Only the developers should worry about power because that means they actually have to work and optimize a game for a system.
The consumer shouldn't worry about power.

The consumer should, however, be worried about whether a developer is able to produce fun games. As in, games with complex AI engines, interesting worlds to explore, sufficient online services, and yes, games that look good and sound good.

All these things combine to create a game experience.

And amusingly enough, all need power.

Eh? Most (if not all) of the developers praising the Wii U have been 3rd party.

Gearbox, Vigil Games, THQ, Epic, EA, Crytek, and even Gabe Newell.

Indeed, even 5th Cell have released a game called Hybrid on Xbox Live

What the hell have my friends been playing these past few years?!

Nothing about the Wii U is confirmed until Ninty shows the specs. Is the Wii U a lot more powerful or only a little bit more powerful? Have to wait and see...

WiiU unplugged edition but seriously alot of the launch games will be nothing compared to what will come in the next couple of years. I would say we are only seeing 25% of its graphical power at the moment so time will eventually tell. When developers start getting into the swing of their kits and put forth some good controller integration and new gameplay ideas mixed with taking risks instead of pulling the old 'play it safe card' we might be pleasantly surprised

I find it odd how you consider those other developers...even the ones that never made a game on a Nintendo system...to be "nintendo only devs" Do some research

I think a better question is how much more powerful can a system get before it becomes superficial. Graphics aren't much more impressive (personally do not care about the pointless 4K TVs).

I know and I take their words oveer shiren ir Wayforward for that reasons.

And hybrid isn't out for another 2 weeks. Played in the beta and it just didn't click for me.

By that I mean recent projects have either nintendo only or nintendo focused. (Shiren,5th cell,Wayforward) though I guess you could scratch wayforward and 5th cell off that list.

And I would hope you would realize there is more to power than just graphics. What about the non gaming functions as well as the consoles OS. That not even talking about what more power allows for one to do outside graphics on a development from.

I kinda feel like they're biased towards Nintendo, although Xbox LIVE Arcade is a tough platform to develop for from what I've heard.

See I hear some devs say its hard and others say its pretty easy. I do know there are a few things that kind of suck about it like the patching systems.

Well, Shinen knows how to use Nintendo's platform compared to other 3rd parties. Jett Rocket is a beautiful game and it's done on WiiWare. FAST Racing League too (which I hope comes to 3DS and PSVita).

Yes, but you can judge that by seeing the final product and if the devs never get to grips with the power it doesn't really matter what the system specs are.

development ease is pretty important for the success of Nintendo platforms since they don't like to update anything, and have only recently allowed it more. On xbox live almost everything I've played requires some kind of "update" before playing, probably patches, online additions, gliches.
Until recently if a something on a Nintendo system had a bug or anything, it was done; too bad. suddenly they discovered that a small patch through a download is worth it over a sometimes crippled game feature. Thats why all the complaints about the approval process.
For launch games you better believe they're going to be tough about games being rock solid from the start which is tough especially while working with a new platform. Unfortunately we can't see 2 years into the future when we'll see the real power come through and devs are used to it's features.

I played demos on it last night at a WiiU 'experience' thing and nothing was really all that impressive, looks no better than xbox games now, but it's really hard to judge it long term.

Sony and Xbox have had years to hone the dev for things like Arkham City, but so much is possible if that's now the starting point. Arkham City on WiiU seemed to be moving like greased lightning from a disc, same for "ZombieU". And the possiblities for a 2nd screen in HD are crazy cool, but learning to develop for it is like making HD, motion based games for a DS; Probably pretty tough even conceptually. Driving 2 screens is still no small feat for memory, video card, and processor, so optimizing for both is where a lot of that new power is going.

AI is really the biggest factor now; Textures and animation are about as good as they can get now, it's up to the manpower to take time to design the details now. The WiiU Demos have some noticeably lazy textures in the 3d games probably because they're pressed for time. Metroid Prime games are amazing with textures because the design was slow and expensive. Now the power is there but schedules are crazy tight. Nintendo is late and it's time to just get this out so devs can see what's there and get to work.

Launch games are an unfair but inevitable measuring stick.
The ZombieU multi player mode is amazing and not possible on any other system though, Can't wait for that. ( one player has top down touch screen RTS directing zombies, and the other has to survive the strategic onslaught, totally fresh take on FPS)

Shin'en made some ridiculously awesome stuff with the 40MB limit on WiiWare, Jett Rocket is one of the best looking games on the system. I think they thrive in a restricted environment, Wii U will be a big playground for them and an interesting challenge.

No what they're saying is that it doesn't have as many limitations as the other current gen platforms. It could mean anything from "it' might not be more powerful but for the games we want to make it's more balanced" to "this thing is like a super computer in a small box". More likely it's a fair amount more powerful and the improved RAM, CPU, GPU and so on give it more headroom than the 360/PS3. Thus it doesn't have the limitations of the other "current gen" consoles.

Let's be serious here though. The Wii was seriously underpowered compared to the other consoles and it was just barely more powerful than what the XBox was. It came out five years after the XBox. Even if the Wii U is as underpowered as the Wii was for it's time it would still be about twice as powerful as the PS3 and 360. That's not too shabby.

Oh and current gen can and should simply mean what's newest on the market. Next gen is what's not announced yet and the previous gen is what's been superseded already. Any other definition would have the 3DS and Vita, the PS2 and Xbox, the DS and PSP or the 360 and Wii in separate generations. This makes no sense obviously. So I'd argue whether or not the Wii U is in the same gen as PS4/720 has more to do with when those consoles launch and when the next Nintendo thing happens than how powerful they are.

Regardless of what power and what approach any of the big 3 brings to the table I think its time to shift focus from graphics and overdone dired out formulas back to something they did around 2000 in PC and console gaming: focus on AI (bring us offline BOT modes for shooters to enjoy together with a friend in splitscreen) gameplay (bomberman was an awesome innovation in it's days) and story (nothing today comes close to the epicness of SNES/PS1 JRPGs). So I really hope for the best, the indie developers are pushing in that direction already which is a good sign, hopefully the "big industry" jumps the wagon or at least all the obstacles for indie developer to release their creations multiplatform get ironed out a bit...

OLD MAN ALERT, OLD MAN ALERT