are horrible. Its lacking 3rd party support. Once again the system will be known for Nintendos own games. It doesn't even get PS360 multiplats, there is no way it'll ever get PS4/720 multiplats.

Thing is though, it's not 2006 any more. Sony doesn't have the same credit rating as they used to have, and as far as I know, they have more debts then they have assets. Like it or not, but that's one serious financial situation. And of course they have money, but they're losing it, slowly but surely. I bet you have a better understanding of Sony's financials than I do, but I think we can both agree that Sony's economy isn't all that good right now. ANd the GC was actually sold at a small loss - I think it was something like $9...

The Wii U is doing terrible right now, but they've still sold more Wii U's in the same time frame since launch than Sony sold PS3's. But you're right; if Nintendo can't build hype around Wii U and release games and increase sales, Wii U's pretty much fucked. And I actually think Wii U has a better chance of getting PS720 games; the engines will be far more scalable this time around, and Wii U and PS720 will have architectures more aching to each other than what Wii U have in common with PS360...

And we won't see a difference so big like that. We got some new PS4 info today, it's pretty powerful, but won't make a Wii/PS3 situation: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=153742&page=1

They have more than enough to launch it at loss and looking the rumoured specs, it is exactly what they are going to do. Sony has a healthy income, they need to cut costs and that's all (and the difficult part), but not from important divisions. TVs are a lost cause, it would be better stop with them than risking PlayStation. Believe me, if they still can afford that massively unprofitable TV division, PS is safe. They would cut that first.

Comparing Wii U launch with PS3 it's not very fair. It's a US$ 300 console competing with a US$ 600 console (and that stil had to fight with 360 that came a year early and with a beastial PS2). Wii U got a clean road and a good price point. The hollydays were great, but now the weekly sales are dead and they need to fix it before PS720.

Yeah, I saw that. I wonder what while constitute "cutting edge" and when that term can't be used... Perhaps I should have specified that in the OP :P