I sort of feel he isn't being completely honest with that take.

I mean aside from the storage medium of the games, the N64 was the most powerful in terms of 3D graphics and the GC while not stronger then the Xbox, was stronger then the PS2. Don't even get me start on the skirmish they had in Japan with the Wonderswan devices and coincidental rapid releases of Game Boy Color and later Advance.

Maybe this is because they came after the competition but before these devices were made to compete and exceed the competition. The Wii outside of the original NES itself and the handheld line, is the first main home console device they ever purposely undershot the specs on. For their own sake, I hope the actual team working on hardware specs isn't buying Miyamoto's vision and working to at least get the NX to level of being competitive because we've seen with the Wii U and later day support of the Wii itself what happens when they don't even try to be beyond the last generation's hardware and call it the next.

No, we have said this for one gen.

If he means a moderately capable console like they made with NES - GCN, then great. If he means an underpowered unit like the Wii series then he's a fool. Wii U didn't need to be bleeding edge, but 2X the specs would have put it in the ball park of other systems. Since Sony typically ups specs about 7X for each gen, Nintendo should be targeting 4X PS4 for NX. Then get some content beyond your own for people to enjoy.

Why do you think they were talking about how 'all games look the same now because of realism'? It was a prelude to the fact the NX will not be that powerful.

I was a little miffed about the lack of power both this gen and last gen, but after this point I don't care too much. If the NX is at least mostly as powerful as the PS4 and Xbox One, I'm cool. It's if it's an even less powerful half step that we need to be concerned.

Cost

Its not as if him leaving would change anything.

Come on don´t panic.

1. Nintendo doesn´t need to compete in that regard, they don´t need to have the most powerfull machine, they need enogh quantity and variety of games on their system, if this system is an hybrid then the number of first party games for NX are gonna be huge, if you combine the efforts Nintendo make to support its handheld and homeconsole on a single console, that would be pretty great, and it could even survive without a huge third party support. In order to have more third party support NX doesn´t even need to be as powerfull as Ps4, it just need to have an x86 architecture an be close to its rivals to have part of the third party support that the others have.

2. When Miyamoto says "we are not interested i n High End specs" is he talking about high end specs on 2013?.... or high end specs on 2016/2017 when the console is released? Because honestly now in 2015 PS4 is very far from being a "high end" machine, so that sentence would make sense even if WiiU is way more powerfull than Ps4. 

So basically, Nintendo doesn't want to go through a bit of risk? Don't they have enough money to produce like thirty unsuccessful consoles?

Miyamoto has a major problem if he thinks PS4 and Xb one (at launch) had high end specs. IIRC back in 2013 the PS4 specs were regarded as being similar to a medium to low spec'd gaming PC right? Perhaps a bit higher in the RAM than your average gaming rig, but GPU and CPU were not at all at the top end.

If in 2016/17 they don't at least have double the specs of PS4bone (but 8GB RAM would still be plenty, though maybe they should go for 12), then that would be a major error. PS5 / Xb one2 will be along by 2019 at least and they will shit all over NX spec-wise. If Nintendo intends to go counter-cyclical though, esp if NX comes out in 2016, then they will be prepped to release NX2 in 2021 with a higer spec'd machine again. Given Nintendo kind of rises or falls on its own there is no real reason for them to release new hardware with much relation to Sony or MS. People will either buy or not by the Nintendo console regardless of what Sony and MS are doing or where they are in their hardware cycle.