The Wii U controller is like a swiss army knife. It can not only do a large variety of things, it can appeal to any type of gamer. Because it has dual analog, triggers, and buttons, it can be used adequately to play any "hardcore" games as well as a 360/PS3 controller can. (I'm going to assume the controller is comfortable and light as that is what's being reported from the show floor all around). ALSO, the Wii U controller can be used in a "Nintendo" way being that it has a touchscreen, motion controls, camera, mic, and speakers. You really can't go wrong with this controller, there is SO much potential! The problem with the first Wii was that the motion controls replaced stable gaming, but now with Wii U, the extra abilities just ADD to the stable controller formula. I implore you to ****WATCH THIS TRAILER**** to see just one example of this.
Personally, I think that graphics in general are coming to a sort of plateau. While things like bumping, textures, dynamic lighting, etc. can always be improved with increasing graphics card and hardware capabilities, the overall generation of graphics doesn't have too much room to grow in respect to imitating the realism of things like human expression, etc. That's going to take technology that's not invented yet, but I hope it will be in the future. Anyway, we're not going to see a gap in generations like we have in the past for a long time. That's why MS and Sony are concentrating so much on Kinect and Move. Consoles whose only feature was having the generation's highest graphics are not acceptable anymore and need an X-Factor. Nintendo has realized and acted on this since the Wii (which was a failure to me, cause of lack of me wanting to play it much), but now have fixed their mistakes with the Wii U. Now that the graphics are high end, we will not see a lack of third party anymore based upon it not being able to handle it.
Also, I think it's time to consider that 3rd party developers have SO MUCH on their plates these days, now having demand to make up full fledge games for PS3/360, PSVita, 3DS, and Wii U. That's 5 systems, each capable and requiring full length "console worthy" games. In the past, all portable system's games did not take near as much work to produce and with quality. You can see what I'm talking about today with the lag in releases with the 3DS. Remember the SEVERAL awesome games revealed in development since LAST e3??? And most are still not even out! You can probably expect similar issues with the PSVita and Wii U. But remember, I've been talking about 3rd party games (because I think those play a very vital roll for a system's long term survival). Now if we consider first party, Nintendo clearly has the upper hand, being that they supply content that is of general better quality, attention, and in much higher quantity with many different franchises.
