Do you consider the Wii part of this generation?

[burgerstein]

WereKitten said:

The Ghost of RubangB said:

But generations are strictly historical terms.  They refer to history.  They've already been decided.  This isn't about your own logic or your own philosophy, or even your own opinion.  It's like saying "I think the 1960s were actually in the 1850s.  It's just my opinion, lol."

"Well look guys, the way I see it, the Dark Ages is a term to refer to any time without light, so all of history was the Dark Ages until the invention of electricity (the Enlightenment).  And every night when I turn the lights out I'm living in the Dark Ages for a few hours."

"Industrial Revolutions are what happens when one industry goes around the whole planet, so satellites and the internet are Industrial Revolutions, but factories and steam engines are not."

This drew a smile. But it's a strawman argument.

When discussing technology a "generation" is not an historical term. A "generation" in technology is defined by technical criteria. The definition of a technological generation is usually born in restrospect, and by consensus among the specialists.

A "second generation web search engine" or a "third generation nuclear power plant" are such because of how they work, not of when they came out. Of course as technology progresses the chronological order is usually respected. But when technology branches it's entirely possible to have the platypusses of this taxonomy.

Coming to consoles, I am not sure of when exactly someone thought it was useful to group them in "generations". Is that wikipedia link the only authoritative source? We surely didn't talk of "third generation" when the NES was out. We talked of 16-bit computing and 8-bit consoles, and they were poor but still technical criteria.

And if it has no technical content, what is its sense? Business wise I already explained why I don't think it makes much sense to put the Wii in the same category as the other consoles.

 

 

 I think you problem is you're categorising video games as technology,when they are in fact toys. And thus out of the realm of science. Wikipedia actually works in this case. It's truth by consensus. 90%+ of people agree on these generations, and that's just how it works. The criteria are simply the years listed on Wikipedia.