"Everything I have been told is "best of the current generation by a country mile but not significantly beyond that."
It is the XBox to the PS2. The Gamegear to the Gameboy. The Mad Men Alison Brie to Community's Alison Brie. It'll look better, but generational transition probably won't apply to it.
On the plus side, there will probably be nothing hardware-wise stopping downgraded ports from what people think the new XBox will offer. We're talking, like, Witcher 2 on high settings vs. Witcher 2 on low settings. Same game, same basic idea, different graphics.
But games that do take advantage of the Wii U's hardware are going to blow this current gen out of the water. I am not sure we'll see that at E3 (seriously, think back to nearly every console's launch, most of those titles don't stand up today), but I'm sure we'll see it eventually."
"The XBox was a crazy beast if used right. But it was just an analogy, it wasn't meant to be a proper comparison of power.
Dreamcast to N64 might be a better comparison?"
http://www.nintengen.com/2012/04/wii-us-hardware-to-blow-current-gen-out.html