In terms of raw power yes, Vita is capable of up to 52 gflops while the New 3DS is something between 4 and 6. It shows in every aspect. Also do you expect the next home console to be weaker than the XBO? If so, that will set a new precedent. It would probably cost Nintendo more money to manufacture a gaming capable GPU that weak in 2017. It would also make no sense considering there are retail cards that cost $100 that best the XBO and an embedded chip with a bulk deal from AMD would be even cheaper than that in 2017. I think you are going to be surprised.  Expect at the very minimum PS4 level performance, which is about 6-7 times the raw performance of the Wii U.

If the flops show the N3DS as having roughly 10% as much power as the Vita then I don't trust them to accurately convey the actual capabilities of a platform in practice.

However much sense it "doesn't make," yes I expect the Wii U's successor to be "less powerful" than the PS4/XBO. By that I mean it will have fewer flops and people will scratch their heads in utter bewilderment when Nintendo nevertheless manages to make games showing off a bunch of power it clearly doesn't have.

Why is it hard to believe. For starters Vita games run at 540p while 3DS games run at about 800 x 240p (with 3D.) 

When we consider resolution alone that is approximately three times more pixels being pushed. Additonally Vita games have considerably higher resolution textures, greater polygon counts, better shading & lighting, etc, etc over 3DS (and New 3DS by extension) games. Remember the New 3DS doesn't have a new GPU over the 3DS, so the best it will do is allow for things like higher resolution shadows (MH4) or certain games to be portable (Xenoblade Chronicles) that are limited by CPU constraints. 

Here's some Vita games. 

 ~ 10 times more power fits in perfectly with this considering the law of diminishing returns and higher resolutions these games are being run at. 

Also your Wii U statement makes very little sense. If Nintendo is using a modern GPU made by AMD floating points WILL correlate with performance. This isn't the sixth generation anymore. All hardware is on a level playing field and is quite comparable in terms of real-world results from said theoretical performance. 

Additionally, Nintendo is likely not using  the ageing GC-based architecture with next generation, so I really don't see them doing another Wii, which was limited in power by its architecture needing to be GC based more than anything else. If they did pull a Wii that would put their performance between 450 GFLOPs and 600 GFLOPS. That's half the theoretical performance of the XBO and one third the the theoretical performance of the PS4. You will not be able to run games at 1080p with such hardware, and it would show miniscule advantages over the Wii U's visuals. Nintendo would be better off just putting Wii U hardware into their next console, sell it for $150 and call it a day. 

Sega 😶😝

Xbox probably, because Microsoft probably thinks they are losing because their console is slightly behind PS4 spec wise. When really what they did was a big fuck you too gamers when the announced the Xbox one. Guess they figured we wouldn't notice.

I am aware that the Vita has a higher resolution and I have seen Vita games before. Your pictures do nothing to explain how this prooves the N3DS has 10% of the power the Vita has. That's an enormous difference, and I simply don't see it.

Given Iwata already said their next platform will be based on the Wii U architecture, a repurposing of the Wii U hardware is exactly what I expect. Considering how much difficulty they had adjusting to HD development, I do think they'll deliberately gimp its successor. Weak and compact hardware, low energy consumption.

It really isn't an enormous difference. It's a typical generation difference in power, and the difference in visuals between the 3DS and Vita is definitely a generation difference. What is your skepticism based on? I showed the pics because it seems like you are mostly using intuition. Why can't that be a 10x difference? Like I said, PS Vita games have a lot more going on in just about everything, geometry, textures, shading and lighting, image quality, world detail and size, etc, etc. Sure they're not PS360 titles, but the PS360 is theoretically much more powerful than the Vita (250-300 Gflops vs. 50 Gflops) so that fits as well. 

Where did Iwata say their next platform will be based on the Wii U architecture? I remember him saying that it will "absorb" the Wii U's architecture, but that is not exactly the same thing. That can be done by using the Wii U's CPU as a DSP (sound chip) for example while having an X86 main CPU and an ARM chip for Handheld/Console cross-platform games. AMD has already all but confirmed that the next Nintendo platform will have an X86 chip and.or an ARM chip. 

“I will say that one [design win] is x86 and [another] is ARM, and at least one will [be] beyond gaming, right. But that is about as much as you going to get out me today. From the standpoint [of being] fair to [customers], it is their product, and they launch it. They are going to announce it and then […] you will find out that it is AMD’s APU that is being used in those products.”

