I believe the Kinect has something to do with the lack of 1080p on the console. To be honest thou as much as I would like to make a 'Wii U is 1080p and the Xbox ain't' joke it isn't even questionable how stunning all three consoles are graphics wise. As for power, while the processor plays a big part, it isn't the sole reason. The Wii U is powerful for what is is optimized to do. There was also a stat somewhere that you could fit 10 (estimate, can't remember the actual number) copies of Mario 3D World over 1 install of Knack. Shows how impressive Nintendo are when it comes to getting the most of their systems. (Thou Knack is big)
Just going to toss out the fact that Nintendo has always been good with compression of their games. Example Wii Game data size uncompressed for say Smash Brawl was about 7 gig Compressed was about 3gb 3.5gb (been a while since I messed with it). I will agree that Nintendo is good at saving space since they never go with the cutting edge in lieu of game innovation as far as one function or another, at least with the Wii and Wii U.Not sure why you single out the Kinect as the reason it doesn't run games in native 1080p. The function of it should have no play in the way most games run. I could see this being argued if the game had heavy integration and use of the sensors input for game play display rendering it could limit the game output but for games such as COD where it has none that I know of it shouldn’t be an issue at all. But who knows how its coded in the OS, for all I know the thing is on all the time for whatever reason.
As far as power of the Wii U its not really a debate when you get down to the numbers, its slower than both the XB One and PS4 by a fair margin. Its GPU is about 300Mhz slower than the Xb One or PS4s GPU's.
As for CPU playing a part in graphics these days your info might be a bit out of date. With the intro of coding for the GPU directly with things like CUDA and other GPU languages the GFX really do come down to GPU speed. The CPU is going to carry the system when it comes down to physics calculations and that group of functions but for shinny its 90% GPU.
For whom ever is attacking the guy that said his buddy was in the dev side and said it was PS4 then Wii U then Xb one as far as raw numbers goes it might not play this way. I have no access to a Wii U/PS4/XB One dev kit so I can't say for sure but if he does have that buddy I would have to guess he is taking into account the Multi-Tasking the XB One is doing. With the amount of background tasks that Microsoft has said without accounting for the OS or other tasks this line up could very well be true when it comes down to how much of the system you can use on running games.
On the other hand I want to say like most people here the Wii U will fall behind as the other two systems get bugs worked out and optimize the OS.
But I guess I should ramble my way back to the topic of the thread, the power of the Wii U. I feel the real power of the system is not in the spec speeds of the system but in the way they will get used. Unlike Sony or Microsoft devs it seems that big guns for Nintendo take the time to utilize every flop of the GPU/CPU, rendering and compressing textures and skins to save on GPU stress and focus on the game not the bells and whistles such as in game DVR function, overly social integration (lets be honest Facebook/Twitter/whatever doesn't need to know you just beat a lvl on a game or unlocked something every 10 min) and online function that's only there to help sell DLC.
When fighting of what it can and can't do remember it all comes down to clean coding by the dev and optimization!
Some qucik reading for XB one and PS4 specs
http://www.extremete...u-and-gpu-specs
http://www.techpower...ox-one-gpu.html
http://www.techpower...ystation-4.html
Wii U specs
http://www.techpower.../wii-u-gpu.html
http://www.ign.com/a...tails-uncovered