I realize this is a sensitive topic possibly not likely to be recieved well by some, and it's surely been discussed much, But I feel it's worth revisiting because PS4/X1 are basically out now so we have a final verdict.

The thing you'd hear a lot of Wii U supporters say, months ago, was basically that the Wii U, while weaker, would be "good enough" to get next gen ports. That the gap between Wii U/next gen would be much less than between Wii/current gen, etc.

Well, it's clearly not the case, proven now. Wii  U is not getting next gen versions of games. BF4, NFS Rivals, COD Ghosts, NBA 2k14, etc etc etc.

Again, it's been beat to death I suppose, but Wii U didn't live up to the claims of some it's supporters, nor perhaps what Nintendo had planned (but apparantely not as it's clearly PS360 level). Xbox One is what you want, maybe less powerful but still gets all the ports. Wii U isn't close to that.

I think one of the real killers was RAM. There was a time when most speculation centered on 2GB RAM for next gen consoles. 4GB was considered a stretch. Somehow, a collosall 8GB was enabled at both as they engaged in a RAM one-upmanship race. Nintendo couldn't have known that. That was really one of the key nails in Wii U next gen coffin (though the weak GPU/CPU is obviously huge too). Even with a large OS reserve, you ended up with 5GB in next gen vs 1GB in Wii U (for games) and that's just not overcomable.

sales of 3rd party games is what killed ports more so than anything.

I'm going with WiiU and PS4 because of the studios those 2 companies have...but PS4's power helps those studios create bigger more immersive experiences. I don't go for Nintendo for big or immersive though. I go to them for A.) Great couch co-op (seriously no split screen missions in KZ or Resogun?) and B.) Focused gameplay with platforming prowess

Sony gives me great stories and has the gameplay to compliment them and Nintendo has a different kind of gameplay and what they lack in story they make up for in content and charm. Together WiiU and PS4 will give me gaming nirvana just like Wii and PS3 did this gen. Happy gaming!

Nah. If anything I think they all fell well below my expectations in terms of power. We haven't really seen what Wii U can do yet with proper optimisation and probably never will from third parties which makes direct comparisons impossible (that CARS game might be different though).

In the end I don't think it will affect Nintendo nearly as much as the fact that they pretty much abandoned a lot of their user base with the Wii. Clearly the ports of third party games at the end of the current generation haven't sold as well on the Wii U which leads me to believe that there is almost no audience for anything but Nintendo games on the Wii U.

It will take a lot of time and effort on Nintendo's part to bring their core audience back to the numbers it was once. I would say doing some deals ala Microsoft putting the Wii U logo alongside big third party launches, paying for advertising of third party games, and leading the way with first party games in genres such as FPS and TPS would go a long way.

In short: Power is not the real issue here. If third parties had good reason to port their games to Wii U and do it properly, they would.

SM3DW says differently lol

PS4+WiiU best combo this gen, WiiU for Ninty games, PS4 for third party and Sony 1st party! nuff said

It's ever a chicken and egg scenario though. Is Wii U not getting ports because it's not selling, or is it not selling because it was never included in next gen port plans from the beginning because it wasn't powerful enough? Third parties like Ubisoft never gave Wii U "next gen" respect, because they knew early on the hardware beef wasn't there.

The situation is exactly as Wii from a power perspective. Two consoles on one plane getting the same games, one console deficient, not getting those games. This is the situation we were told Wii U was powerful enough to avoid.

I think Microsoft would be in the same situation or worse, if the they had put out a Wii U-powered console. Dont you? And Microsoft has tons of marketing dollars, great third party relations, and hardcore support.

Consider carefully the discrepancy between X1 and Wii U specs.

160 shaders at 550 mhz (older AMD architecture) vs 768 shaders at 853 mhz (newest AMD architecture)

5GB of game RAM vs 1GB

8 1.75ghz modern x86 cores vs 3 ancient Wii-era tiny cores at 1.2 ghz.

12.6GB/s Main RAM bandwidth (+some unknow EDRAM BW, possibly 34 GB/s) vs 68.3 GB/s (+204 GB/s ESRAM bandwidth)

You have to make two completely different games on those specced machines. The spec difference is easily 5-8X at every turn.

As long as PS360 are around you can port that to Wii U, but after?

Well I suppose there's 2 ways you can look at this:

Given that Nintendo made billions, upon BILLIONS last gen, the ball was firmly in their court to deliver the system with the most nuance this generation, seamlessly without the ifs and buts that bottlenecked the N64 and Gamecube.

On the other hand, there was the prospect of getting a year headstart on this generation without any understanding of the expected benchmarks, yet Nintendo themselves have done... nothing... with it, and by giving the original Wii the original Xbox treatment besides Skyward Sword and Mario Party 9, they've left themselves with nothing favorable to work with at all in the home console market.

So yes, it has, and Nintendo have brought this on themselves, but I can't say I'm shocked. However, if SM3DW is the stem of what's to come, then I can't see myself not getting one at all this gen.

Wii U is closer to PS4/Xbone than Wii was to PS3/360. We were right about that.

And even Wii got some few ports from HD twins (COD, for example). So of course technically it is possible to get multi to WiiU and of course very few companies will try...

Just hold a second - the claim was that the WiiU would be powerful enough to get next-gen ports. Except for COD Ghosts (which is on the WiiU), the other games you mention are not available for the WiiU due to EA's limited distribution, rather than technical reasons.

I can't speak for all Nintendo fans, but certainly my expectation was never that the WiiU version would be of the same graphical quality as the PS4 and XB1 versions. My expectation is that the WiiU would be good enough to get downgraded versions (i.e. 720p, no AA, no tesselation, simpler lighting, 30FPS vs 1080p/60FPS). So far, that does not seem to be a problem - most games available on the "next-gen" platforms have versions on the PS360, which would run fine on the WiiU had the publishers bothered to put in the effort.

The WiiU's problem is not power, but market size. Until the market is big enough, publishers and games developers will continue to ignore it. I fear the performance of 3rd party software this Christmas is not doing much to change that situation.