As an owner of a Wii and a 360, I wholeheartedly agree with Stas.
The PS3 and 360 set the standard for the current generation in terms of features, power, online capabilities and, most importantly, gameplay advancements. In not catering to the normal gamer, and instead focusing on roping in the more casual gamers and families, the Wii inadvertently (or not, who knows what Nintendo planned) placed itself behind the other two consoles. Sure it had the innovative motion sensing controls, but the rest of the console was nothing special, and not considered that great a improvement over the GameCube.
The important thing to realise is that more power in a console doesn't just mean better visuals and effects, it allows developers to include features in their game that affect, and often improve, gameplay. Euphoria, which is featured in GTA IV, allows developers to program NPCs to react with the in-game world realistically, and without the need for the standard animation approach. Characters react to being pushed by stumbling and regaining their balance, as a real person would. If a character falls over a railing, it will try and grab on to save itself from plummeting to it's death. It's innovations like these that, while at first seem like purely cosmetic changes, actually affect gameplay. The thing is, implementing a middleware physics/animation system like this on a Wii game would be impossible, because of the amount of processing power it requires.
In the end, Wii is clinging on to it's initial Wiimote innovation, while the other consoles get access to brand new innovations that actually allow developers to create better gameplay, as opposed to stifling the developer's creativity with an unconventional control system. The whole point of breaking down games consoles into generations is to show where there was an improvement made by all of the big players, but ultimately, it just shows the time frame in which a set of consoles were released. If you look in the past, you'll see that not every console was up to the standard of other consoles in the same generation.
NES / Sega Master System
SNES / Sega MegaDrive / Other consoles that couldn't compete due to lack of games and failed gimmicks (CD-i)
N64 / Sega Saturn / Sony Playstation
GameCube / Sega Dreamcast / Sony Playstation 2 / Xbox
Wii / Sony Playstation 3 / Xbox 360
Also, bazookajoe, you said that you doesn't see the point in online leaderboards, yet at the same time you praise games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, games which can be memorised, and the whole point is to get the highest score. And when it comes to console exclusives, it doesn't really matter whether a console gets an exclusive game or not, it's just got to do with how many AAA titles a console has. And in the case of the Wii, it misses out on a lot of multi-platform games that are released on the 360 and the PS3.
I should probably go back to my assignment now.