Obviously when all nextgen consoles are out, but I voted "when Sony says so" for the lulz.

There is no definition and so everyone defines it to meet it how he wants it to be. Some are hoping for Sony to win this gen since day of release so they define it as "until Sony stops production" which means "until all stop production" as Sony ends production later than Nintendo and MS.

So when somebody asks you, "Mr Carl90210, what console generation are we in currently?", you reply that we are in two generations simultaneously?

To add to what i said... a generation never really ends. The ps3 will always be in the 7th gen 20years from now. The real questions are A. When does a generation start? And thats dependent on all three manufacturers. And B. When do we declare a winner? And thats dependent on sales till each one is discontinued

It changes when big profile titles stop beeing released for the past generation.

This generation will keep going for at least another year or two, depending on how the sales of the new generation go.

Wow, then 3rd gen is perhaps still active! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_System#Brazil

"In 2009, Master System Evolution (a new version) was released in Brazil, a successor to the Master System 3, including 132 built-in games."

Look how beautiful it is!

Thats not sega. Thats a knockoff. NES has onetoo that i bought off ebay for a dollar to play my old ass games

Yes.

Think of it using Humanity as an example. Our generation wont die off when our kids take our place. We keep going. Were still relevant. Our generation ends when theres none of us left or we become so few we are irrelevant.

@walsufnir...

Id. Wow. Id buy the shit out of that at the highest damn price I could. Its so pretty!

My take is that if you crown the winner based on profits(which vgchartz doesn't track), then it should be when all the consoles stop production. But if you crown the winner based off of marketshare, then is should be when all the next-gen consoles come out. Simply because, last gen consoles aren't competing with each other anymore, they are basically fighting to get some scraps, and I can guarantee you that Sony/microsoft/Nintendo won't be caring much about market share with their previous consoles, they will be focusing more on just squeezing a few extra bucks out of their old consoles. But that's just my opinion.

The term 'generation' is more of a fluid word - it's not really set in stone. Different 'generations' for different companies start/end at slightly different times - Nintendo is in 8th and soon Sony and Microsoft will be too