Actually I think you'll find if rumors are true ps4 does not blow wii u out of the water and does not keep up with the xbox either. It is literally in the middle. Xbox is the one with the truly sizable gap that could hinder wii u.

I agree, I'm disappointed that only a couple of next years biggest multiplatform releases will come out on the WiiU.

You spelled pleased wrong.

Not sure where you're seeing pleased in my comment. I think I spelled disappointed right.

There, you did it again. It's p l e a s e d. That's not too difficult is it?

This gen is going to be similar to the 6th gen with regards to the difference in power between the three consoles. All 3 are going to be in the same sort of ballpark going by what's been leaked so far. We're looking at the 720 being 6-8 times more powerful than the 360, on paper (4 times as much RAM, 3MB cache on the CPU, 32MB cache on the GPU) the Wii U is around three times more powerful than the 360 with certain aspects (the OOOE CPU, the DSP, the IO processor, the ARM11 co-processor, the very low latency RAM) making it between 3 and 4 times more powerful than the 360 in real-world performance.

So we're looking at the 720 being 2 to 3 times more powerful than the Wii U, the Wii U has a similar architecture, the U has a DX11-equivalent feature set and we know that the GPU has some exclusive Nintendo Magic going on under the hood which allows developers to save memory for textures. Nintendo aren't going to have any problems with third party support at all, particularly if they continue to make deals with developers like they did for Bayonetta 2.

I would be careful with assuming you know what Sony or Microsoft are going to do, but I do think it is fair to say that they are limited by what they can realistically do ... I do think there are some pretty safe bets:

1) I expect Sony and Microsoft will have an answer for the Wiimote/Wii U tablet bundled with their system at launch. This could take on multiple forms, for example an advanced version of Kinect or Move, a clone of the Wii U tablet, or something entirely different. Whatever they decide will probably not be cheap and will probably take away resources from their hardware.

2) Sony and Microsoft will probably want to sell their console for a reasonable price ($400 as a guess) without taking too large of a loss

3) Sony and Microsoft will probably want to push technical features that go (mostly) unnoticed by the average gamer and eat up a lot of processing power but are easier to market; for example 1080p, 60fps or 3D.

4) Any losses Sony and Microsoft do take will likely be recovered through increased game prices and/or the expansion of for-pay services.

Microsoft has monstrous cash reserves. They can throw around $8 billion for a purchase of Skype like it's candy.

I think it's a huge mistake to think MS can't take large losses.

And I don't think they view it as a "loss", they view it as a long term investment to basically secure the living room. How much do you think Microsoft would like to have control of the living before Google or Apple get there?

XBox 720 will be sold at a loss at launch, and I don't think MS really minds.

The XBox does not exist for MS because they need another division to make them profit. Whatever profit "silly video games" make for them is peanuts in their overall business scheme. The XBox is and always has been a trojan horse for them to make their move into the living room and the XBox 720 I think will be the fully realized vision of that. 

I also think Epic and other third parties are pushing MS to make the system as powerful as possible, and MS tends to listen in these cases (they upped the 360 RAM basically at the urging of Epic for example). 720 will be a beast of a console, book it. It will be a 8-10 year product cycle too. 

Also from the murmurs we've heard from certain developers point to the 720/PS4 being very powerful and impressive, not moderate upgrades of existing machines. 

Microsoft can't take losses to their gaming division. As large a company as they are their shareholders will once again demand they leave the gaming industry. Microsoft as it stands right now is ignoring their shareholders. Do you ever wonder why they always boast about the 360 at their shareholders meetings? Because they dont want it. The only reason people are staying are probably the dividend checks, but beyond that they want Microsoft focusing on Apples growing marketshare.

This entire post is confused, but especially the last line.

The only people that might fall into this category can be counted on, maybe, ten fingers (e.g. Ken Levine, the Houser Bros., etc.), as far as Western devs are concerned. Everyone else is going to do *exactly* what management tells them do to because THEY WORK FOR MANAGEMENT and management is PAYING THE BILLS. Software engineers do not get to pick what they work on. Period. I'm not even sure why you would suggest such a fanciful notion.

And lol at the notion of tens (let alone hundreds) of game devs walking from their jobs in this economy because they refuse to work on 'x' console! Have you been paying attention to the game dev job market lately? I have because I work in it, and let me tell ya, it ain't pretty. Right now everyone is moving onto "nextgen" dev (be it U, NextBox, PS4), but this also means that more money is being spent on fewer games, which means fewer jobs since they will always try to squeeze as much blood from a particular employee as possible. This, at least in part, explains why independent dev studios have been dropping like flies for the past 2-years--there simply isn't enough work to go around. (I can almost promise you this is exactly what happened at Eurocom--they got caught in the vise of wrapping up a current gen project and had nothing at all lined up after that because the work just isn't there.) And anyone that is at an independent game dev studio right now is probably just happy to have a job making console games--that's certainly been my experience when talking to the non-Levines of the gaming world, which outnumber the rockstars 1000-to-1 or more.)

(I hope everyone enjoyed the dev holocaust of the past 5-years, because by the end of the nextgen, you'll probably have five big pubs with internal teams, and a vanishingly small handful of dev studios that actually still make console titles, and a *ton* of contractors, be it here or in the Far East/India.)

(I'm actually one of those people that can 'choose' what they work on but not because I'm somebody--it's because I'm freelance/contract-based, so I work on what I want (unless I really need the money then, like eveyrone else, I take whatever is on the table), but that's hardly the same thing as working for EA and demaning they make "Software Engineer: The Reckoning" or you're going to leave--they will *laugh* at you.)