Gen 9.

Just because Switch came out earlier doesn't mean it's not from the same generation as PS5 and Xbox Scarlet (or whatever it'll be called). This happened before more than once, for example: 3DS came out on February 2011, while PS4 was on November 2013, that's almost 3 years apart from each other, but everyone considers them to belong to the same gen due to natual order, regardless of the timeframe they came out or their power differences.

PS5 and Xbox Scarlet are rumored to come out from late 2019 to late 2020, so they'll be 2.5~3.5 years apart from Switch, like it already happened before. It's really easy to get.

It's current generation. That's all that matters.

Numbered generations are kind of meaningless and irrelevant at this point.

We are in Generation 9 right now. Generation 8 is just overlapping for the time being. Remember Switch is a 9th generation successor to both the 3DS and Wii U. Not Nintendo's fault no one thought to make a 9th generation handheld competitor. Also, a home console being released 4 years apart is nothing new. Microsoft and Sega already did it. In addition to that what if the Switch outsells the Ps4? Does that mean the Switch is the winner of generation 8 despite it only spending three years as its main rival? Switch being generation 8 will look more and more silly as the years go by. Time converts more than reason.

I am of two minds about it.

From a release window point of view... I would consider the Switch a 9th gen platform... But then the Xbox One X would also be considered 9th gen. (It's not.)

But from a hardware feature set point of view, it's clearly 8th gen and even exceeds the 8th gen consoles in a few areas.
And from a performance perspective... It could be seen as a 7.5 gen device.

At the end of the day... I just don't give a shit what generation a console is, doesn't make a difference to whether the platform is enjoyable or not.

Nothing.
Unless someone considers the use of PowerPC ISA as the definer for that gen... But considering it's not exclusive to the 7th gen anyway... Kinda muddies the waters.

The thing that makes the Dreamcast generation 5, rather than generation 4... Is that it's hardware feature set had more in common with say... The Playstation 2/Gamecube/Xbox than it did with say... The Playstation 1.
It would have lost soundly in regards to performance though.

I'd say it's technically "gen 9", if using the parameters of a NINTENDO console succeeding the Wii U. In the dynamic of the larger gaming industry picture, I suppose you could make the argument that it's sort of a gen 8.5, as it's similar in horsepower to the PS4/Xbox One and competing basically directly with them.

But honestly, at this point we may as well just throw out the numbers, as they've pretty much become meaningless, seeing that the big three are no longer close to synchronized in their console releases. This essentially has led to "relative" definitions of what constitutes a "generation" which means there's no longer any point.

The only stable or consistent factors are the console generation within the specific company's timeline and what's it's competing with at its time of release.

Generations are about things in the same time frame, directly competing. So it is gen 8 and if it lives significantly after PS5 and Scarlett release, it will be also Gen 9. The wrong idea here is, that it can only be in one gen.

Switch it's Gen 9.

3Ds, PSVita, Wii U, PS4 and X1 are part of Gen 8, That makes sense.

The idea of a Generation has to do with grouping systems together, for the purpose of comparison. With taxonomy. The mistake everyone in this debate makes is to believe that there are some sort of objective criteria -- that we can simply state the facts and determine where Switch belongs. We can't. It is a mostly arbitrary designation.

Analysts now can look at the Switch and say, "Well, the Switch competes against PS4 and XBox One, so it must be in the same generation." But maybe ten or twenty years from now they'll say, "Well, the Switch mostly competed against the PS5 and Scarlett, so it was in that generation." And in either case they'll be equally right/wrong.

Don't be silly my friend. What I said is clear as day. Switch is a Gen ahead of Wii U. It only uses a different set of values to advance itself. Blue Ocean=Value Innovation. Pure horsepower isn't the only metric in existance. And Switch is Gen 9. End of story.

Exactly, why can't we accept that two devices from the same company can't fit on one generation?

Wii U and NSW are on the same generation as PS4 and XB1.