Thanks.  It's very intersting that "some" people consider power next gen because honestly they will all be wayyyy behind PC still

Power does not define a generation. People that use this type of argument are trying to bash Nintendo because they feel humiliated by the Wii in the last gen.

Wii U is a next-gen console. You guys accepting it or not.

It doesn't even have to be marginally more powerful. If you look at video game generations this is how they have been traditionally defined... chronology.  I'm nt going to bother digging through tech specs, but I can almost gurantee that there were more powerful consoles then the Atari 7800 when it released.  Hell I believe in some ways it was a backwords step from the 5200.

People are free to disagree... but they're just wrong and not worth argueing with, since it's either just a borinng pointless arguement or sadder an arguement made in the overall "console war".  Which in itself is nothing but a shame.

i's actually a moot discussion, and one that will not change anything at all

well, that is not entirely true, it will decide about people getting banned, if there will ever by a consensus, but there won't be, so at one point someone will have to decide if you can call what console next gen or last gen or whatever in this forum.

And that is all there is to it. A arbitrary definition that will not go beyond this forum and be reason for some bans.

I disagree that there is confusion. People know full well what they are talking about but usually have an agenda and make statements to support their point of view.

You will have some people claiming that the Wii U is not next gen which would be wrong as it is the successor to the Wii. However I would say that within context it can be argued that in terms of performance the Wii U does not offer what we would expect from an 8th Gen console.

Exactly what I say all the time. The main competition makes up the gen. So far we didn't see a console, that competed in two gens, although wwe saw consoles that were competing only half a gen (Dremcast). Naturally a new console competes with the old gen for a short time, but mainly it's competitors will be the new gen.

"Previous-gen-tech" is laughable in the case of the Wii. Gamecube was together with XBox on top of gen 6. The Wii was way more powerful than gamecube. The Wii could show stuff, that was way ahead of gen 6. That XBOX360 and PS3 made a bigger jump tech-wise, doesn't mean the Wii employed prev-gen tech.

They only did, what was Sony doing the two gens before: releasing a machine, that was lower-powered than the competition.

I can fly faster with Blast Processing than with an Emotion Engine. At least Sonic Speed!

Fixed the gens based on similar power of the consoles.