Better way to look at it. MS and Sony are a generation ahead leading to insane budgets which then leads to losses, loss of jobs, companies being shut down and the industry losing creativity. You either play it safe with your AAA titles or you make indie games otherwise you wont last long.

I don't think anybody is doing anything wrong really. We need companies which push the limits of what's possible with hardware. Otherwise there would be no progress. At the same time, we also need companies looking for new ways to play like Nintendo does. Everyone will copy each other anyway so the way it is, it's good for the players imo.

Sure we can push hardware but no to the point where we destroy the industry. 7th gen was one of the worst when it came to studio closures, hell even THQ went under. Most of this was due to rising costs in development due to the hardware.

Yes I notice it and I don't like it.

Do some research. Read articles from Slightly Mad Studios and Shi'nen Multimedia, watch Hector Martin's 30c3, figure out the missing 30% of the decapped chip and tell us all what it's function is, buy a Wii U and THEN comment and some here MIGHT take your opinion with a grain of salt...

Just sayin'...

...and also, Nintendo's video game consoles are nothing like personal computers, but good try. Someone here dumb enough might believe you...

And it is a horrible strategy. Specially because Wii U isn't selling at a profit, they basically exchanged powerfull hardware for a tablet. Besides that, both PS4 and One are profitable with just one game or a Plus/Live subscription (and probably both will happen at the same time). Nintendo hardware strategy is simply bad right now.

You were faster, sir. Take my sincere congratulations.

Actually, you are wrong here. PS4 and One dev costs are the same as Wii U. When they transitioned to HD, things got more expensive. But the assets that studios create are already in massive high resolutions and the models are in the count of millions of polygons. No console or PC can use these assets at real time (an example, Uncharted 3 original assets would have hundreds of GB). So you just create high quality assets and downgrade them to real time. What they do with Wii U is just downgrade it more.

About dev, Wii U would actually be more expensive, since PS4, One and PC share a similar architecture. You do a game for them and them have to rethink a lot of things for Wii U. An example is if you use GPGPU (a given with the newer consoles weaker CPU, the focus is on the GPU). Wii U uses a older shader model, so you have to rewrite your code basically from scratch. And you have the devs complaining about Wii U's SDK quality and the CPU. Sony and MS simply went with better development toolkits and machines with a better architecture and that drives costs down.

Try to drive costs down by holding inovation isn't the solutions. Better SDKs and more direct architectures are the answer. I've read at some week about the game The Crew. The PS4 version was ported from the PC (since the game was in development long before the dev kits arrived). They ported it in 2 months with 5 guys. That's how you improve costs, with more tech, not with less.

Game systems were always a bit behind PC hardware, but were specialized to run games better and smoother. When MS joined the industry, they brought in more PC elements and made machines overall more powerful and more costly, and Sony has joined that strategy. Nintendo went the opposite way, making machines a little weaker than they had in the past. If Sega was still around, you would probably see hardware more in line with what Nintendo is doing.

It worked 75% of the time (DS, Wii, and 3DS) to great success and it didn't work with the Wii U. But I feel the Wii U's problems go beyond its specs. The biggest problem is the gamepad, which prevents them from selling it cheap and making a profit, and hasn't attracted consumer interest. So you can't say it's a bad strategy overall, but I'm sure they will change things up next generation due to the Wii U problems.

Actually, that's not necessarily true in the case of Nintendo handhelds. They've followed a linear progression from day one.

GB/C = NES

GBA = SNES

NDS = N64

3DS = GC/Wii

4DS = Wii U?