I didn't bother to read through the entire thread but I've been saying this myself. Wii U is as much this gen as Move and Kinect. Now all three consoles have HD + Motion controls. The tablet interface is novel but in today's day and age of smart phones and tablets, it's not very novel or innovative at all.

WiiU in no way poses any threat to 360/PS3 as all it'll receive is ports of their existing game line up. So what? Yeah, it'll be in true 1080p and have a second screen which is nice and all but not justification for people to buy a 2nd (or 3rd) HD console. There's no indication it'll have any 3rd party exclusives (outside of that sh-t from Ubisoft) and no telling if it'll have any sway on the casual crowd or if they'll stick to their Wiis.

However, I also question if there will even be a next gen. Where do they go from here? Plus streaming game services are here and will grow and eliminate the need to have to have this or that console as you'll probably be able to play all the games you want on modern HD smart TVs.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Wii and I was one of the very first to predict it's massive success (before launch) when everyone wrote it off as doomed from the start. However Nintendo has shown nothing so far to show why WiiU will have any chance of success or who it will even appeal to. It is certainly not 'next gen' except in terms of how people still refer to PS360 as 'next gen'. It'll lump in with them and all will share the same games. Yeah for homogeneity.

Hardware wise he's right.

Going by what we've had confirmed by IBM and AMD the U is going to be 4 or 5 times more powerful than the PS3 and 360. And it's currently impossible for the gap in power between the U and PS4/720 to be the equivalent of the gap in power between the Wii and the PS3/360. The hardware simply doesn't exist yet.

This gen has confused a lot of people, some new to gaming this gen and some with the memory of goldfish. The only console this gen that has shown the traditional leap in power from last gen to this gen is the 360 being around 5 times more powerful than the Xbox. The PS3 has been a nontraditional 10 times more powerful than the PS2 and the Wii has been a nontraditional 1.5-2 times more powerful than the Gamecube.

Next gen is going to be more traditional, similar to last gen, with all 3 consoles being in the same sort of ballpark - Sony and Microsoft will both want to avoid making the same cock up that Sony made this gen with the PS3...they'll want to keep production and retail costs down, particularly when the U has had a year head start on sales and marketshare and will be ripe for a price cut if needed.

You'll see the U being the lead platform for multiplatform games next gen as the PS2 was last gen with the U running next gen engines at 720p native and the PS4/720 running them at 1080p native. Just a slight graphical downgrade.

You don't decide whether a console is from one or another generation because of graphics, that would screw up the console generation time-space continuum.

For example, the moment the PSP came out (matching the current gen), the DS would suddenly become a last gen handheld. Meaning all portable systems would go one generation back making the first ever portable generation 0, thus giving an error and making the universe implode.

As others have said, PSX and N64 would be in different generations, effectively making N64 the only 6th generation console and meaning the current HD consoles are the 8th. That would alter the course of history and also send us forward in time to an alternative universe.

i see a lot of people saying the jump won't be big but my question is - whats the point of launching a nextbox and ps4 unless they are significantly more powerful or have some kind of differentiating feature to their predecessors?

wow so defensive

So? Pachter's not really an analyst.

Yup it's slow news in the video game industry when we start on Pachter!
Wii U is next gen....bottom line. It has nothing to do with graphics. When a new console is released it is the next gen.
People say it's not because they don't want it to come yet. Well too bad, next generation starts next year.

his ego just go butthurt by Nintendo, so now he's spouting bullcrap all over again!!! (my opinion)

Patcher is not god and i can think with my own mind.

I will judge if it's true when i get an hold on the WiiU.