Shinen Games was just asked on Twitter about apparent rumors that Nintendo had downgraded the Wii U. True to form, they point out the dev kits were upgraded from when they first received it.

The rumor comes from this NeoGAF post examining the system’s base specs, which has not been publicly disclosed by Nintendo, but is speculated here at 160 ALUs, 8 TMUs, and 8 ROPs. The poster then tried to collect information from older interviews to clarify how they got to these specs. Taking tidbits from another forum thread about earlier Wii U prototypes, an interview with Vigil Games, and the Iwata Asks on the Wii U, the poster came to the conclusion that Nintendo must have lowered the system’s power specs to fit a smaller case.

Unfortunately, considering the process of making launch games for new consoles is a secretive and difficult process, I think there is too little information publicly available to really make these kinds of calls. Even if we take into account developers breaking NDAs, each group involved with a system launch really only has a limited amount of information. Developer kits themselves are expected to get tweaked as the specs get finalized, and the only people who would really know are too far up in the industry to say anything.

So, obviously, Shinen has eviscerated the rumor, and we hope they elaborate on this later, but this does raise new questions about the system’s design. Can Nintendo be convinced to release more information on its power and specs? Did 3rd parties have as hard a time making Wii U launch games as they did making PS4 and Xbox One games? Maybe we can have another Iwata Asks so that they can clarify all this and clear up doubts about the system’s capabilities.