I think its sad that the biggest pride people have is sales, at least graphics and power add something to the gaming experience, what do sales add? nothing much if any.

The Ouya is not here yet, as far as I know. Only a kickstarter. I'm not sure, if the Ouya is in the same market or is only bought by homebrew/free-software-activists. Or as Rol puts it: if it will compete for the same Dollars as the WiiU, PS4 and NextBox. We will see.

The purpose of a new console is to bring gamers to put dollars on the table. Point is this: at some point most gamers have a device to game on. The sales of the old-gen machines dwindle in result. The console-manufacturer starts a new gen to force the people to pay for a new machine. Naturally people need at least an perceived value from the new machine, to consider to buy it. So the console-manufacturer try to sell new features. That may be advances in graphics, controls, network-capabilities or the like. But the best and most used argument is: if you want to play the new Mario/Final Fantasy/Halo/God of War/Tekken/whatever you have to buy the new machine.

And, what is with PS2? Your argument basically says that the PS2 is gen 5 and gen 6 was won by the Xbox.

Sorry, do you think I didn't realize that when I posted the example?

Of course it's a game and not a HW expansion, of course that's a big difference, but it doesn't change the fact that it's equally applicable in the discussion of adoption. Some people made use map settings only made for the classical version, but they were few because BW was so well made that everyone adopted it.

Another example is Diablo Hellfire. It's not considered part of the canon because it was made by a 3rd party and wasn't officially backed up. This all supports my "push" argument, regardless of the differences you mention.

I'm not sure how much I disagree with you, and your reason is discrepancy in adoption of the add-on as compared to the original platform.

But I will disagree. 3rd parties supported Kinect pretty much just as much as they supported Wii as of 2010 onward. Why is that? It's because MS did a good job at pushing it. It comes back to what I said.

But whether this is all true or not, it doesn't change the fact that it can all be done on one same platform to a certain degree of success or not. The same could not be said for computer components on the 1st consoles of the time, which is what prompted the generations in the first place.

So Wii lost to PS2! :O


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@bold. That can all be done on the same console. It's purely about marketing if technical upgrades are totally out of the picture.

If a competitor offers the updates on the same console, doesn't that invalidate the need for a brand new console, unless there's some other considerable upgrade that requires a new machine (such as a performance upgrade due to better computer components)? So a console in your perspective is purely artificial and has no reason of being, since a competitor in that case could easy cut over your offering by making it an add-on and saving people the need to buy a whole new console.

This basically puts the nail in the coffin.

That is all by design, being made by the same manufacturer. The same would likely not hold true had the handhelds been made by anyone else than Nintendo or Sony. Case in point, the N-Gage, released in 2003, bang on between the PS2 and the PS3.

Semantics, I love them, because they make us smarter and put people on the same footing. So much arguing is over the ambiguity of words. Words aren't concepts, they're tools to describe concepts. The sharper the tools, the cleaner the cut.

Again, generations have no reason of existence if not due to hardware upgrades that can't be done on the same machine.

Sales definitely doesn't mean whether or not a game is good, however I think the people you're referring to are mostly exclusive to this site.  The graphics and power people are much more common.  However, in regards to your comment about sales, for some people they believe that as a result of a game being good, it should have higher sales rather than high sales being something itself that makes the game better.

Sales is much more to do with business in the realistic sense, and I would say higher sales give a game a better chance to gain more exposure and have more games like it come out (not rehashing).  /redundant rant over.

Its the next generation Nintendo console at least.

Be happy with what you've got.