The due course disclaimer of taking this with a grain of salt is at the forefront of this post. Remember, most of it is unsubstantiated at this point. According to a post on NeoGAF, it seems as though the Wii U hardware may have been downgraded to deal with overheating due to the size of the chassis Nintendo wanted to maintain for the Wii U. According to the post, evidence for this appears from an Iwata Asks, in which Iwata asks Takeshi Kitano–a hardware developer for Nintendo–whether or not a small chassis was a focus for the console. The answer was yes.
Iwata – Was making the casing smaller a clear target from the start? Kitano-san?
Kitano – Yes. At the start of development, Takeda-san gave us the task of making the console a “stagehand”, a kind of unobtrusive role behind the scenes.
Another piece of the puzzle comes from Vigil Games, who developed Darksiders 2 for the Wii U. According to an interview conducted with one of their developers, development kits arrived that meant the game had to be retooled to work with new hardware because of significant changes.
Donald added: “When we got the new kits there were some things in the old build that wouldn’t work with the new hardware and we had to wait for updates. So it’s been a little tricky in that regard.”
As stated above this is strictly a rumor, but going over the evidence, what do you think? Did Nintendo reduce the power of the Wii U because they wanted to maintain a smaller console? Let us know in the comments what you think.