i'll pay $400 and see a marked improvement.  you don't give enough credit to what $400 purchase price (an extra $100 over the wiiU) can buy especially when $100 and ~15% of the systems power isn't going towards a manditory secondary screen.  launch games won't be mind blowing different but they will be noticably better and by the end of next gen i promise you games will be mind blowingly more advanced than what you see today.  ..just like ps2 to ps360.

I kinda think Nintendo should've been more nuanced in their approach and refreshed the original Wii earlier and left the Wii brand as being strongly casual-focused and budget friendly.

Wii HD - For casuals and families, basically just the original Wii redesigned with a new Miiverse style OS, HDMI output, upscales old Wii games to 1080p, has a slightly better chip + larger frame buffer that would allow some newer games to run in HD. Greater emphasis on eShop content. $149.99 sticker price, 8GB storage (expandable). Release fall 2010.

New Nintendo Entertainment System - Premium console, with a decent modified GPGPU in the 1-1.2 TFLOP range (ie: the AMD 7770) with 4GB of DDR3 + a nice fat pool of eDRAM (64MB?). Low power CPU (quad-core, 2 GHz). 4-5x more powerful than a 360 with much more modern DX11 style feature set. Full "entertainment" functionality with a tablet controller that can function as a TV remote/living room hub (Nintendo TVii service). Easy to port from PC titles. $299.99 (basic, limited quantities), $399.99 deluxe (standard). Initially aimed at core players, set-top-box market, gradually over time as price reduces could be aimed more at casuals and kids too (like the 360 has). Release fall 2012. 

Sure MS and Sony could break their backs making a system even more powerful, but they'd be reaching the point where no dev would have the budget to make a game that really takes advantage of the extra horsepower. 4-5x leap with DX11 style effects and ease of porting from a PC would paired with a year long headstart and an established 10-15 million unit userbase could've been a winning formula for Nintendo IMO. Would've gotten lots of dev support and gotten a lot of PS3/360/Wii owners who are tired of this long console cycle and want a more tangiable hardware upgrade. 

No, that's very true. I'm not saying the other consoles will not be a marked improvement; more that porting to the Wii U will be possible so a new console is not needed. 

That article is pure bollocks and the author is a wanker. There is no need for Ninty to release a new console for years. This Wii U bashing must stop.

well, i'm entirely sure about porting to wii U ... but i will obviously conceed that nintendo won't and shouldn't can the wiiU by 2014.  i'm posting dispite what the article in the OP says not because of it.

PS4/720 will probably in the 2 TFLOP range performance, they'll shred the Wii U apart. Next year will be a reality check for a lot of people. Sony/MS are not going to "barely" upgrade 7-8 year old hardware.

The real reason the Wii U is not a big performance jump isn't just cost IMO.

It's Nintendo insistence on having a 30-35 watt energy consumption and having a very small form factor for the console. That basically kills your choices for using even a budget modern GPU.

That said Nintendo can't release a new console. They made their bed with the Wii U and will have to lie in it, for better or worse. Maybe a new console aimed at a different audience by 2016 would be feasible, as long as the Wii U slides into the role of a budget machine.

You are right, the hardware will seem a lot more powerful, but it doesn't mean there is hardware that's actually for sale that can do true next generation graphics. Beating Wii U is easy but delivering true next generation graphics is entirely different. 

Look at the vegetation in Uncharted 3

vs. Far Cry 3

Technically speaking, the "next" level of graphics already exists - it's on the PC. The goal for PS4/Xbox 720 is to get there to match a 2013 PC. For PS3/360 console gamers the above graphics might feel next generation, but it won't be next generation for PC gaming or rather the gaming industry.

When I think of next generation graphics, I think of this below. If people expect next generation PS4 games to look like this, they are going to be sorely disappointed. 2 Tflops of GPU power is a drop in the bucket for realistic graphics.

(This is fake obviously). 

I am going to go with Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli with his prediction:

"Rising cost of memory and processors will impact next-gen specs - Crytek"
""Impossible" for next-gen consoles to make same impact as current-gen, Yerli claims.
http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/crysis_3/news/rising_cost_of_memory_and_processors_will_impact_next-gen_specs_crytek.html

Not in terms of gameplay, but technical knowledge in graphics, I would consider this guy among the top 3 in the industry right now. His studio set the standard for PC graphics for 5 years with Crysis 1 and is aims to achieve another mark with Crysis 3 by having the best looking PC game for at least 2 years. In fact, Crysis 1 still looks better than Far Cry 3 in terms of lighting/light shafts, textures, vegetation physics and human faces -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3ohqbEn1v8

The fact of the matter is the next level of "Real" next generation graphics will require mind-blowing exponential increases in GPU power, not 5-6x, like 100x. This is the nature of the graphics technologies.

