I also think the article was somewhat disappointing in the technical aspect too, but it was well grounded in the business side,cause Nintendo forcing M$ and Sony going to invest more in your next gen console.
This link* with good talk about some idea of what could be Project Cafe.
In the end talking about GPUs aspect if Nintendo comes with a Radeon 4850/RV770 custom, Microsoft with a Fusion II / Krishna / Radeon 5770/juniper or even 6850, sony Geforce GTX460 ** as a whole package(cpu+gpu,ram,drive etc) range of 200 to 300+ watts under DX10/11, I have the impression the gap will only change the number of frames per second at 1080P with 3D(despite maybe little more textures,shading processing,tesselation etc).
Well Sweeney has bee taken for fool when he stated that Crysis on high PC rig looks marginally better than Geow the 360. It's been classified as marketing bullshit.
Point is keeping in mind how power consumption and thermal dissipation sky rocketted since 2005/2006 (they hit the ceiling by the way) we can't expect much more than the kind of spec you're speaking about.
Frost engine 2 looks really good on a good PC rig and it may be a disappointment or not but we can't indeed expect much more (the engine will mature, artists wil do more with les, etc. but the engine is pretty much ready to push next gen systems. May be we can expect more geomtry through tesselation. But that's it we have already a good picture about what next gen systems could push through "direct 11 only" PC games.
Maybe im just a dreamer, but I think the only one who could provide something different,is Sony... if going with PowerVR 6(maybe better relation processing power/wattage on the market...even only IP...Imagetech TBDR in powervr could compete with AMD and Nvidia?) customized for high clock (600/800MHz?) and 16 cores (MP16) with Cell "more powerful" (16SPUs) helping in light interactivity something like "extreme deferred shading" ("full global illumination") or even ray-tracing at 720P (if results really better than paradigm scan-line/rasterize/shaders).
*
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/04/25/project-cafe-system-specs-leaked/1
**
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17747/12
I'm not sure the problem is the hardware, I believe is more on the software side.
Assuming manufacturers avoid big boxes, we're looking @ ~1TFLOPS of compute power. I believe that such figures are in reach for throughput cores /manycore designs.
You may still need a GPU somewhere but I don't believe that the hardware is the problem, it's software. Sweeney speaks but I get nothing ready, Id is more advanced with there "mega geometry" researches (nut sure if that's the proper name). You have thing like Atomontage and that's it. Nothing is ready, even if hardware were to prove a compliant platform we won't see the mix of various rendering techniques Sweeney talked about in some paper.
It's kind of depressing I would happily trade some "graphic fidelity" for something that looks different, something fresher but most won't. They want the most realistic war game as possible.
As explained by the atomontage developer voxels would open a lot of possibilities for physic based gameplay, it won't happen any time soon; For some reasons I believe that really casual gamers and female gamers could be more receptive about the benefit those kind of techniques brings that your average gamers.
Next gen is about more beautiful CoD that's it, nothing new is to be expected in regard of gameplay, letting may some new forms of inputs aside. I'm not expecting major breakthrough in regard to animation or AI either. It's going round in regard to gameplay but most are happy with that, competitive online play mostly shooters are set to rules the battelfield for quiet some time, new techniques doesn't bring something sensitive in regard to those game and may come at the cost of graphic fidelity tho... won' happen.
