Just kinda curious, what if Nintendo had gone a different route with the Wii U design philosophy and just made the system basically a standard "next-gen" machine, just first to market? 

No touchscreen controller in the box. No super low power requirement. 1.5 TFLOP DX11 equivalent GPU + 2GB GDDR5 RAM + 2GB cheapo DDR3 RAM + quad-core CPU. USB 3.0 ports for high speed HDDs. Classic Controller Pro in the box, still functional with the Wiimote though. 

$349.99 basic pack, $399.99 deluxe. Maybe you could still have the touchscreen controller, but as a seperate accessory like the Wii Fit model ($99.99 bundled with Nintendo Land). 

1 year headstart. Hands down the best version of BLOPS2 and other multiplats for a year (1080p, DX11 style effects, etc.). 

Microsoft would probably be OK, but Sony would be in serious trouble of being irrelevant if this happened IMO. 

why people still believe wiiU is not next gen? if you are waiting for quantum leaps in the nextbox or ps4... i think you are going to be disappointed.

I don't think that would have worked too well for Nintendo in the long run. If they had gone the traditional route with WiiU (standard controller, higher price for more power), I think the Nextbox would easily come in a year later and provide a more attractive option for this approach.

As is, WiiU is offering a unique approach of its own with the controller and an affordable price, and I don't think the power issue will be that big of a deal to the masses, as long as its modern architecture and scalable game engines allow it to receive the majority of multiplats. We'll see, though.

Nintendo have done this before. That's when people started to think Nintendo should have dropped out of making consoles. This is what N64 and GC were: power beasts of their era, and it didn't really put them in a good spot.

GameCube launched 18 months after the PS2 though. 

N64 would've destroyed the PSOne IMO if Nintendo hadn't crippled it with cartridges-only, and even then that was a year after. 

I would probably still wait for PS4 or 720 as Nintendo does not have the IPs for me and I would assume third party support would still be less than the other 3 companies. I suspect it would be too expensive for most Nintendo consumers, they seem to be used to spending less than other types of gamers. I think they would do even worse than I already think they will if they took this method.

Other implications of this:

Wii U probably would have the superior version of Grand Theft Auto IV on top of BLOPS2.

Things like Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes ... I think Wii U would be made the lead platform for, because it'd be t he only console that could run the game in the fidelty shown in that trailer without compromise and would have an actual instal base behind it.

It would basically be the PS2 of this generation. Sure, Microsoft could release an even more powerful system 1 year later (as XBox was better than PS2 hardware wise), but the market is clearly starving for PS3/360 upgrades right now.

The WiiU IS a leap into next gen. graphically as well as how you play. the size of the leap is arguable.

Hence why the title states "full-on" as in a processing performance leap greater than 5x. 

Being first is a moderate advantage, and by producing a more powerful system Nintendo could have played "defense" and eliminated a few potential advantages their competition may have; but (ultimately) people buy a system because it offers new and exciting game experiences they can't get elsewhere and I think the draw of better graphics is getting smaller and smaller all the time.

With that said, with how highly optimized late generation games for the HD consoles are running at (roughly) 720p@30fps and their quick early generation unoptimized ports are running at (roughly) 720p@60fps on the Wii U I think it is fair to say that the Wii U is at least twice as powerful as the HD consoles; and may be 3 to 4 times as powerful as either of them. With this in mind, I'm of the opinion that developers of games in the next generation will have to choose whether to target the largest user base possible (resulting in games targeting the Wii U with some frame-rate and resolution enhancements to more powerful systems) or whether to produce the most advanced graphics possible (resulting in games that run below 1080p@60fps on the most powerful consoles); and I expect that most games that are not big budget blockbusters will probably choose to target the largest user base possible, and this would mean that there is limited benefit of the Wii U being substantially more powerful.