These consoles were outdated the second they were manufactured. That's the problem with this generation.

I was speaking in regards to the PS3 and the Cell procesor and the 360.

Now, the PS4/XB1 both are based on the same architecture as the 360.  

To be honest, my problem with the PS360 hardware was never that it lacked power. I never look at a 360 game and say "that looks hideous" the way I would on a PSOne game. And as my favorite console IS the PSOne, go figure on how much I care about graphics.

Really, I don't care for games to ever get prettier than the last wave of games of the last generation. I will never say no to prettier, but my eye can barely tell the difference between a high-end PC game and 360 version of the same thing. Power is no longer worth the time of day. What IS worth the time of day is that games last gen were restricted for the longest time by the memory restriction. Which is now no longer a problem.

So when people talk about how underpowered the Wii U is, I just want to laugh. Unless you have a multiple monitor set-up, the last few notches on PCs are basically about dick-waving. What do you honestly want to do with all that power? Compute pi to 10^65th places in the background?

Incorrect ... 

New consoles every 3-4 years would be fine by me.  ONLY if they made them backwords compatible.  The next gen in 3 years(if it were that fast) would work pretty easily if they used the same kernel for the code and allowed the game to auto scale to the next gen version.

Aren't they both basically using x86?

It's certainly the smallest generational leap I've lived through, and I started gaming in the 4th gen.

What we have here is a poor understanding of how power translates to visuals, and how large differences to visuals in motion can look like minor differences in static screenshots, there are large differences in both power and capability, the changes go way beyond "just slightly higher resolution" and if people want to persist with claiming this bs, then they're going to get their asses schooled.

They are...but 360 is not x86, it's PowerPC

That video doesn't load for me, but I lived through the transition. I had a CRT projector connected to a LD player on a 72" screen. Then I bought the first DVD player, a DVD drive for PC in Februari '98 with S-VHS out via my video card. (I got it with Tex Murphy Overseer, first game on DVD) DVD movies looked worse than a good Laserdisc. 6 months later I imported my first standalone DVD player and it looked about the same quality wise. Since then codecs and compression technology have improved DVD by leaps and bounds, as well as the introduction of 16:9 enhanced DVDs. Gladiator was a November 2000 DVD release, by then DVD was outperforming LD quality.

It's similiar with consoles. Early games to late gen games show massive differences, and unlike a new movie format (early blu-ray to todays show massive improvements as well), games never quite mature to the level that more improvements can't be made.

PS2 supported games with progressive scan as well, already solving the clarity issue of 480i. It looked great with component cables. There are 2 factors that make last gens transition feel bigger. First for many people it coincided with going from CRT to a digital screen, the consoles were no longer hampered by overscan areas and interlacing, plus 16:9 became the standard. Second, last gen the HD twins were a bit further ahead on the tech curve, this gen they're back on the normal trajectory making it a bit smaller leap in comparison.

I wouldn't call this gen of consoles weak. One thing is quite different from last gen. You tube videos generally tended to make games look better than they did blown up to full tv size. This gen you tube videos murder the visual quality of new games. Same with compressed screenshots watched on a browser. Most of the improvements today are in movement, dynamic physics based lighting and other effects.