Think about it. Imagine you need to produce a 3D square that's sitting on the ground. At most you can see 3 visible faces on the screen for which you need 3 textures and 7 vertices. Now imagine you need to make an entire road of real cobblestones. That's a lot more complex since cobblestones are geometric figures that aren't plain like a square. You need to start tessellating the geometry or "cheating" by using displacement bump-mapping.

Now imagine populating a game world with life-like characters, where the eyes reflect/refract light, the skin undergoes sub-surface light scattering, the eyelashes and each individual hair strand (40K on a human) are all real and interact with wind, the hat would need to move realistically with real world physics effects. I am having doubt PS4/Xbox 720 will do much there because  2Tflops GPU (HD7870) is a joke for next generation graphics effects (i.e., a drop in the bucket for realistic real-time graphics).  You need 100 Tflops to shake things up the same way PS3 was vs. PS2. It's easy to get a cut scene with photorealstic characters, but what about real time graphics?

Carmack Not Impressed With Next-Gen Console Hardware

"Take a current game like Halo which is a 30 Hz game at 720p," he added. "If you run that at 1080p, 60 frames with high dynamic frame buffers, all of a sudden you've sucked up all the power you have in the next-generation. It will be what we already have, but a lot better. You will be able to redesign with a focus on DirectX 11, but it will not really change anyone's world.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/John-Carmack-Next-Generation-Console-virtual-reality-Doom-3,news-15618.html

Both John Carmack and Cevat Yerli think next generation consoles won't be revolutionary from a techonology point of view.

Yerli even goes on to say that no game made on any platform will be as good as Crysis 3 for at least 2  years:

http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/14/cryteks-chief-nothing-will-beat-crysis-3s-graphics-for-at-least-two-years-interview/

Crysis 3 will completely max out GTX690 (5.6 Tflops). If you aren't going to be impressed by Crysis 3 on the PC in 2013, chances are you won't be impressed by the leap PS4/Xbox 720 will have to offer either. Imo Crysis 3 looks good but it's not blowing people's minds like the first time we all played Unreal 1 or even Super Mario 64 vs. 2D mario. Remember current generation consoles don't render any modern games at 1080P with DX11 effects. Just to go that level you'll probably need a console 6x more powerful, what about next generation graphics? If GTX690 is completely maxed on in Crysis 3 and it's 5.6 Tflops, think about that....

I don't disagree that PS4/Xbox 720 will blow Wii U away hardware wise, but with development budgets balooning, and next generation graphics effects requiring expontential increases, and modern GPUs using a lot more power for high-end versions than R500 in 360 or RSX in PS3 ever did, I just don't see PS4/Xbox 720 being some $350-400 consoles that will suddenly blow us away. My guess is first 2 years of their games will be just PC ports with proper 1080P resolution and textures. As long as Nintendo releases fun 1st party titles and starts getting some 3rd party games that will be cross-platform between PS4/720, they should be competitive at least on price. It'll be easy for Nintendo to drop prices by $50-100 in 1-2 years to counter the more expensive PS4/720 consoles.

No matter what the other next-gen consoles bring to the market, Nintendo launching a new console in 2014 would be ludicrous.

Ya I agree no new Wii U 2 in 2014. If PS4/720 are really going to be a lot more powerful, does anyone actually believe they'll only cost $299? Nintendo doesn't need to directly compete with those consoles on graphics to make viable sense for the company. If they drop the price to $249 with time and PS4/Xbox 720 are $349-449, things might look different. Also, by the time PS4/720 roll around, we should start to see some 1st party titles arriving on the Wii U. That would make the console a lot more attractive. It's not out of the question that 3rd party support may pick up as developers who didn't consider developing for with the Wii U out of the gate may want to spread the cost of game development on the Wii U and by that point the install base will be larger than ~1.5 million today.

So, how do you explain the (roughly) $3 Billion the division lost between the XBox 360 launching and the end of 2007?