PS2 was closer to the Xbox/GC than the Wii U will be to the PS4/Xbox 3. That is my point.
If the Wii U were as close to it's competition in terms of power as the PS2 was to it's competition, I'm arguing it would be in better shape. The gamepad just wasn't a smart move in terms of drawing in the buyers.
If that's your point, then that point would be wrong. PS2 was barely ahead of Dreamcast ffs (DC actually had more video memory!) Gamecube and Xbox were years beyond it in specs.
Wii U on the other hand is capable of Unity 4 (even if unsupported) and supports many of the graphics capabilities PS4 can do, even if significantly lower. The CPU is a bottleneck, but the majority of the processing load is placed on the GPU, another similarity to the architecture to PS4 (but again significantly lower.)
As much as you don't want to admit it, Wii U is about as far behind PS4 (and by extension Nextbox) as PS2 to Xbox 1 and Gamecube.
Exactly, no way in hell is the Wii-U closer to the PS4/Durango than the PS360. If the console was comparable to next gen we'd be getting fucking definitive version ports running at fucking 1080p/60fps easy. By making the hardware so awkward Nintendo made the box less appealing to 3rd parties. If the hardware was better ports could simply be brute forced and would easily be better than the PS360 versions.
360 and PS3 games' processing load are primarily on the CPU. Wii U, the GPU. The port from 360/PS3 to Wii U have had issues because of this problem. However you are seeing "definitive versions" starting to show up with NFS and soon Deus Ex. With new hardware you're going to have an adjustment period. To simply deny that reality is, quite frankly, ignorant bordering on idiotic.
Oh wait this was the guy that said Trine 2 wasn't a graphics intensive game because it was made by 20 people. I rest me case.
Edit: Pulled some specs.
PS2
CPU: 64-bit "Emotion Engine" clocked at 294.912 MHz (299 MHz on newer versions)
System memory: 32 MB Direct Rambus or RDRAM
GPU: "Graphics Synthesizer" clocked at 147.456 MHz
Video memory: 4 MB Embedded DRAM video memory bandwidth at 48 gigabytes per second (main system 32 MB can be dedicated into VRAM for off-screen materials)
Xbox
CPU: 32-bit 733 MHz, custom Intel Pentium III Coppermine-based processor in a Micro-PGA2 package
Shared Memory: 64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz; in dual-channel 128-bit configuration giving 6400 MB/s
GPU: 233 MHz "NV2A" ASIC. Co-developed by Microsoft and Nvidia.
Despite having shared memory, Xbox was basically twice as powerful as PS2 in every way. It also used a hard drive, adding additional VRAM when necessary.