NPD: Smash Ultimate sold 3M+ in 11 days in US,Pokemon Let's go 2M+

[The_Liquid_Laser]

SpokenTruth said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

Untrue. 

The video game crash counts as a separate generation.  That explains why it "appears" that some of those consoles were in the same generation.  Truth is that Atari 2600, 5200 and 7800 were all in a different generation.  Each one was meant to be the successor to the previous one.  But Atari 5200 was the console of the "crash generation" so it incorrectly gets lumped in with generation 2.

The second situation where it seems like their are 2 consoles in the same generation is when their are two product lines.  Like we could say Nintendo had the SNES and Gameboy in the same generation, but those are obviously two different product lines.  So you could also have Atari ST and Atari 7800 released close together, but those are also two different product lines.

The third situation is when a console is canceled prematurely after 1-2 years, like the Virtual Boy or the Sega SG-1000.  In this case you can have two consoles in the same generation, because the first one was canceled very prematurely.  On the other hand Switch was released 6 years after 3DS.  That is a normal generation.  Switch was also released about 4.5 years after the Wii U.  That also is normal for a generation.  Historically, 4-7 years is the normal time frame for a generation.  

Bottom line is that Switch is in the next generation.  The term is not an arbitrary construct.  A typical console grows, peaks, declines, and then spawns a successor while continuing to decline.  This repeated pattern is very analogous to a that of a living organism (or group of organisms) so it is called a "console generation".  It's a simple way to describe a set of complex phenomena.  People use the term generation, so they can make sense of it all.  And originally the term was used to simply tell customers, "hey guys we have another console coming out."  By any reasonable definition of a console generation, the Switch is generation 9.  

The Atari 2600 and 5200 are considered the same generation precisely because of the crash and how it affected the US and Japanese markets.  Yes, the 7800 is 3rd generation.  I never suggested otherwise.

I'm not talking about the Atari 7800 and Atari ST but the 7800 and the XEGS.

Your third situation doesn't exempt the fact they released 2 consoles in the same generation.  Especially with your Sega example.  The SG-1000 wasn't canceled like we normally see but was simply replaced by newer models.  The SG-1000 II a year later and the Mark III the year after which is technically the Master System which is why they have 2 consoles in the same generation.  Technically, you could call it 3 consoles.....or possibly 3 iterations of a generation 2 console.

Bottom line is that generations are typically delineated by a competing time frame denoted by the release of flagship successor consoles.  But again, it is that competing time frame that is the prime delineator and the one used by the industry since the late 1970s.

The Atari 5200 was meant to be a next generation console.  It was the successor to the Atari 2600, and it was released 5 years later.  It was the successor to Atari's first console in the same way that the SNES, PS2 and XBox360 were considered successors to their companies' first consoles.  It is thrown in with generation 2, because it is hard to classify consoles around the video game crash. 

And this should be a reality check on how we understand generations.  If our definition depends on generation 2 and 3, then we need to seriously rethink our definition of generation.  Generations 2 and 3 was the most unusual time in console history because of the video game crash (and also generation 1 was really weird too).  Why not base our definition from generations 4 - 8?  That should be where our understanding of generation comes from before we try to explain the special cases from generations 1 - 3.

In the typical cases, a company releases a console and then 4 - 7 years later they release a successor.  That is the next generation.  That is the standard situation where you don't have a crash or a horrible failure like the Virtual Boy.  Why define things based on the special cases instead of the typical situation?