To be honest, I don't really care much about what Nintendo does. Sure, something like that from them would be interesting and I'd probably get it, but I'm more interested in a portable device capable of running my Steam library. That would be the thing! Imagine a PS4 level handheld/tablet with a controller running Steam and your whole Steam backlog. That would be sick, I'd get it day 1 and never look back. I guess it'd take for Valve to put SteamOS on such a device or MS releasing something with a Windows, but hey, a man can dream

Well the other thing as much as people slight the PSP and Vita, the truth is they weren't really "home consoles" on the go. That was always a misnomer IMO.

I mean they were reasonably well powered for a handheld certainly, but the PSP could never run Grand Theft Auto 3 or Final Fantasy X or a console equivalent version of Madden or FIFA, and it was certainly completely outdated two years later by PS3 (lol, not even in the same ball park).

The Vita similarily .... Call of Duty on Vita sure as hell is nothing like the PS3/360 versions. Neither is Assassin's Creed. It doesn't have the horsepower to run the home versions, so developers have to make bite sized spin-off versions. And compared to a PS4 ... not even close.

A developer can't take a PS4 game and port it to a Vita without reworking the entire game and graphics engine.

But mobile tech is now approaching a point now where not only might Wii U ports be possible ... but perhaps even PS4/XBox One ones. That is interesting. Probably why Nintendo is also interested in simply just fusing both hardware lines together ... well mobile chips are this powerful, you can share even the really high end console games. Sure you may have to cut down the resolution and scale down some of the effects, but it's more or less the same game.

That's different, even the PSP and Vita could not never really claim that outside of very few games.

It's not as powerful as a Wii U. I probably only exceeds the GPU power of the 360, while having a slower CPU and probably equal memory bandwidth. In 2016 you couldn't be able to create a portable version of the Wii U's GPU.

Creating a Fusion consoles that runs games at a lower resolution outside isn't feasible. Decreasing resolution won't give you necessarily a direct increase in performance because you can be bottlenecked in other areas. Despite that, an ARM CPU is too weak for a home console. What we saw with the Shield is only a machine running games that were ported from the 360, that's turning 10 years old now. That's why we saw Crysis 3, MGR and Borderlands instead of Shadow of Mordor or Ryse.

They showed the Unreal Engine 4 Elemental engine running on the Tegra X1 during its unveiling. This is the same demo used for PS4/X1 (not PS3, PS3 can't run that). At 10 watts (versus 100+ watts for the XBox One). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcU56Q9vu84&t=320

They've also demoed games running on the Tegra X1 at 1080p, 60 fps. Not sure if the Wii U could run the same thing. I think the Tegra X1 is more powerful than the Wii U. 

To be honest I think if XBox 360 had double the horsepower it could run a lot of the X1/PS4 games ... at 540p. It's able to run things like Destiny and other PS4 ports reasonably OK. 

The problem is there aren't really any Android mobile games that would use this kind of horsepower, they're all kinda crappy $1/freemium games. But if you look at what the Vita accomplished with Killzone, a modern mobile GPU like the Tegra X1 absolutely demolishes the Vita chip. 

This is Killzone on the Vita. That could pass for a PS3/Wii U game ... certainly not the highest end one, but it's alright looking. But it shows what a developer can do with a mobile chip when they're just working on one spec rather than having to make it work on eight different tablet/phone models. And the Vita is terribly outdated today, and will be even moreso by 2016. 

PS3 and 360 just can't run the themo because it uses DX11 resources, while they are DX9. You would just have to remove the DX11 specific resources and it would be fine.

Running a game at 1080p @ 60 doesn't mean much. They did it with Doom 3 BFG a port of a 2004 game that already runs at 60 fps on PS360. It isn't the same thing than doing that with a modern game.

Again, just decreasing the resolution won't magically make any game run. You can be bottlenecked in several areas. Destiny is more of a PS360 port than a PS4 port since it doesn't uses basically none advanced rendering technic. A better view would be Metro Last Light. The PS4 version is at 1080p @ 60 while the PS3 version is at 720p @ 60 and had basically all visual effects removed to the point it doesn't look the same game. From what we know, the PS4 GPU probably outperforms the one in the 360 by around 10 to 15 times, with 16 times more memory and more than 15 times more memory bandwidth, with a stronger CPU. Running a game with last gen tech and running something like The Order, Ryse or Shadow Fall us a completely different beast. You can't aim to the last gen ports, because in a year they will be done and everything will be new gen tech. If "by a lot" means running the games that are on PS360 too, it's correct. If it means games created with 8th gen techs in mind, wait for more 3 to 5 Tegra iterations.

