Wii Successor will have 3D

[dunno001]

Sorry, I can't help but laugh at the people who think Nintendo needs to go all-out. Let's look at console histories, shall we?

1st Gen: Standalone dedicated units. There were tons of them to come out, but the best selling, and least powerful, was the original Pong from Atari.

2nd Gen: Cartridge systems pre-crash- Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, Atari 5200. This is the gen for which I know the fewest specs. I've heard people argue that Atari 2600 was the weakest, but it's not arguable taht it was the most popular. (The mini computers like the Atari 400/800, Commodore 64, and Vic-20 were much more powerful, but none hit the penetration of the 2600.)

3rd Gen: Market revival- NES, Master System, Atari 7800. Again, I do not have the 7800's specs, but the NES was technalogically inferior to the Master System. Like before, I've heard the same with the 7800 being stronger than the NES, from its launch delayed to assess the competition. So the weakest and most popular, the NES, won here.

4th Gen: Renaissance- SNES, Genesis, Turbo-Grapx 16, Neo-Geo *. This gen is the hiccup. The Genesis was limited to 8-bit sound processing versus the other 2, it could do the least per processor cycle, and it could also handle the fewest moving objects. So while Genesis was weakest, and the SNES won, the Genesis took a very respectable second.

5th Gen: New media- N64, PS1, Saturn *. Some have speculated that Sony rushed the PS1 to be able to ahead of known dates for the N64, and the upcoming Sega system. While this is unsubstanciated, it does leave the PS1 as the weakest system this gen. Not that it hurt it any, it won by far in this gen!

6th Gen: The shake-up continues- Gamecube, PS2, XBox, Dreamcast. People have said for a long time, even here, that the PS2 is the weakest system from this era. And they're right. Again, though, not to its detriment.

7th Gen: Move generation- Wii, 360, PS3. If I have to say who's winning and the weakest here, we have a problem...

*: There is dispute as to which gen the Jaguar belongs in- based on its release time, it would fall in the 4th gen; by bit power, it would be 5th gen. It is stronger than both the Genesis and PS1, however.

So what about portables? I don't have info for all the Tiger ones pre-1989, but I can start there.

1st Gen: Gaming goes portable- Game Boy, Game Gear, Lynx, Turbo-Express. The Game Boy was clearly the most crude, aside from the B&W screen. It and the Lynx were the only 8-bit systems, but the Lynx had better processing and sound. But the Game Boy, weakest of all, won.

2nd Gen: Are we color yet?- GBC, Wonderswan. GBC stays 8-bit, but adds color. WS comes along, 16-bit, but... B&W? Despite the color limitation, it was more powerful than the victor.

3rd Gen: Portables catch up- GBA, WSColor. Seeing the error of no color on the WS, the color version was launched to go against the GBA. For handhelds, this is the toughest gen to figure, since both appear to be about equal in power. But they weren't equal in sales...

4th Gen: A little twist- DS, PSP. Again, if I have to say this outcome, there's a problem.

So with the exception of the 4th gen consoles, and maybe 3rd gen portables, the weakest system always wins. Strange, isn't it? And you may have noticed a different pattern in the home consoles, also: the victor changes every 2 generations. We had Pong and 2600, NES and SNES, PS1 and PS2, then Wii and...? Will this continue? Possibly. But is Nintendo going to rush to make their system super-powerful? Absolutely not; look where it got them on the N64...