i do wonder where exactly games consoles can really go now. we are at the stage now where game graphics are so good that short of being entirely photorealistic there isnt anywhere to go and really the cost of making that improvement might not be worth it. i feel like sony and microsoft have run out of places they can really go by beefing up processor and graphics speed and they are all reaching out sideways to change the gaming experience what with kinect and move. since the wii-u has brought nintendo closer to the others in terms of raw power, maintain its casual audience which the other consoles didnt quite have but appeal more to the more tech focused gamer. so really, it seems pretty win/win for nintendo to me.
This kind of vertical advancement in a small well-defined measurable field is what the business people like. They don't necessarily understand what makes a good game, but they do understand that bigger numbers are better. It's also kinda predictable. It's also easier for the marketing department when they can sum up the product in a few cryptic lines of specs, rather than trying to actually show the kind of games a platform has.
This is what nintendo is trying to change in the games industry. Make it more about the games as an experience rather than a contest about the highest number in the spec sheet. This, of course, is beneficial for them since they don't have the massive resources of sony and microsoft to make cutting edge hardware to be sold at a loss. Because a large portion of the current market was drawn in to the single vertical marketing (graphics), they had to broaden the market by making horizontal advancements in gameplay and market segments.
The business people at sony and microsoft are not going to be happy when their growing numbers aren't making their profits bigger anymore. They are going to blame a lot of things for what is essentially their mistake of trying to make art measurable. Sure you can give an artist better tools and he'll do technically better art with them if he has the skill, but you can only market his pieces by "made with nanofiber ultima-brush!" for so long. In the end the technical specifications of a piece are not what it's actually about.
I wonder what number they'll think of next to market? They have used the mysterious "bits", megahertz, polygon fill rate, output resolution...