Should NS and wiiU be both labeled as 8th generation?

[potato_hamster]

Mandalore76 said:

potato_hamster said:

Atari 5200 would like a word. Both it and the 2600 are part of the "2nd generation".
So would the Sega master system. Both it and the SG-100 are part of the "3rd generation".

Did you know there's only 8 months difference in release dates between the Atari 5200 (Nov '82), and the SG-1000, and NES (July '83) yet, the Atari 7800 is considered 3rd generation, even though it released in May '86, just a little over a year before the PC Engine came out, marking the start of the 4th generation. So the 5200 spends the vast majority of its life competing for shelf space with "third generation" games, yet it's considered "2nd generation", and the Atari 7800 spent most of its life competing for shelf space with "4th generation consoles", yet it's still considered third. Now you might be asking "well what was Atari's fourth generation home console" and the answer to that is that they didn't have one. The Jaguar is considered "5th generation".


Trying to come up with logic and reason to which consoles belong to what generations is a fool's errand. It's completely arbitrary.

I think the waters of where to historically place the ColecoVision and the Atari 5200 became muddied from both consoles lifecycles effectively being cut short by the North American Video Game Crash of 1983.  The Atari 5200 was discontinued in May 1984.  The ColecoVision was discontinued in 1985.  So, the Atari 5200 was off the market for 2 full years before the NES entered the North American market, and the ColecoVision by about a year as well.  Neither the ColecoVision nor the Atari 5200 ever competed with the NES at any point while they were actively being produced.   

The Atari 7800 launched in May 1986, which was not far off (only 6 months) from the NES release in North America.

Also, for what it's worth, at the time of their release, ColecoVision and the Atari 5200 were actually considered to be "Third Generation" systems.  For reasons referenced above, I think perception of these systems place in history became altered.

First off, thanks for the deep dive. Nice sources in that one.

Does it really matter if Atari has two second generation consoles or two third generation consoles? Doesn't your argument point out how silly it is to even have this conversation about this Switch at this time?  The fact remains that there is plenty of precedent for console manufacturers to have two console in on generation.  Hell, lump the Wii U in with Wii's generation if you want and call the Switch 7th's generation.

Either way, in a few years, people will come to an arbitrary consensus about what generation Switch ends up in, but I think trying to sort that out before we see how the Switch gets treated after the PS5/X2 are released is jumping the gun.