http://www.computerandvideogames.com/34 ... evelopers/

It never hurt Wii sales, just the developers'

I'm finding this hard to believe. The graphics architecture in the PS360 is so old it seems impossible not to improve on it.

Intel HD graphics?

With a decent CPU it wouldn't be too bad, after all the PS3 runs a modded 7800gtx which is pretty pants by modern standards

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video ... e+7800+GTX

Mobile Intel HD is just 2 points off on the mobile version, an i7 comfortably beats it

ive read rumours that the part in the Wii U will be a modified HD 4870 core (source). quite how anyone could mistake that for being less powerful than the 7800GTX and Radeon X1900 in the PS3 and 360 respectively probably needs to learn how to computer.

Got one of those in my Mac pro, it seems a reasonable bit of kit. It'll run ME3 and Witcher 2 on decent quality settings at 1080p with good frame rate, which to me seems more than enough for a console.

Jon

So we'll just wait for both the 720 and PS4 to blow the stupid thing out of the water then. Still, you still can't escape the fact that the 4870, especially a stripped-down console version, is very nearly 3 generations old.

You're measuring things by PC gaming standards. The console market is entirely different. Each new 'generation' you're talking about costs rough £200 to jump onto and lasts about six months. There's no way console buyers (especially Nintendo console buyers) will look to dedicate that amount of income to hardware.

Put it this way, the whole console has to cost less than one of your 'current generation' video cards costs to buy. So the very idea that it's going to have one of those cards in it... That's simply not going to happen. We're talking about the likes of a GT210 or a 54** to be within the budget. So yes, it's going to be a hell of a lot slower than a current gen PC card. And it's never ever going to be anything else.

Consoles are played on TVs. It will have to do reasonable quality at 1080p/30 with 1080p/60 at reduced quality, that's it.

Jon

It would also have to fit in a much smaller frame and work with reduced airflow

It's fair to say consoles can be optimised to make do with lower spec hardware than PCs e.g. in 2005 (when the 7800 and X1800 were out) BF2 on PC looked like this and pushed PCs fairly hard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV6_ykrPTx0

Compare this to BF3 on the consoles which are using GPUs related to those 2005 7800 and X1800 models for example.

It'll go the way of the Wii - people will buy it, lost interest because of lack of games and then go and buy a PS3 or an X-box.

And given the amount of money Nintendo made on the Wii, do you think they would mind at all if that happened?