Nintendo honcho Satoru Iwata has said that the difference in visuals between the next consoles from Sony and Microsoft and Wii U won't be as "drastic" as the visual gap between Wii and PS3/Xbox 360.

Wii U's closer parity to its competitors, Iwata added, will mean that Wii U won't be left out of multi platform releases as frequently as its predecessor was.
"We cannot promise that the Wii U will never be excluded from multiplatform software for eternity, but we can at least assure you that the Wii U will not have such a big difference as the Wii had in comparison to how, on other platforms, developers could expect very different graphic capabilities of generating HD-applicable high-resolution graphics," said Iwata.

"Other companies might launch a next-generation console with more power, but we don't necessarily think that the difference between the Wii U and such console will be as drastic as what you felt it was between the Wii and the other consoles because there will be fewer and fewer differentiators in graphics," he added, mirroring a previous statement in which he said the next-generation leap won't be as significant as last-gen.

"Naturally some consumers are very sensitive about such a small difference in graphics so that we will make efforts to make the most of the performance of the Wii U to keep up with technological innovations and not to make the system out-of-date soon."

"However, as the structure of the product called the Wii U is as if we are including both a video game console and a handheld device, if we were not careful about how luxurious both of them were, we could end up having to offer the price of the two hardware systems combined, which would not be an acceptable price for the consumers. We had to design it by balancing the performance and the costs."

Posted: Jul 04, 2012 10:38 am

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/356457/iwata-ps4xbox-720-graphics-wont-be-drastically-better-than-wii-u/