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Gamerace on 03 July 2013
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RolStoppable said:
Gamerace said:
And the Atari 7200 was a generation ahead of the Atari 2600 yet still considered Gen 1.

I believe history will lump WiiU in 7th gen with Wii, 360, PS3 and lump Nintendo's next console with Gen 8. Of course I could be 100% wrong but only time will tell.

Regardless you are completely correct in saying WiiU is a generation ahead of Wii for Nintendo.

No, the Atari 5200 (which you meant) is grouped with the Atari 2600 in the second generation. History groups a whole bunch of systems that actually account for two generations together, because that second generation (which would have been the third overall) didn't get anywhere because of the crash. So it's basically:

Everything before the crash in 1983 = second generation.
After the crash in 1983 = beginning of the third generation.

The first generation were Pong consoles and everything else that had only built-in games. There was actually a smaller video game crash in 1977 that is used as the cut-off point between generation 1 and 2.

Of course you are 100% wrong about the Wii U getting put into generation 7, because you don't understand the reason for the generation 1 and generation 2 classifications. The fact that the amount of console manufacturers got reduced drastically over time means that it won't come to more blurred generations anymore. It's very simple and straightforward nowadays. Not to mention that nobody ever thinks about putting the DS and PSP, as well as the 3DS and PSV into different generations despite a similar gap in processing power existing. The entire "both the Wii and Wii U belong in generations that started six years earlier" thing is nothing more than idiocy or blatant trolling.

Thanks for clarifying for me.

Re: Bold - Might well be idiocy but Wii while directly comparible to the previous gen's power introduced an element that will without question be strongly associated with 7th gen systems (motion controls).  WiiU again not comparible to 8th gen system powerwise, also does not have a unique characteristic to associate it with anything other than the 7th gen aside from coming after Wii and coming, as you mention, 6 years later.   For those that will argue the point, Dreamcast had a second screen on the controller, Gamecube, Wii and PS3 used handhelds as an additional controller (with it's own screen) in certain games.  Of course DS but that's a handheld so for the sake of arguement we won't include it.

I am as usual assuming WiiU will have a short life and Nintendo will release another console mid 8th gen, which will be considered a full 8th gen console bumping WiiU back to 7th gen in the history books as it'll fade out in the same time frame as PS3 and maybe 360 (hard to project how much of an afterlife that will have).   If I'm wrong on that account, WiiU will obviously stand as a 8th gen console.