About Tegra X1 specs, you can't take conclusions with what NVidia showed, because they only showed specs that are good for them. Floating point performance is a useless metric (or else a R9 295X2 with 11 TFPS would slaughter a Titan Z with its "meager" 8 TFPS). They didn't talked about bandwitdh, simply because that would make it look worse than 360 because both have the same bandwidth but 360 has ESRAM. The "octa-core" CPU is actually a quad-core one with a big.LITTLE configuration. It's memory is lower clocked than the one on PS360 too, using a low wattage version of DDR4 to power it.

About the Wii U, Tegra X1 has more memory bandwidth (as PS360 have too). The CPU battle is probably uo to grabs, but that's because Wii U uses a tri-core version of the Wii's CPU (that's a improved GC CPU by the way). The Wii U GPU is significantly stronger, tough. The biggest issue with the Wii U is that Nintendo didn't used scaled down current tech, but used older parts and after that managed to put ridiculous memory and CPU bottlenecks that should have made them fire their hardware design team.

I believe they ran Crysis 3 on the Shield. Resident Evil 5, Borderlands 2, and MGS Revengance is also apparently slated to be able to run natively on the TX1. If any of these games run at 1080p that's beyond what the Wii U is capable of IMO. 

As I have a Vita and a PS3, I can assure you that's a bullshot with way more AA and effects than the Vita game. Vita's Killzone isn't on par with Killzone 2 yet. This shot has almost as much effects on the screen as KZ2 (that still beats most shooters in visuals even today). That's a real shot of the game:

It looks good, it is the best mobile/handheld looking game by far. But this is an in-game shot: it doesn't have the filters and shaders of KZ2 (in the bullshot) and it's more aliased (even if this shot is resized, getting a free AA in the process). KZ: Mercenary also doesn't run at native resolution. When you moves, the game decreases the resolution to get 30fps. It's unnoticeable because you are moving. Stop moving and the game goes for native res and decrease to sub-30 fps. Now, unnoticeable because you aren't moving. I'm not saying it isn't an achievement: the game looks better than any Android, 3DS, Vita or iOS game by far. It's PS360 quality, almost. But it still isn't on ar with a 2009 PS3 game.

Vita's chip is outdated, but it's biggest advantage is that they used a custom memory architecture, giving it around 13GB/s, way more than most mobile chipsets (probably on par with Tegra K1 and Wii U).

But again, Tegra X1 can run PS360 ports as Wii U can because they are more powerful. CPU intensive games could be a challenge because they have weaker CPUs and they would have to make concessions in AA to fit the lack of ESRAM or other resources (Cell).

These games were on PS360. It's good to note that Crysis 3 on PS3 doesn't look anywhere close to C3 on PC. Borderlands 2 was ported to Vita. RE5 is a 2008 game, Rising ran at 45fps on PS360.

None of those games are running at 1080p, most likely. SHIELD is running Android, so they had to port the games to OpenGL too. Besides that, 1080p isn't a display of power. A display of power is doing what another consoles does at 720p running at 1080p. Every PS360 game could be 1080p, but they would have to remove features so the game would look better at 720p + more effects. MGS4 is a 1080p in 2008 and it doesn't look nowhere as good as 720p PS3 games like KZ2.

I'm not saying Tegra X1 isn't impressive. I'm eager to get a Tegra K1 tablet (we still only have the X1 on SHIELD console) because it rocks. It just isn't on par with the Wii U yet. Despite that, the Wii U is a bad measure. PS4 and X1 are balanced machines. Wii U is an unbalanced mess, it lacks bandwidth to feed its relatively beefier GPU and the CPU is 15 years outdated. It's basically a reasonably decent GPU trapped inside a box of very bad design decision that let it starve and still manages to be expensive to produce so they can't even get a bigger price point advantage. I agree that the next 1 or 2 Tegras will probably surpass the Wii U, but not because they squeezed a more powerful GPU in there, but because NVidia simply knows how to build the SoC without that crazy bottlenecks.

I'm almost 100% certain Nintendo will use a custom memory architecture for their Fusion portable/home variant too. Nintendo loves them some custom memory architecture. 

That's pretty much sure. Consoles usually go this route because they know bandwidth is important. I hope Nintendo has learned something about that with the Wii U so they ramp up this spec in their next console.