Re: Comments on the CPU
In almost all real-world in-game scenarios with properly optimised code, the Wii U's CPU should outperform the XBox360's CPU, even if it's clocked as low as ~2.5GHz. That's even ignoring the impact of the dedicated I/O processor and DSP.
As far as I can see, there are three reasons a developer could come away with the impression that the Wii U's CPU is less capable:
1. They're working on early dev-kits.
2. They're working with poorly-optimised middleware.
3. They're not very smart.
Point 1 is very plausible, as not every developer will have the latest round of dev-kits yet, and we know there's a bump in performance with them.
Point 2 is very likely. As wsippel pointed out, there is middleware out there which has seen massive performance improvements on the Wii U over the past few weeks due to optimisation. I've seen the document he's talking about, and as I understand it, said middleware doesn't even make use of the dedicated hardware yet. There's likely to be a lot of other middleware out there which is still unoptimised, and developers who use it and don't know any better will be liable to blame the hardware.
This brings us to point 3. There are a lot of people in the video games business, not all of whom are particularly intelligent. And in my opinion, the ones who leak these sorts of vague stories with trolly comments like the Mario one are much less likely to be intelligent than the sensible ones who keep their mouths shut.
