Nintendo's president Satoru Iwata doesn't believe that being the first to market is as important as other hardware developers might claim.
"Being first in the next generation race is not important at all," said Iwata. "One of the reasons we believe this is the time for Nintendo to launch the Wii U is it's going to be important for the world."
He believes that the Wii U will be in a strong position to overtake its future competition—the next Xbox and the PlayStation 4—when it launches this winter.
The specs on the Wii U, he says, won't be as important as everything else the Nintendo system has to offer to make it different from its counterparts.
"Even when we were going to launch the Wii system, there were a lot of voices saying 'Nintendo should stop making hardware'," he said. "The reasoning behind that was Nintendo would not have any chance against Microsoft and Sony. The fact of the matter was: I did not think Nintendo should compete against these companies with the same message and same entertainment options for people.
"We have not changed our strategy. In other words, we just do not care what kind of 'more beef' console Microsoft and Sony might produce in 2013. Our focus is on how we can make our new console different than [others]."
Source: Gamasutra