I think the Wii U will produce some great visuals.  There is a law of diminishing returns in effect here, so while there is no doubt that the PS4 is more powerful than the Wii U (even without knowing exactly what's under the Wii U hood), it is slightly subjective as to what is underpowered or not.

For example, I have a Porsche 911.  You have a Nissan Altima.  Is the Altima underpowered or is the Porsche over powered?  If money is no object, the choice is clear, but of course at the end of the day money matters.  MANY would argue the Porsche is a waste of money / power etc.

Nintendo made a "risky" move for a second time in a row with an alternative take on a controller.  Will it pay off again?  Only time will tell.  But the porting of games from the PS4 to Wii U should be even easier than it was porting from the PS3 to the Wii.  Porting from PS3 to Wii U should be easy relatively speaking...  Developers are not doing so because they don't see the return on investment being there (yet, if ever), not because the system is "underpowered".

Wii U is more difficult to developer than Wii... that was what I "hear" from developers and this time the Wii U is not that cheaper like Wii and the mostly important it lacks "WOW factor".

In fact the Wii U launch is more similar with GameCube than Wii... Wii was phenomenal even bigger than PS2 in the first years (just fist years).

g911turbo said:

Have not heard / read that the Wii U is more difficult to develop for than the Wii.  Seems like BS to me, but would love to see a source.

Yes the Wii U was not as "cheap" as the Wii.  Agreed.  But, their BOM cost is most likely in a better position for a 50 dollar or more price cut.  That's an assumption, I admit.

Wow factor, remains to be seen.  Who DOES have wow factor this time around?

My point? The Wii produced games beyond the capabilities of the 6th gen consoles.

If you were given cart blanche to cut down visuals to the most basic level, there's almost nothing on PS3/360 that the PS2 couldn't do.

Mid 2012 article... so no Nexbox/PS4 comparision... the comparison was with PS3/360 and Wii.

"The ease of use compared to other consoles is assuredly attractive, too. By comparison, 63% of developers who spoke to IGN said the Wii U would be the most challenging platform to develop for. One creator went as far as saying, “we won’t be working on Wii U due to these complexities,” while another lamented the difficulty of moving innovative games unique to Wii U to other platforms. This poses the question: Will Nintendo once again need to rely primarily on first-party games to propel platform success? At any rate, the Wii U’s 2012 release window gives it a distinct advantage: time."

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/01/the-next-generation-according-to-game-developers

The Wii U is expensive due the Pad... Nintendo lost money with each Wii U unit sold... the Wii was so cheaper that even after price cut the Nintendo never lost money with unit sold. Nintendo can't make a Wii U price cut soon because this issue but I expect something close to Nextbox/PS4 release.

Well Wii sold better over PS3/360 because the WOW factor... after that it started to sell less and there are today a real chance to finish this gen in second place after the fastest launch ever... that's a issue because WOW factor didn't sustain a console for years... the hype just happened in the first three/four years... after that or the console have enough power to stay some more years in the market or you need to release a new console.

The Wii U didn't have neither WOW factor or power to mantain good sales in the first years... that's my point for now... I can't see a BOOM in the Wii U sales in the future because it have no attractives for now... new games like Mario, Zelda (well Zelda is not a hardware mover), etc will give momentaneos boost in sales like happened with GC but nothing like Wii.

I think Wii U will finish like GC in third place  in this next gen... PS4/Nextbox will top it in less than two years after release.

PS. And that's just my opinion... feel free to disagree and share your opinion... there are a mod in Nintendo area that thinks I'm trolling Nintendo or Wii U... so I can be wrong at the end and Wii U became a success and you can show some good points that change my mind about it.

Under powered is an adjective used in comparison.   If he would have said, it is not weak, it would have been different.

g911turbo said:

I don't think you trolling.  Although some people on here constantly, underhandedly jab at a certain company and then claim ignorance later.  Doing that too much invited the mods to notice - its like throwing a grenade into a room, running away, and then saying "what did I do?" later.  Keep it civilized and you'll be ok.

That being said the article you provided compared PS4/Nextbox/Wii U.  Does not compare Wii to Wii U as you initially made it sound.  We'll call it an honest typo.  With HW constraints (more memory shuffling, GPU constraints, etc.), I can see how developers would prefer the other two over Wii U.

I agree that Wii U price cut might make nintendo bleed a bit.  They are probably waiting to see where the other two are priced at.

I agree on the software being hard pressed to boost sales minus a few key titles.  Mario Kart + advertising + price cut will move many systems.  I would bet money on it.

I just have a funny feeling that the biggest competitions for ALL 3 systems out of the gate is going to be the current XBOX and PS3.  Cheap and have large library of games.  AND, still getting developer support through the holidays and maybe into next year.

I would say both really to which console and to graphics or gameplay, Nintendo don't push those either. They leave the rudimentary feeling while changing the way you game. Just because I say rudimentary it doesnt mean that no difficulty is involved but there is. The rudimentary par comes from the fact of who Nintendo are making these games for. Nintendo never changes their inward mentality so I can most definitely say both. They dont push graphics even on a console that has great graphics potential. The most impressive and expansive worlds ever created was in Super Mario and Zelda and it still hasnt changed for Nintendo. Those games never pushed graphics, but they were so amazing no one gave a crap. Art style pushes so many love buttons in so many peoples memory because they can take you away from the technical aspects of the game and I think thats great. Nintendo puts you in a world where graphics dont matter and thats just the way I remember them today which is no different than yesteryear when they were my primary console provider. They dont need elaborate stories. Nintendos greatest asset is their creativity and art direction when it comes to their characters. Nintendos games have the building blocks to create gamers out of young children and novice gamers. Microsoft and Sony do no posess the key to this just yet. Sonys creative asset is narrative, cinematics, dialog and character development games with moderate level gameplay as the lowest learning curve. They essentially want you ride the movies because thats what the Playstation has turned into Universal Studios in a box whilst Nintendo is disney in a box. The Xbox 360 doesnt focus so much on the creative but general online and we can be thankful for them because if they werent around we would be scraping around. Microsofts innovation does not come from its games because thats actually their weak point, they got gamers to forget about games for ten seconds and realize that OS matters in games. 

In conclusion every has their strengths and weaknesses and I like a little bit of everything.

Just like Killzone 2 was running in real time playable at E3 2005? We don't know any of that. It surely looks better than KZ3 and KZ2, still, I absolutely don't think it's a generation ahead in the graphics department.