Instead of the Wii U, Nintendo could have taken SNES internals, put them in a slightly different case, called it the Super-Duper[b/] Nintendo Entertainment System, and it would still be an 8th generation system, because it was the successor to the 7th. The technology doesn't matter; the only things required to label a Wii U an 8th generation console, is that a generation had to have come before it, (Wii, 360 and PS3) and the competing games consoles must label themselves as of the same iteration. (Pretty sure nobody classifies the PS4 and One as anything but.)