Playing Mario Odyessy, I mean there are times where it feels almost like playing a rendered version of the Mario box arts. Obviously things could look better (mainly the texture work), but man once Nintendo gets a 2 TFLOP+-ish Switch ... I think for the art styles they like to use, Nintendo would have all the horsepower to make whatever game they want and make it look really impressive. It almost feels like such a Switch could last Nintendo for 10+ years with such hardware and just release home docks that have different degrees of resolution power and scale the game up to 4K for those who want that. Unless they want to go crazy with VR, a 2 TFLOP Switch with optional dock that bumps that up to 4TFLOP-6TFLOP strictly to handle 4K res feels right now like something they could just make games on forever. 

Switch having modular controls means the controller could be changed or multiple configs. 

In game Mario now. 

I think Switch 2 or whatever it's called will come close to being able to generate the box art visuals (the rendered bit obviously). 

I imagine ~2 TFLOPs will only happen in docked mode and an external processing unit in the dock for Switch's successor complicates things quite a bit since developers will have to figure out a way to synchronize 2 devices and deal with the additional latencies ...

In portable mode I expect Switch's successor to be just ~1 TFLOPs ...

As for not needing more than a PS4, I kind of doubt that since home consoles are probably heading into the future such as ray tracing and fine grain high detail soft body physics simulation ... (places where probably no ultra portable system will ever go like home systems can)

I agree that Nintendo themselves won't really use all that extra power. The NES was going to last longer then it did in this timeline if it wasn't for Sega and their blasted Genesis. 3rd parties demand it the hardware to get more powerful and well you got to listen to them sometimes.

Also power isn't always about graphics. Sometimes you need extra power so the game can run better and do improved physics. So Nintendo will eventually make stronger hardware.

Its fact that Nintendo don't need strong hardware in order to make great and beautiful games.

Like I think with each successive generation though we are getting away from the "man going back to this old generation looks like shit!" to "well this new gen looks great, but the old gen is not so bad either" type thing. Like when I play Switch games it's not like the Wii where I was very aware that the games looked painfully SD and quite far off from PS3/360 stuff. Switch still looks OK, yeah you can notice it could be better for sure, but it's not as big of a deal. 

I think that gap will continue to close. I mean a Zelda game like this (obviously Nintendo will use their own art style, but imagine what their art team could do with this much horsepower): 

Ask yourself that question again after playing Ratchet and Clank on PS5.

We'll see, but a Mario gaming using PS4-tier or better hardware (more modern chip/feature set most likely) to me probably looks almost like a CG cartoon. 

Pre-Rendered Mario CG Off A Work Station: We've been getting these since the days of Mario 64, where obviously the rendered Mario looked miles better than the in game stuff. 

Real Time Mario Model Running Off current Switch:

Nintendo's art team is going to totally kill it when they get their hands on anything north of 1 Teraflop. Aside from the hair, the Mario model they use now is almost already on par with their CG renders. 

Pretty much, I think a lot of PS3/360 games still look pretty good.

They didn't need to get any better looking than the GameCube games imo. I'd rather have weaker hardware and a cheaper console.

People have been suggesting for generations that Nintendo doesn't need more power. However, every time the power of their machines goes up the visuals improve drasically.  The game looks great however they did have to make some sacrifes in order to get it running smoothly.  Who wouldn't want this game with improved anti aliasing, 4k resolution ect?