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Dulfite on 06 November 2021
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Kakadu18 said:
Dulfite said:

NES 1983

SNES 1990

N64 1996

GC 2001

Wii 2006

Wii U 2012

Switch 2017

Some had short windows of 5 or less years, but on average about 6 year gap between each. However, over the last 4 new generations, that average is closer to 5 between each gen, including going from the highly successful Wii to the Wii U.

This is one of the many reasons I think Nintendo releasing in 2024 or later would be uncharacteristic of them, seeing as that would be 7+ years later and they historically do 6 year cycles and lately closer to 5 year cycles.

You ignore the handhelds.

GB 1989

GBA 2001

NDS 2004

3DS 2011

With the exception of the GBA they all had a longer life than 6 years. The 3DS was actively supported until 2019 even. Their average with that is over 6 years.

Again appart from the GBA the length of their consoles often depends on it's success and the ones with a shorter than 6 years life were always low sellers.

I just find the mindset weird that some of the earlier posts in this thread shared, that all Nintendo systems have a 5 year life and therefore the Switch's life would also be 5 years.

Ignoring the GB Color is not a good thing to do. GBC could play hundreds of games the original Gameboy could not. It was its own generation based on that standard alone. It wasn't a New 3ds level upgrade with a few exclusives, literally hundreds of exclusives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_Boy_Color_games

Sort by asc/dsc and you will see how many games were not Dual Mode compatible. GBC was its own generation, regardless of how Nintendo likes to label it (they join them up to make it look like they sold more, just like they will probably do years from now with Wii/Wii U).

Also, support doesn't mean much when the games are few and far between and heavily focusing (at least first party-wise) on "remasters" like the M&L ports of the DS games.