Read more: http://wccftech.com/amd-game-console-arm-x86-architecture/#ixzz3cVpnBdlG

As for hardware costs, a PS4/XBO level Wii U would be gimped enough. It's not like PS4/XBO games cost that much more than AAA WIi U games, and by the time the next consoles release, Nintendo would be quite adept at HD development that they would easily be able to reduce costs of said games. Never, not even in the WIi generation, has there been more than a generation difference (power-wise) between Nintendo and its competitors. What you are claiming is that there will indeed be almost two-generations worth of difference. I just don't see that happening. 

Probably the NX thing, whatever it is. Even more if it's a portable, cause the 3DS is extremely weak for these days.

The burden of proof is on you. Why can't that be a 2x difference? Why can't it be a 500x difference? Show me the math. You are right that I am going by intuition, as this is a matter I have no knowledge of. Showing me pretty pictures does not help me understand the numbers involved.

Aye, the 'absorbing' quote is the one I was thinking of. I remember a lot of these same things being said 4 years ago about the Wii U, that it would be impossible for it to be on the same level as the 360/PS3 while using modern parts, yet here we are. You suggest that the Wii U successor will use '2017' parts, but if it launches that year, wouldn't it be more likely to have 2015-2016 innards? The design will be set in stone for the developers and manufacturers a while before release.

Even with as little power as it had and (essentially) no internal HDD, the Wii U cost $100 too much at launch. Nintendo can't even use the power they have at their disposal now. IMO their next console will be as affordable as possible, a relatively tiny upgrade over the Wii U. If you really think 10x is "relatively tiny," I'll take it -- but in that case, why wouldn't the PS5 be a much larger improvement over the PS4?

No it's not. The burden is on you. You are the one who is making the claim that you doubt that the theoretical performance of the 3DS vs. Vita is reflective in real-world performance. I already substantiated my claim why it most definitely is correlative. You have not done anything with regards to your claim other than restate your statement. Why can't it be a 2x difference? Because 2x the GPU power won't let the platform run 3DS games at 540p with everything else the same as a typical 3DS games, let alone a game with Vita level graphics.  

No, I was talking about the prices of 2013 parts in 2015, and how they will possibly be more expensive to produce in 2017 (because nobody manufactures them anymore.) The power you are estimating has been capable by low-end (<$100) GPU's since 2012. You can find a $60 GPU (r7 240) with the performance you expect the Wii U's successor to have, and that is today. That is as low end as you can get before you have GPU's that aren't made for playing games at all. I expect in 2016 such a card would be eliminated entirely (we will know soon when AMD announces its lineup.) So it would actually cost Nintendo MORE to get something that weak than if they just chose a more standard and more powerful part that people would actually be buying and modified it to their purposes, as they had done with the Wii U. 

Also, the Wii U fits perfectly with its theoretical performance. Its GPU is more modern and has higher theoretical performance than the PS360's (~ 350 gflops vs 250 gflops.) Furthermore, there are not as many memory bottlenecks to hinder this performance, so hencely, the Wii U was expected by most people to outperform the PS360 and it does in most cases. The exception to this is when its archaic CPU architecture and low clockspeeds hinder it, in ports for example.

Ten times is neither relatively tiny nor enormous. It was a standard console generation growth in performance. The PS2 was much more than ten times more powerful than the PS1 (hardware is not very comparable.) The GC was about fifty times more powerful than the N64. The PS3 was about 37 times more powerful than the PS2, and the 360 was about 12 times more powerful than the original Xbox. The PS4's GPU is about 8 times more powerful than the PS3's and the XBO's about 5 times more powerful than the 360's.  This is because they were mid-end hardware rather than high-end (like the PS360.) It is also because console hardware has stagnated in progression quite a bit. When the PS2 released computers were just starting to use dedicated GPUs for gaming. When the PS360 released, it was at the height of these advancements. Since then advancements have been quite incremental. In the Vita's case, it was released at the start of the smartphone boom, and consequently it benefited from it, and that is why it is so much stronger than the 3DS (which used hardware which predated this boom and which was stagnant for about ten years.)

Obviously Nintendo since their systems are so weak arm.