MS being a software company primarily, I'd expect them to have the smallest footprint and most efficient OS. Of course it all depends on what multitasking they want to do. With Ps4 rumoured to use 1GB, I can't see MD using more than 1.5 - 2GB.

The Ram difference between WII U and (rumored) 720 and PS4 is quite big. And will probably be the biggest disadvantage of the Wii U.

Even if the Xbox uses 3gb for the OS. Which I doubt ,Win 7 and 8 run with 1gb-1.5gb fine. 3gb seems like overkill especially for a console . Thats 100 times more than 360 uses.

The difference this gen:

Wii: 88MB

PS3/360: 512MB Ram

Next gen

Wii U: 1gb games 1gb OS

PS4/720: 5-7gb games, 1-3gb OS

Its about 5-7 times less, like Wii: 88MB*6 = 528MB vs PS3/360 512MB

But the bandwith difference is also pretty substantial Wii U12GB/s  + 32MB EDRAM vs 720 68 GB/s  + 32MB ESRAM and PS4 176GB/s

This might turn into a big disadvantage later in the gen. Atm Games are developed for 512MB so no problem for the Wii U. But Developers want more RAM and will use all of it ,that was the biggest complaint this gen. Todays games are all made with 512 MB in mind but that will not be the case in the future. 

I am not sure if you are serious, Flops show how much calculations a chip can perform. How many Polygons, how much post processing and which kind, what types of lighting, how fast it can calculate a sceene (fps), how detailled and complex the world can be, how complex physic models can be and more.

Flops are not everything and tell you just part of whats necessary for graphics, but its the most important number for raw performance we have. Say you want to implement a new lighting model or push complex geometry get high resolution and have many high poly NPCs on screen at once all this is directly related to FLOPs . Its  directly related to graphical performance. What do you think Flops are good for ?

Also people keep harping on a on about the fact that 7GB is overkill, but how much ram will gamed require in 5+ years time? When PS3 and 360 launched how much then?

Exactly. Looking at how the amount of space PC games took, this gen will definitely use up 6-7 GB of ram by the end and development cycles will probably move to 3 year cycles.

So if Tomb Raider needed 5 million to make even, can you imagine how much a game would cost to make that actually used 7 gb's of ram? It would take hundreds of artists/developers, and likely any of the big company's that actually try to make those games would likely take massive losses because of it.

The wiiU may end up getting 3rd party support simply because 3rd party publishers need the extra money to make even.

" Wii U's RAM is about half as fast as the PS3's": says who? not the developers praising the wii u ram. not the games that run better on wii u than on ps360.

if you're talking about those numbers of 22mb/s for ps3 vs 12.8mb/s for wii u. I might be wrong here, but I think that's the maximun performance for the ps3 (the game code is optimized the most) against the raw speed of the memory wii u uses. it desn't take into consideration how the wii u works as a whole. if we were to check the ps3 memory separetely from the console I think it would be far less than the wii u's raw 12.8mb/s.

Nah...they wont gimp their art direction because of Nintendo. Japanese devs probably will but western ones know better if they want optimal games. Nintendo blew their shot to win back the hardcore, by saying they were not competing with Sony and Microsoft and with each waking day that more specs are shown it shows how far out of the game Nintendo really is. Competition will get really fierce and companies will or they wont make back their money. The developmental budgets will be similar for the first couple of years and depending on the game will increase. Nintendo isn't exactly neccessary if they dont want themselves to be and they've proven that. Sucks for the loyal fans they've had that wanted a console from them that is as functional as all the others.

Just to clarify, rumors state that 720 will have 4 gig for games and 4 gig for "other stuff", not just the OS. There is a lot of speculation that 720 will be doing lots of things beyond games. The OS could use up 2 gig, while skype, your cable feed and DVR, your always on connection and other features could be using up system memory while 4 gig is blocked off for games. This is all speculation on rumor, of course.

The point is, if games are designed to run on 4 gig of memory, it's not a crazy stretch to say they can run on 1 gig or so. Whether 3rd parties support Nintendo is a whole other matter.

If thats the case then Sony will really be the more favored console next gen with gamers and third parties alike.

You have played them?  Where and how?  I want to play them!!