The technology definition is also one of time. It's one of when the technology was available, rather than the release date of the machine.

A couple of years back, there were a fair bit of people on VGChartz stating that the DS was a 5th generation machine, while the PsP is a 6th generation machine. Those people (at least most of them) were not trolling, they genuinely felt that was the best way of defining generations.

I don't agree with them, but those people are just wrong (or, well, have a slightly strange definition), and that doesn't make them trolls. Calling them trolls is just as wrong a use of the word as defining generations by technology is. Probably worse.

especially since said troll baiter don't seem to know crap about the Wii-U any statment underpinning the system as being less than or equal to current HD is troll bait.

That is a very bold an un-logical statement.

One big reason is retail price. Nintendo has already stated that their new WiiU controller is going to make the console pretty pricey. So in theory that would mean the competition could create a more powerful unit for the same manufacturing price right? Wrong, Microsoft has stated Kinect is the future and when it was first announced Microsoft said it would start coming with future X-Box's. Rumors and facts suggest that a Kinect device will likely come default with the Nex-Box. In that case the Kinect device will cost as much if not more then the WiiU controller. This means if Microsoft wanted superior hardware it would likely cost a lot more then WiiU. Sony is the only one that could technically pull off a drastic raise in power for PS4. However Sony is well aware of what happened with PS3 and they will not likely sell the hardware at a loss. This means the hardware will not be a similar leap to other generations.

Software development is another big one. THQ has out right said a generational leap like what occured between PS2 and PS3 would bring up dev costs so high that the retail price of games would be at least 100$. Other developers have commented that they would need to sell 3x or so as many units to break even. So a game would need to sell like 1.5 million copies just to break even considering UbiSoft said that this generation a game wouldn't be a success unless it broke the 500k mark.

Ports Nex-Box and WiiU are bound to be very similar in power if Kinect is incorporated into Nex-Box. So Sony would be at a loss if they were to drastically superior. They would loose multiplatform development to a degree and with a higher dev cost exclusives would be less likely as well.

Profit margins ties into all this. Say Microsoft and Nintendo's consoles are both around the same specs (5x PS3), Sony could release a slightly more powerful unit at a cheaper manufacturing price then Nintendo's WiiU or Microsoft's Nex-Box. This means every PS4 sold would profit Sony more then every Nex-Box and WiiU sold.

In the end it just makes logical sense that we will not see any console (Significantly improve on current gen tech) its impractical and risky. All three companies are going to try and create cheaper and more profitable hardware. Nobody will want to repeat the PS3 fiasco in fact even 360 lost money initially. The three manufacturers are likely to try and keep any loss of money to a minimum.

I suspect all three consoles to launch around 400$. With WiiU and Nex-Box possibly next winter and PS4 in 2013. All three consoles will be within a few times the power of one another.

Nobody has said that, and it obviously won't be equal to consoles this gen.

Well, how about calling them wrong. That's all we really know that they are. Assuming the worst from people only leads to insults and misunderstandings. Calling people trolls all the time only causes problems and makes the world a less lovely place. 

I think its somewhat about the graphics. It can' t be completely left out of the equation. The Wii did lack power yes I agree with you on that. Now you say you don't believe that the Wii U's power is greater but not that significant. Are you basing this on the tech demos or the tech specs?

Repeat: Next-Gen.

1) The Gameplay System
2) The Innovation.
3) The Hardware.

Not only the hardware.

Ah, another thing maybe wait the real specs of the console to talk more about this, it's getting old fast like the Other M discussions.

I am one of those who in the past defended the point of view of feature-defined rather than strictly chronological generation definitions. I have no particular emotional attachment to Nintendo, but I come from a background of technology enthusiasts.

Nuclear power plants, wind turbines, common rail injectors, they are all characterized by "generations" associated with features and technology, not just with the timeline of their development and commercialization.

More fittingly in computers, which is where I come from when it comes to videogaming, we always talked of the 8-bit vs 16-bit era, of the introduction of coprocessors, of the AGP to PCI Express transition,  of directx 7 compatible GPU hardware, of multicore or hyperthreaded CPUs. It is the norm to categorize your gaming hardware based on its features, not on when it was marketed. Ask any PC gamer to define the GPU generations and they will probably all agree, for example, on clustering directx compatibility for 7 and 8 together, but consider directx 9 a whole different thing for its shader model.

I can live with a "chronological" definition of generations for the past if that's what the forum dwellers are used to and in the name of clarity in communication, but I keep thinking that it's a weird exception of a definition, stemming from the fact that technological quantum leaps in the console world used to happen more or less synchronosuly between a very reduced number of manufacturers. Thus defining generations by enumeration made sense enough. Still, I feel it's quite a perversion of what "generations" mean in tech or more general in product development.

At the same time, no agenda whatsoever. Not everybody coming to console gaming from a different background has actual emotional investment in Nintendo or their policies, it's simply a little lexicological and cultural clash. One that is to be expected as more PC gamers turn to consoles.

PAtcher is a fool, always has been.

Wii U is the next Nintendo console to be released, for the next generation of consoles. It is more powerful than its predecessor and has new features. Thus, it is a next generation console. End of story. Patcher needs to quit mudslinging anything Nintendo. He is really starting to get painfully obvious in showing his true colors.

Weren't the older generations based on for example, 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit...

Wouldn't those gens be based on technological stuff?