There is still no confirmation on what the wii u gpu is as Nintendo have never released such information and as far as I can tell no hacker has managed to divulge its secrets. It's pretty obvious it's heavily customised and many of the so called specs of it fail to even mention the wii gpu embedded in the hardware which is necessary for wii mode as well as the texture cache, frame buffer memory etc. It is expected to be based on a mobility radeon not desktop and these normally have a few compromises to reduce power consumption. We know the wii u is on a inferior/cheaper fabrication process which is more power hungry yet still consumes far less power than ps3/360 even allowing for the lack of hard drive.

It wouldn't surprise me if in fact the wii u gpu architecture is pretty much upto date with ps4 in functionality, feature set etc but its actual performance is less than many people realise.  The 32MB of the wii u is blisteringly fast and the stated 352gflops just don't seem to be realised at all in performance. Lets not forget in one generation of Radeon chips efficiency went up 30% and since many improvements have happened. The 240 gflops of 360 do not equal the 240 gflops of a modern budget gpu today as older gpu's required far more resources including additional support from the cpu. It's highly likely the wii u gpu is well below 352gflops but still massively outperforms the 360 and PS3. Many people have stated the wii u gpu is 178gflops and this certainly fits the power profile of the console but this will still be massively superior to ps3 and 360. If the wii u gpu is 352 gflops why isn't it drawing power that you would expect from such a gpu with a 40 or 45nm process? If you look at neogaf and other places there are good debates on 178 or 352 gflops and the case against 352 gflops based on power consumption is very strong. 

We also have to remember that XOne and PS4 are using X86 architecture while the Wii U uses a PowerPC architecture.  As tempting as it is to compare GFLOP's (believe me, I have tried it), these consoles specification's are in separate worlds.

Guys, this thread is NOT about comparing Wii U graphics to 360/XB1/PS3/PS4. It was stated from the beginning that this thread is for comparing early-gen Wii U games to current games releasing on the Wii U. Those other consoles and their graphical power have no bearing on this discussion, so please respect this or we will have to start modding people for continuing to post off-topic and derailing the thread.

I do wonder if any developer will ever invest heavily to push the Wii U to it's absolute max potential. Don't think that's happened yet, but I wonder if it ever will...

Even though I agree with what you are saying.  I wouldn't be so sure with the bolded especially xenoblade chronicles when we have GTA 5 to compare.  Granted, GTA 5 development budget is very big but it also shows that ps3 is capable of doing things that were at a time unimaginable.

Doubtful, I think aside from the DS, the last home console of Nintendo's that was ever pushed to its max potential MIGHT have been the N64.

Maybe the Wii, but I get the feeling that due to schedule and budget contrastiants even its best games (save possibly Skyward Sword but I feel they probably could have done more with that)  could have been MUCH better, so the system was never really pushed to the extreme like we've seen certain SNES, N64 and even DS games that arrived late in those system lives.

Unfortunately I see the Wii U on that same path, Nintendo will of course do a lot with the system but aside from the Zelda entry they won't come close to maxing it out with their own internal studios, and they don't have the third party support that a major publisher would gamble on getting a team to do so. I mean Intelligent Systems, a long time internal Nintendo development studio didn't even know the 3DS could process feet for character models on battle cinematics for Fire Emblem Awakening, until it was too late to add it in development.

Well, keep in mind that XCX is far larger than GTAV.  The map is around 153 square miles confirmed (the playable field, according to the Dev).  GTAV is unknown, but the highest estimate is 100 sq miles.  Lower estimates put it at the 50s range iirc.  So XCX is significantly larger.  I would also fall back on Tachi's analysis, who believed it was highly unlikely that XCX could be achieved on a 360 or PS3.  There's also things to consider like AI.  XCX's seems to be handling more as far as that goes, something more in line with Skyrim just at absurd sizes.  And while the visible draw distance varies, it can be (and often is) very far.

Guys, please.
I've asked you nicely, a mod has asked you nicely, let's please get back on topic.
I know it's fun to compare between different platforms, but that's not what this thread is for.
PS3/PS4/Xbone/360 aren't up for discussion here.

Exactly. That's my point. It really can't be done unless someone were to specifically design a benchmark that could directly utilize just these consoles. 

As you pointed out, the difference in architecture changes a lot. Even when on the same architecture two x86 processors running at 2.5 Ghz can have very different performance, even from the same manufacturer ie. i5 comparitive to an i7 or celeron. It really is a case of apples to oranges when talking consoles in this scenario. 

Edit: sorry this was off topic. It was my last statement on it. 

The pictures certainly did show progress as originally stated by the OP.

This. On SNES, N64, and Gamecube, they had studios like Rare and Factor 5 who were willing to make the investment needed to push  the hardware to its limits. Nobody really did that on Wii, and I doubt anyone will on Wii U either.

But just because Wii U will probably never be maxed out, doesn't mean there's not room for it to grow still. I expect there are games still to come that will exceed anything released on it so far graphically.