It might be able to handle compute shaders. I just don't know if it will, or to what extent.
Like, even if it does, what if there's a shift next gen to compute shader heavy engines? What if UE4 takes massive advantage of GPGPU processing, and the Wii U's more traditional architectural slips up in this area? Meanwhile the next Xbox and PlayStation take such things into account, and perform pretty with with engines built from the ground up to dominate with compute shaders.
I don't think well get another Wii situation, which was literally a worse case scenario of a system that could do nothing that current gen engines really needed. I just don't know enough about either platform to write problems off.
Like, Battlefield 3 is a DX11 exclusive game on PC, but runs 'fine' on the 360 and PS3. That's cool. But you're also halving the player count for online rounds, reshaping the way many multiplayer games are played. Sure the Wii U will get ports, but where will the line be drawn? What if we see a surge of games featuring heavy procedural destruction on a large scale? The Wii U might be able to handle the shaders, the textures, and the poly count (appropriately downscaled), but can it handle everything else? Can it faithfully run the game as a whole, built on engines designed to simulate and render these environments?
And this is the unknown that we're all stuck with, and why I'm still wary about drawing up current gen multipliers and situational examples. Even knowing what the Wii U's hardware is, it would be difficult to see how it will handle next generation ports until we know just how those games will actually work. None of us know how UE4 works. Or the next gen iteration of Frostbite. Or CryEngine 3's full advancements. Or what kind of games we'll see that do new things. Until then, we're all guessing.
