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S.Peelman on 05 February 2013
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Scisca said:
S.Peelman said:

Okay, that is fine. But then you're not talking about 'generations' as by the meaning of the word anymore. More like... 'families', or 'groups' or whatever word you'd find best.

One can group things in an indefinite amount of ways. For example I could group them all by advancements in controllers. Which would put NES, Genesis and Master System, 5600, 7200 and Jaguar in 'group 1' (only digital four-way input) and thus the least advanced systems; the Atari 2600 in 'group 2' (digital joysticks); the many Pong consoles, the N64, Saturn, Dreamcast and the Odyssey2 in 'group 3' (more accurate analogue joysticks); all the PlayStations, the GC, WiiU and the two XBoxes in 'group 4' (dual analogues), the Wii in group 5 (motion control) and the Virtual Boy as the most advanced one with (yes) 'virtual reality' in 'group 6' ().

No matter how you look at it though, it doesn't however change the fact that in reality, the WiiU is still the successor to the Wii by 'time', which makes it a generation (as defined by the meaning of the word) up from the Wii and the GC, N64 etc. before it. Even if the WiiU were to only have the power of the SNES, it would still be the successor to Wii and thus 'next-gen'. A crappy one by today's standard of-course .

Ok, Wii U is the next generation OF NINTENDO CONSOLES. But when we're talking about the general console generations, which include the compatition, I think that a totally unbiased person with no knowledge (like the kid I told about) would consider GCN and Wii the same generation. Wii would be pretty much a reboot instead of a new generation.

That is more correct to say yes, but for convience sake, we 'group' generations together usually based on period because otherwise it would get too complicated. You would have Nintendo gen 6 (or 7 or 8 depending what you count), PS gen 4, XBox gen 3, Atari gen 5 (the 'Flashback'), Mattel gen 3 (Hyperscan), Neo-Geo gen 3 (new handheld) and whatever else there is all together . Which would be a pain in a conversation.

The point was, that defining in the way I did by 'controller-advancement' is exactly the same as defining by only looking at 'power'. Wrong, because both of which do not conform to the definition of the word 'generation'. Defining 'generations' by 'power' is thus incorrect, and I don't like it when that word is used because it's incorrect even when I always know what is meant. It is fine to compare them by 'power' and say one is 'underpowered' or doesn't belong in the current standard and it thus 'behind the times'.

When the kid would sort consoles in the way you say, (s)he would sort them only according to how they look; they would probably sort the DC and PS2 seperate from GC and XBox with indeed the Wii also in the latter group. Neo-Geo would also likely be grouped with the N64/PS1 instead of SNES/Genesis, while the Jaguar in turn would end up in the SNES group instead of in the N64/PS1 group where it belongs. (S)he still would not be defining generations as the definition states however, just grouping, because this kid would not know where they technically belong, in the same way I cannot know in what generation two different people belong if they look alike.

EDIT: But this has all become a bit off-topic now anyway.