This is the first generation that they've had the console with the weakest graphics, so it wouldn't surprise me. The Wii seems to be doing nicely so I don't see any pressure on them to make their next generation console a graphical powerhouse, but you never know.

Just as an observation, when the Wii was released it was a system that was (roughly) as powerful as a typical console would be after it was 4 years old and the XBox 360 is 4 years old (this year) and next year the PS3 will be 4 years old ... Being that neither the PS3 nor the XBox 360 will be as small and energy efficient as the Wii is, and they both will have difficulty reaching a $250 price for their fully featured consoles, it seems odd that so many people bash its technical capabilities. Do these people who see the Wii as an insult to gamers think that keeping the HD consoles on the market for the next few years is an insult to gamers as well?

Now, to the topic at hand ...

We're have hit (or are hitting) a point in time where the graphical capabilities of hardware are far greater than most people care about, and games that take full advantage of the capabilities are too expensive to produce anyways. When you consider that at the end of 2012 a modestly priced console could (potentially) have capabilities that are similar to the best PCs on the market today, it is difficult to imagine any console manufacturer releasing a system which is both expensive and loses money in order to get increased hardware performance.

Honestly MS and Sony will probably copy Nintendo next time and just soup up their existing chipsets for their next machines.

I think even on their side of the fence the appetite to keep losing money on hardware to the point where you're bleeding billions before you even have one profitable quarter has likely substantially waned. Especailly now that they both probably realize as a company they should've been paying attention to the iPod/iPhone rather than thinking video game consoles were the holy grail of electronics and PCs merging together.

While Sony and Microsoft were having a dick waving contest over who would be the next big content company via their game consoles, Apple quietly just took half the entire media market uncontested (music provider via iTunes) and is far ahead in the video sweepstakes as well. And on top of that, Nintendo came out of nowhere and smacked them both down to second and third place.

Beyond that, really what's the point of having a chipset when it's costs a developer a small fortune to make games on it? We're close to that point now, if you get to 10x-20x more power than the 360 or PS3 ... you're getting to a point where like maybe 6 or 7 studios even bother to use all that horsepower.

The Wii would be fully capable of 720p output - it's a lot more powerful than the original Xbox, which had several 720p games.  Nintendo just doesn't allow it.

No I do not see it happening for a while maybe two generations down the track when Nintendo are resting on their laurels they will put out the best specs gaming console.

No what?

So what isyour take on when consoles turn to cloud computing?

daggerfall.MSDOS game.Really?? I havent played that but im assuming miles and miles of empty terrain/broken game terrain isnt anyones idea of fun.

A.I. is important.. not everyone is into online playing. On that note the wii is definitely limiting gamers- friend lists, codes et al.

bloom box has decent physics. agreed

Wii's gesture controls are simplistic- heck isnt that why nintendo is introducing wii motion plus. So that they get it to be more accurate. If your gonna use godfather; im going to say sonic and the black knight has the WORST implememntation of motion tech yet. Does that mean all wii motion games suck. NO. But on most titles- it isnt implemented correctly. Try playing guilty gear with the wiimote, its a pain.

I feel nintendo have thrown us down some really really outdated hardware. The wii is graphically nothing more than a gamecube turbo. Nintendo were on top of the game with SNES/N64/GC hardware wise- wii is very underpowered. Even if nintendo had blonked down a basic dual core athlon X2 with a geforce 5/6 level card the games would looked fantastic.well.. maybe next time round...

you do get that nintendo has relased just as many core title this gen as they have in preious right.....how is doing everything they have and more abondaning teh core.....epic fail and a face palm so great i cant post it here on link

http://facepalmbook.org/facepalm.jpg

Why are you assuming the game is miles of broken gamer terrain and assuming the game isn't fun?   Point is open world game size isn't being limited by Wii.   Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is 15 square miles of tall buildings, enemies, pedestrians, traffic, etc...  Remember that Oblivion is just 16 square miles.

A.I. sucks regardless of console.  But why did you divert from the A.I. issue right into online?   Sure the Friends Code thing could be a whole lot better but it's vastly improved over GC, is it not?  Remember that Wii was designed to be more socially interactive with people around you so even what little online capabiltiies it does have should be considered a nice addition.   It was never meant to challenge Xbox Live.

Gesture based implementation is at the mercy of the developer, not Nintendo or the technology itself.  That's like saying a technically ugly PS3 game is the fault of Sony and the PS3.

Compared to PS3 and X360 it does have some outdated hardware though at the same time it has some very cutting edge hardware.  The accelerometer technology (which allowed for rumble from day 1), the dual slot loading disc feature (only slot loading disc tray to accept both standard and mini sized disc based mediums at launch), built in Wi-Fi (what's that MS?), very fast 1T-SRAM, incredible efficiency and more.   Wii was neer designed to directly fight with PS3/X360 in a hardware race.   It was designed to offer a unique way to play games while providing developers a cheaper alternative to the bloating budgets of game development.   If Nintendo upped things to much then they'd cancel out some of the bigger business side benefits they've established.

Also, they'd never be able to use a dual core Athlon or Geforce GPU because their contracts are with IBM for CPU and ATi (now AMD) for GPU.

Finally, it was stated before Wii even launched that their next console would be fully HD capable.  How much more powerful is unknown but with GPU technology these days even a low end ATi GPU would easily grant their next system full HD capabilities.