The_Liquid_Laser said:
Shadow1980 said:
@Bolded: The Saturn lasted longer than the Dreamcast with worse sales. The Wii U lasted longer than either of them. The fact is, the DC was on the NA market for a mere 18 months before it was discontinued (only 28 months in Japan). It was prematurely terminated before it had a chance to have a normal life cycle. I fail to see how that in any way challenges any concept of console generations. It was not a normal situation.
@Italicized. Because assuming a 2020 or 2021 release date for the PS5 and Xbox 4 the Switch will likely be at or past its peak. By late 2022, the Switch will likely be well on the way out, if it hasn't already been replaced yet. The Switch will have spent its prime years competing against the PS4 & XBO.
Now, if the Switch ends up being less front-loaded and longer-lasting than is the norm for Nintendo systems, I might be willing to change my stance. I won't argue that it's Gen 9, but I would say that it might too ambiguous of a case to neatly classify into one generation or the other, and that Nintendo systems, by running on a shorter cycle than PS & Xbox, might need to be excluded from the numerical generations (because it'll start to get ridiculous if we see people argue that Nintendo is already on Gen 10 a mere two years after the PS5 & Xbox 4 are out). But with the way things stand now, I don't see how anyone can classify it as anything other than Gen 8.
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Generation is not based on the market leader. Generation is based on the first successor to market. Generations 4, 5, and 6 were also started by Sega consoles, because they were the first successors to enter the market place. Sony and Microsoft do not define generation 9, because they did not have the first successor in the marketplace. Switch is the successor to both the 3DS and Wii U (both generation 8 consoles). Therefore generation 9 has already begun with the Switch.
This is how generation is used in any other context as well. When a couple has their first child, then they have begun a new generation in their family. If they later have more kids, those kids are still in the same generation. The first successor (in this case the first child) is what starts the next generation.
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So by your reasoning, the Atari 5200 started the 3rd generation, the Atari 7800 started the 4th generation, and the Atari XE started the 5th generation?
