I can't say for sure until knowing what componets are, exactly, in the Wii U, but PS4's supposed 8GB RAM minimum seems to me it'll make a huge difference in the long run.

Probably 4K displays for the PS4 if I had to guess.

There's no new optical format to push, unless they're planning on making a new 4K compatible format.

The problem with this is that the market for 4K displays and content is arguably even smaller than that for stereoscopic displays since 4K resolutions would only be for larger sized displays. Unless marketing manages to convince people that they need 55" and larger displays in their bedrooms/single bedroom apartments, I'm not sure I see this happening.

The other problem is even if the hardware can output at 4K native resolutions for the UI and menu system, it's not going to be able to render anything but the most simple of games at 4K native resolutions, much like the PS3 really doesn't render any of the most graphically intense games at 1080p native resolution.

I'm not really knowledgable about these tech stuff but afaik we still know nothing of the gpu orbis/durango are using (IF orbis actually has one in addition to the APU)..I think the difference is gonna surprise some people

Not based on these specs it won't be.

The rumored specifications for Wii U's GPU are an RV740 DirectX 10.1 GPU. Only 2 such GPUs were ever made:

- HD4770 & HD4860 (http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=612&card2=622)

Both of those are based on the VLIW-5 architecture (Very Long Instruction Word). 

The A10-5800K APU is just a Trinity AMD CPU (i.e., slower CPU performance for games than a Core i3-3120) and an HD7660D GPU. The HD7660 has nothing to do with HD7000 series however as it is NOT a scalar-based Graphics Core Next GPU architecture, like the real desktop HD7000 series is. The GPU inside A10-5800K is just a VLIW-4 HD6000 series design ("Northern Islands"), rebadged as HD7000 series for marketing purposes. As AMD found that game code rarely utilizes the 5th ALU unit in VLIW-5, they scaled it down to 4, but architecturally wise VLIW-4 and VLIW-5 are very comparable.

Looking at the specs, this GPU would actually be worse than Wii U's (again ONLY looking at the rumored specs as we don't know final numbers for the Wii U either, as the Wii U could have a significantly downclocked HD4770 core).

HD4770 = DX10.1, 40nm node, 750mhz GPU, 640 Stream processors, 32 texture mapping units (TMUs), 16 ROPs, 1GB of GDDR5, 51.2 GB/sec memory bandwidth

vs.

HD7660D = DX11.0, 32nm node, 800mhz GPU, 384 Stream processors, 16 texture mapping units, 8 ROPs.

http://www.nordichardware.com/news/69-cpu-chipset/45310-amd-kaveri-graphics-performance-on-par-with-radeon-hd-7750.html

The GPU inside A10 is extremely weak based on technical specifications I just listed.

For those who don't want to dive into technical details, PC gamers keep track of how various PC GPUs perform in modern games relative to each other:

HD7770 = 93

HD4770 = 51

A10-5800K (7660D) = 31 (or 3x slower than a desktop HD7770)

Intel (Ivy Bridge GPU) HD4000 series = 16.7

http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?p=41174

HD7770 sells regularly for $100-120 on Newegg after rebates. Also, the amount of system RAM is a very minor point.  You can put 128 GB of RAM but if the console is CPU and GPU limited/bottlenecked, it will make no difference whatsoever. Even now most PC games only use 2-4 GB of system memory. Most of the workload is carried by the GPU first and CPU second. For modern games, the bottleneck is no longer amount of system memory, but GPU horsepower, GPU Video RAM and CPU performance per core (more cores are not better either beyond 4 for the most part). In terms of performance per core, A10 CPU also falls well short. A lot has changed since 2005-2006 PC era. Whether the console has 8 or 16 GB of system memory tells us nothing about the heart of the console which drives graphics - the GPU & to some extent CPU for API, physics effects, etc. If the GPU is poor, the console will be underpowered regardless of the amount of system memory.

For the Non-techie people, if Orbis goes with an A10-5800K APU only and lacks a dedicated GPU whatsoever, it will be a terribly underpowered next generation console. It will be more powerful than PS3 of course but this is hardly what many of us expected (at least HD7770 dedicated GPU).

Personally, I don't believe this rumor as that would mean PS4 would severely underpowered for next generation games. If Sony does use an APU A10-5800K, I expect a separate dedicated GPU as well. The gaming performance of A10-5800K is barely 2x better than Intel's "free" HD4000 series. 

Maybe I'm just technilogically illiterate, but doesn't 8 GB of ram seem excessive unless there is a really heavy duto OS in the background?  I guess it would be good for future proofing, but I don't see the need for that on a dedicated gaming machine for some time.

There's no way it's not gonna have a dedicated GPU. That would directly contradict the "1080p @ 60fps" comment.

Those were the parts I really needed to see. I expect "Orbis" to have a dedicated GPU as well, but I'm crazy.

Theyre saying 60fps to include for 3d at 30fps

I think you're right on this. For now it seems excessive, but as the thread title suggests, it should be "enough for today and tomorrow's markets".

Developer units always have (at least) twice the memory of the final product. The way it works is that one part of the memory (usually one half) is the "real console memory" in the final product. This is where developers put the game code into as it would be on the end product. The other area of the memory in the developer unit is kind of a "state machine", it contains for example code that supervises what is going on in the machine, and debugging code. Also, usually, software is developed with tons of non-optimised code, so your first attempts at fitting your game into real memory overflows into that "buffer".