The Wii U is about as powerful as an Xbox 360, according to Microsoft.

It would also be a machine that carried many Xbox 360 ports, said Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios.

"I think their Pro Controller makes a lot of sense with the platform they've built. They are building a platform that is effectively a 360 when you think of graphical capability," he said.

"Now they are really making an on-ramp for the back catalogue of games that are on 360. It is easy for those games to move over to the Wii U. They've moved the buttons around, and they've made a controller that feels familiar for 360 gamers, so I get why they are putting those pieces together."

Nintendo typically doesn't announce exact hardware specifications, so exactly what the Wii U is packing remains a mystery.

However, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has claimed that the gap between the Wii U and the eighth-generation consoles of other manufacturers would not be as big as it was between the Wii and the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

"We cannot promise that the Wii U will never be excluded from multi-platform software for eternity, but we can at least assure you that the Wii U will not have such a big difference as the Wii had," he said.

"Naturally some consumers are very sensitive about such a small difference in graphics so that we will make efforts to make the most of the performance of the Wii U to keep up with technological innovations and not to make the system out-of-date soon."

The Wii U is expected to launch later this year.