Where is this thought that the Wii U is heavilly underpowered coming from? Oh thats right, PS4 has 8Gigs of ram!!! So what? PC had way more ram than consoles and look how close ports on the consoles looked compared to the PC. Hell the WIi U already has games that run with PC assets. Sales will continue to improve as hardware continues to sell. By the time the PS4 launches Nintendo will have pretty big lead and alot of heavy hitters on shelves from both 1st parties and 3rd parties. Its going to make it real hard to breathe for Sony who arent launching with any big exclusives (Killzone and inFamous are not big exclusives) if Nintendo has Mario Kart and Smash on shelves by the holidays, or either or

IT DEPENDS ON THE TYPE OF GAME.  If you code to 8GB of RAM, then the Wii U won't get the same content.  If a game isn't not coded towards that and closer to today, with more linear stuff, and you can spool content off the disks, then the Wii U can keep up.  I also think you need to look at what this thread is about.  This thread talks about the Wii U getting the same content as the PS4 and Microsoft's console, NOT that it will sell well.  It is asking for the case of the Wii U getting the same content, which has been Nintendo's issue.

Again, it depends on the games.  If games are coded to the specs of consoles, and big budget games are that way, then you will get games on the PC that map to consoles, even if the PCs have fa more RAM.  That is because of expected sales and so on.

The difference is that the next gen engines are much more forgiving. Frostbite 2, cry engine 3, and Unreal 4 are all able to be run on the Wiiu. Untill we're looking at the sequels to these engines there should be no problem in porting games down. While games won't sell nearly as well on the Wiiu they should sell well enough to justify the minimal cost of porting.

It doesn't have to be equal in power. Just similar enough in architecture and power to have the scale-able engines allow it to run.

Same reason PC games have a wide variation on specs needed to run the game.

WiiU is closer to its PS4NXBox than Wii was to PS360 in terms of raw power and nearly identical in terms of architecture/technologies that can be used.

WiiU will never ever get many AAA 3rd party titles. It's just not going to happen, which should be clear to anyone by now. Even if WiiU was on par with PS4/X720, it wouldn't get them. If it gets ports, they will be watered down, very late, gimped, buggy, or a combination of those. Nintendo shouldn't even try anymore, it's blatantly obvious 3rd parties don't want to invest money and time into development for Nintendo's homeconsoles. Time to move on.

It isn't clear to everyone.  I stil can hold out that the next gen multiplatform content could still end up on the WiiU, based on design decisions they pick  People still think the difference in RAM and other features won't matter at all.

I would disagree about being on par.  If it were easy to port stuff over on part, the Wii U would get it.

But what is dying is the hypefest like seen in the 5th element animated gif where Ruby Rhod goes all nuts about how the Wii U is supposed to get all the big titles, and asks if core gamers are excited.

The case is the business case. Wii didn't get AAA 3rd party support because it was a low-def system with weak online that couldn't handle PS360 games, and the combined PS360 userbase was enough to justify bringing them their. In addition, on a Nintendo platform you need to compete with Nintendo software, which makes it a tougher sell.

On the Wii U most games could be easily scaled back from PS360 to play on it. What Wii U needs is a large enough install base, and these games need to sell in enough quantities. The first batch of AAA games mostly broke even with 100k+ sales (AC3, COD, B:AC). But that's still low, but expected since most of the ports were late and on last gen hardware. If the next batch (AC4, WD, Destiny?) does well (500k+ sales) then you can bet that third party support will continue. Most games will be built to run on a range of PC's and consoles to hit as many consumers as possible. Targeting only high end doesn't make a good business case.

What Nintendo needs is just to sell a lot of systems. If there are 10 million WiiU's out there and only 3 million of other systems, even if the game sells at a much lower rate it could have a significant portion of sales. If WiiU gets a price drop to $299 and other systems are $399 or more, Wii U could make it into many more homes.

This Christmas will be a big test since Wii U is getting AAA games at the same time or before the other systems and it will have a larger install base. For Wii U to have future support, these games need to sell well. Looking at Wii for reference doesn't apply because it was so technically far behind, and it simply didn't get ANY AAA 3rd party multiplats, while Wii U has gotten and is getting them.

I don't think the WiiU will get many next gen ports. It's not even getting many current gen ports and many of them are watered down and some even not releasing their DLC even if it's story heavy like Mass Effect. Terrible situation now, and it's not going to get better when there is a large difference in specs again.