So when I made a thread on this, I failed to see this one after searching. -- Anyway, the fact that it took Wii U longer to surpass Dreamcast's userbase than the Dreamcast was on the market just goes to show what an absolute and comprehensive sales disaster Wii U has been for Nintendo.

Hopefully with NX they will correct everything that was wrong with the current console.

Wii U

- 10.73 million units sold

Dreamcast

- 10.6 million units sold

http://gonintendo.com/stories/245737-wii-u-manages-to-outsell-dreamcast-install-base

Incredible achievement Nintendo, you've managed to sell more Wii U consoles than Sega did with Dreamcast :D

Dreamcast is also part of the 6th generation.

In terms of hardware power / specs, 6th gen consoles rank:

1. XBox (Intel CPU + Nvidia NV2A GPU)

2. GameCube (IBM PowerPC 'Gekko' CPU + ArtX (ATI) 'Flipper' GPU)

3. PlayStation 2 (Emotion Engine + Graphics Synthesizer)

4 Dreamcast (Hitachi SH4 CPU + PowerVR2DC)

In terms of worldwide console sales / userbase, and thus, success, they rank:

1. PlayStation 2 - 155 million

2. XBox - 24+ million

3. GameCube - 21+ million

4. Dreamcast 10+ million

Hey guys I wanted to post this. Some of Miyamoto's comments on GameCube's specs and hardware capabilities shortly after it was revealed on August 24th, 2000. Yes, this stuff is 15 years old. A time when Nintendo, at least to some extent, still competed with Sony (and Microsoft's then-upcoming XBox) in terms of hardware.

It's interesting to look back at this while at the same time thinking about what the NX home console will be able to do and how Nintendo's teams will be better enabled to create their visions.

I've edited this down quite a bit, full archive at the link.

https://web.archive.org/web/20021011031745/http://members.aol.com/mips36/shigeru_miyamoto.htm

Miyamoto talks about Nintendo GameCube

Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo Director of Technology, talks about how easy it was to create the GameCube demos, created with code similar to actual games. "Until now, us software developers were always being put on by the hardware developers" - whenever new hardware comes out, software developers are always amazed, their imaginations stirred by the hardware spec numbers. However, the reality so far is that the new system's real speed is not even a tenth of the peak performances shown in the specs. GameCube, though, is different - "I finally feel like I've met a set of honest hardware guys."

Miyamoto talks about Polygons

Polygon movement is essential in the creation of 3D games. Therefore, we are taking various steps to simplify polygon movement. Namely, this includes calculation of polygon display, properly shading and lighting the polygons and applying the textures. Whenever new hardware comes out, the manufacturer always talks about how many million polygons it puts out, but never mentions that when textures are applied only half that can be handled. Then when you do the lighting calculations, the number halves again. So the actual number of polygons is half of half, or about 1/10th of what they say. So if the specs say the machine can do 80-100 million polygons, that really translates to roughly 5-8 million.

Polygon-pushing power isn't enough; game machines have to be able to handle things like terrain and collision detection too. When the CPU handles these tasks, it can't do much else. With the GameCube, we've divided the tasks up as much as possible to eliminate bottlenecks. If you simply look at the documented specs for existing systems, they may seem to be the latest and greatest things at the moment, but in a year or so they'll already be outdated. On the other hand, looking at the GameCube, I think it will have a shelf life of many years. We wanted to make a piece of hardware that would free developers from worrying about technical stuff like polygons or bottlenecks.

Daily Radar UK - 11/08/00

Miyamoto talks to Famitsu about demos & GameCube technology.

Speaking as a developer, what types of software are you interested in creating for GameCube?Miyamoto: I think players are generally bored with games these days. I think that means developers are also somewhat bored. The GameCube has the potential to break everyone out of that cycle. We created the demo's shown on August 24th in just a few days, meanwhile we were working on other projects. Some of my co-workers told me to focus on actual games and not produce the GameCube demo's. But they were finished quickly, and they were a lot of fun.Still, there hasn't been an announcement regarding official games in development?

Miyamoto: Our public relations department ordered me not to show any other demo's, particularly ones which looked like actual games in development. So I haven't publicly shown any pictures of games that I'm focusing on now.

You mentioned at Spaceworld that five titles will launch alongside the GameCube next July?

Miyamoto: All of them more or less, are being developed under my supervision. We're still not sure how many titles will be available at launch though. Could be six or seven now.

But Nintendo will definitely have 5 internally developed games available for launch?

Miyamoto: Yes, Nintendo is planning to release 5 or so own its own. Please wait until E3 next May for more details though. If I revealed more now, Microsoft might change the specs of the Xbox . [laughs..] I don't want people to focus on specs though. Some people might say; 'GameCube isn't great, just look at its CPU power.' The truth is though, for tasks such as drawing pictures or making music, GameCube doesn't use the CPU. I think the balance of the GameCube hardware will lead the industry for years to come.

Existing consoles aren't capable of producing the demo's we showed at Spaceworld. In fact, I think the demo's resemble graphics created by multi-million dollar workstations. But, that's not what I want to emphasize. The main concept is; Nintendo has created 'The machine to make great games.' If you look at the specs, it could be a powerful multimedia machine. Almost anything is possible on it. But the GameCube hardware will be used strictly for great games.

Famitsu - 10/12/00Question: What are some of the main technical advantages of the GAMECUBE over the PlayStation 2, in particular for game developers?

Miyamoto: Well, of course I've never worked on the PS2 hardware, so I really don't know, but what I've heard from many different people is that they have somehow created a machine that is even more difficult to make games for than the N64. In terms of the GAMECUBE, we have created the hardware so that it's much easier to program for than N64, and yet we can guarantee several dozens of times better performance than N64. In other words, GAMECUBE is probably far superior to the PS2 in terms of the friendliness for game developers.

@nyadc: That is all true, PS4 GPU is not twice as powerful as Xbox One GPU, so even though it has twice as many ROPs, it's likely that this setup is underutilized. However having more ROPs does give PS4 at least some significant advantage in the number of pixels per clock cycle the GPU can deliver. AKA pixel fill rate.

Peak pixel fillrate on PS4 is 25,600 million (25.6B) pixels/sec (32 ROPs * 800 MHz GPU clock)

On Xbox One it's 13,648 million (13.6B) pixels/sec (16 ROPs * 853 MHz GPU clock)

While PS4 GPU likely cannot take full advantage the extra ROPs & pixel fillrate, I'm sure it can take advantage of some of the extra pixels per clock it does over and above what Xbox One GPU outputs.

This has to be *part* of the reason why PS4 games can more easily reach native 1080p at similar levels of graphic detail and framerates compared to the Xbox One versions of the same game. ROPs & fillrate aren't the only reason, but they most likely contribute to that picture, no pun intended.

With all that said, I hope that the next generation Xbox and PS5 both have GPUs that are nearly equally as capable in power & performance, to handle 4K Ultra HD games when they arrive, probably by 2019.

Nothing new (June 2014) but It's pretty easy to follow and understand.