To Clear up confusion on what makes Next-Generation

[OdinHades]

__XBrawlX__ said:
This is true, and it was the same thing when the Wii launched. Nintendo could release something that was only marginally more powerful than the Wii, and if they intended to go head to head with the next Xbox and Play Station, it would still be next gen. It's their offering to the next generation of consoles. It doesn't matter how damned powerful the console is. What if the Nextbox is 2x as powerful as the WiiU, and the PS4 is 2x as powerful as the Nextbox. Are they all in 3 different generations? Then how do we categorize them?

In short: A console's generation is determined solely on which consoles it is in primary competition with.
Gen3: NES, Master System, Atari 7800
Gen4: SNES, Genesis
Gen5: N64, Saturn, PS1
Gen6: GCN, Xbox, PS2
Gen7: Wii, X360, PS3
Gen8: WiiU, X720, PS4

The primary competition of the Wii U is the PS3, Xbox 360 and even the Wii. And Wii U is doing pretty bad. I doubt the Wii U will last longer than two years once new consoles from Microsoft and Sony arrive. (no bash intended) So it's really kind of an 7.5-ish console. It is in direct competition with the last generation AND the new generation. 

Thar said, it's purely up to interpretation what is Next-Gen and what is not. It becomes more complicated if you look at other markets. What about smartphones for example? Are 99 $ Smartphones with Single Core CPUs Next Generation just because they release in 2013 and are a successor to some other phone? Doubt it.