My stance is that Switch is neither. It’s a Gen 1 hybrid console that competed with both PS4/XBone, and now PS5 and XSeries. Like the NES vs calculator/keyboard consoles like C64 and Wii vs PS3/X360, it’s an “indirect” competition. By indirect, I mean that it’s capturing market share in a way that isn’t really contested by Sony or Microsoft, at least right now. While there’s a ton of overlap in users, Switch offers a unique experience that makes the extra power of PS5/XSeries irrelevant. “PS5 has X floppies of power and 14,000 zetacoids of blumagons, oxynontenistic splining vaporeel gammaquads” means nothing because Switch offers games that look good enough for most gamers, and they can pick up the experience and go - on top of some really key software experiences like Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, and Breath of the Wild - but also all that stuff that can be played local multiplayer and handheld.
Unified generations have been irrelevant at least 15 years now. You can probably consider PS/Xbox to be other same generation because they released about the same time, and are basically clones. But the reality of the matter is PS5 is the 5th PlayStation gen, the XBox Series is the 4th Xbox gen, and the Switch is Nintendo’s first hybrid console - a combination of their 7th gen home/5th gen handheld console.
What’s relevant is what’s currently competing - directly and indirectly in the dedicated gaming console space. Putting the Switch in the 8th generation or 9th generation is completely meaningless. How could it matter? Saying something like the Switch doesn’t compete with a 9th gen console PS5 because it competed with the 8th gen PS4, or the other way around, isn’t based on reality. I can’t think of any reason to try to shoehorn these generations of different types of consoles together... aside from insanity =)
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
