Indeed.
But who knows what goes behind closed doors. :P Just throwing some theories around, that's all. Or "hopes".
But even with that said, even if Nintendo goes for Zen+Polaris... They could still have hardware that is technically slower than the Xbox One.

You are going to need definitive evidence to say the WiiU has 480Gflops, most outlet's think it's far less than that.

Just. Look. At. The. Games. There is a clear generational difference between WiiU titles and the Xbox One, one that leads it to a performance gap greater than 2.5x that you you imply. - That's all the proof right there. The games.


Polaris can use HBM, GDDR5, GDDR5X and the Memory controller will likely have DDR4 (Maybe DDR3?) support also for die-harvested parts that will filter down into lower-end segments and mobile.

Tonga would also be a good choice, Colour Compression would help make up some performance ground with the other consoles even if it has less resources than the Xbox One. - Excavator would be an extreme dissapointment, a dissapointment that would be on par as being served a big fat steak that was actually Tofu.
AMD's current CPU's are horrible.

Polaris and Zen had working silicon last year, so it's not entirely impossible to imagine Nintendo taking advantage of that, whether it happens though is something that only time will tell.

We are looking towards history for an idea of the future.

The games show you're absolutely wrong. Xbox 1 900p 30fps standard, wii u gets 720p 60fps standard. the wii u's framerate cover the lower resolution so the only difference is graphics, and those aren't that much better on x1.

The games show you're absolutely wrong. Xbox 1 900p 30fps standard, wii u gets 720p 60fps standard. the wii u's framerate cover the lower resolution so the only difference is graphics, and those aren't that much better on x1.

*facepalm*
Because resolution and framerates are what defines the quality of an image.

Hows about this...
You can emulate Nintendo 64 games at a 4k resolution with 144fps... But it's still not going to look as good as a 480P photo-realistic image is it?

This is a Zelda, running at 1080P on the PC, a Nintendo 64 game. Does it look better than a 720P Xbox 360 game? No. It doesn't, does it? Low resolution textures, low poly models,  crappy lighting, horrible shadows, insignigicant draw distance, abundant use of low-quality sprites. Shall I go on?
But you know... It's 1080P.


Halo 4, which is 720P.




I dare you. Find an in-game screenshot of a Wii U game and I will give you an Xbox One Game that looks vastly better.

My head hurts. Do you truly have no idea how graphics work?

Resolution and framerate have NOTHING to do with hardware power. If the Wii U tried running the assets of a typical 900p 30fps XBO game at 720p, it would barely reach 10fps if even that, let alone 60. The ONLY reason a game runs at a specific resolution and framerate is the developer. The only reason Nintendo games run at 720p 60fps is because that is the resolution Nintendo chose to run their games at. If XBO devs wanted their games to run better, they could easily run their games at 720p 60fps and the resulting games would look worlds better graphically than anything the Wii U could ever pray to run at the same specs.

Resolution and framerate have everything to do with hardware power, or else everything would already be running at 4k 120fps.

Yeah, and nintendo could also choose 900p 30fps, for example.

If xbox 1 games were altered to 720p 60fps standard, they would look the same as they do now, since the lower resolution compensates the higher framerates. Would still look only a little to moderatly better than wii u games.

No they wouldn't. Standard TVs don't run at 120htz and no game would look acceptable at 4K with how week these machines are. That's the point.

You're blind if you think something like The Witcher III, one of the most graphically impressive games of this generation, would look "only a little better" than Wii U any Wii U game. That was 900p 30fps on the XBO and was virtually indistinguishable from the PS4 version. Especially if it ran at 720p 60fps.

Also, let's stop this fantasy that 720p 60fps is the "standard" for Wii U games. It's not. Only like 7 games run at that clip. Also, let's stop pretending that Wii U 720p 60fps games are even remotely as demanding as other games that run at better specs on the XBO. The XBO version of MGSV runs at 900p 60fps. Smash runs at 1080p 60fps. Smash isn't even a slither as graphically pressing as running a full open world game that looks that good at that resolution and framerate. Meanwhile, XCX looks the way it does at 720p 30fps. The Wii U couldn't dream of getting the game to run at 900p 60fps, not even if it still looked like the Wii game.