maybe this will help give people a bit of perspective

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second

X360 Xenon 19,200 MIPS at 3.2 GHz (2.0 IPS * number of cores * clock speed)

Wii U CPU aparenlty 3 Power PC 750 cores at 1.25GHz according to Hector Martin (AKA Marcan42) which is ~8,625 MIPS (2.7 IPS * number of cores * clock speed)

Rumoured Next Box AMD FX 8 core CPU at 1.6GHz (according to Martin) would be ~48,384 MIPS (3.78 IPS * number of cores * clock speed)

Not really accurate to real world performance but should give a rough idea of how they would stack up.

xbox 180 confirmed.

Microsoft don't need to follow Nintendo model,if they want to,just use Xbox 360.
Nextbox won't be low-power console,because MS want everything

This is a long winded thread because someone sent a tweet lol, we'll see what happens in a few months

That is just a rumor, we will see later if it is true. I bet MS will show the specs, unlike nintendo.

i dont know why a few people are speculating the CPU will be an 8 core, unless the console is going to have some fairly powerful video editing or 3d modeling software an 8 core CPU is a waste of time and resources, look again at PC hardware especially gaming PC's, they dont require 8 core CPU's to run the latest games as most game's dont even make use of quad core CPU's its the GPU that is the main focus point, last gen consoles were very limited in terms of dedicated video ram 'VRAM' current mid/top end PC graphics memory uses GDDR5 while system memory uses DDR3, the 360 had unified RAM with just 10mb of dedicated VRAM as the system RAM is being shared by the system its not as quick as dedicated VRAM.

im sure some one who knows what im trying to say can say it in a way that makes it clear to those that are unfamiliar with PC hardware.

Thanks. Very helpful.

Never been a problem on the PC where the current level of technology is several dozen multiples higher than the consoles.
In-fact it gives less burden to smaller developers as they can spend less time tightening up code, compressing textures and other assets to fit into the anemic 512mb of memory. - That costs TIME and money.
And the games are cheaper on the PC too, go figure. - They still make some tidely profits.

Perfect examples of this is CD Projekt with The Witcher and Stardock with Sins of a Solar Empire not to mention Crytek who became successfull for pushing a PC to it's limits.

Half the problem that faces console-only developers is that Microsoft and Sony get a small cut from every single game sold.
Everytime a developer releases DLC or a patch, Microsoft and Sony make money out of it with various "fees".
On top of that you have the greedy developers who want to make as much profit as they can with as little investement as they can, end result? Bugger all to the developers.
This is why small, medium and large developers have been thriving on the PC, none of those cost burdens exist, heck even publishers are being removed thanks to things like Steam and Kickstarter.

So really, the costs of games and the potential price increases for the next generation cannot be blamed on the developers and the cost to develop them as they will remain relatively stagnant, but instead try pointing your fingers at the other middle men who drool in anticipation as it's only the console platforms  who get price increases with each successive generation.

don't take it as absolute truth tho, the type of instructions used, data types, how the workload is/can be split up accross multiple threads, changes to the architecture such as cache sizes and speeds, RAM, bus speeds/widths etc etc can drasticaly change how the CPUs would stack up in reality.

8 cores are needed so that various tasks can have dedicated cores.  Kinect needs 1 core, OS needs another, etc.