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Shadow1980 said: The problem with calling the Switch "9th-gen" is this:
I took the actual console release timeline (I tried to align things to the month as well) and added a plausible release timeline for the PS5, PS6, its likely Xbox counterparts, and the Switch's successors, should it get one. Nintendo being on a 5-6 year cycle while Sony & MS being on an at least 7-year cycle will quickly run into problems. The Switch's successor will likely launch closer to the PS5 than the Switch did to the PS4, and the Switch's successor's successor could potentially come before the PS6. This is all assuming Nintendo & MS remain console makers into the latter half of the 2020s. By time the PS5 comes out, the Switch will likely already be past its sales peak. The Switch will have spent its prime years being nominal competition for the PS4 & XBO. The idea that the Switch is anything other than an 8th-gen system just doesn't seem to hold up under scrutiny. And as for the Scorpio, it would be utterly dishonest for MS to market it as "next-gen." It exhibits all the same characteristics as other mid-gen upgrades, including the DSi, New 3DS, and PS4 Pro. Its GPU is only about 43% more powerful than the Pro's, hardly next-gen. Third-party games will be nearly identical on both Pro and Scorpio. Gamers will know this. |
Insightful graph.
The generations here seem pretty clear cut, if not for the Switch. Obviously those PlayStation and XBox releases are hypothetical, so it remains to be seen. It kind of all depends on what the Scorpio is exactly. Otherwise, if PS5 and XBox4 (if Scorpio isn't that) coincides with the release of the Switch successor, I'd say there's also always the possibility of considering either or both of Sony and Microsoft to have simply skipped a gen and went from 8th to 10th, like Atari did with the Jaguar in the 5th gen after having skipped the 4th.
