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Forums - Gaming - When is a generation over?

 

When is a gen over?

When the first next gen console comes out 15 9.15%
 
When 2 out of 3 next gen consoles are out 7 4.27%
 
When all next gen consoles are out 56 34.15%
 
When 1 stops production 3 1.83%
 
When 2 out of 3 stop production 8 4.88%
 
When all 3 stop production 40 24.39%
 
When MS says so 0 0%
 
When Nintendo says so 4 2.44%
 
When Sony says so 14 8.54%
 
When I say so 17 10.37%
 
Total:164
animegaming on 30 April 2013

when the golden chicken in the sky says so



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greenmedic88 on 30 April 2013

It's a multi-tiered question really. Naturally, a lot of people are going to try to declare when a hardware generation ends to prop up their own beliefs and claims.

On one end, there are the end tallies: when production stops on a given console, those are the final numbers whether it sold for 2 years or 12. No company keeps a platform in production if it continues to lose money or software support completely dries up, so in that sense, the market and the consumers determine when this happens. Can the final numbers be ignored simply to support a personal opinion? Not really. Not legitimately anyway. They still matter even after replacement products become available.

On the other end, there is such a thing as market relevancy, meaning there is a point at which the numbers lose their significance for anything other than as a product that continues to generate revenue for the parent company. Past a certain point, how well a piece of hardware sells relative to competing products, no longer determines developer support or even future developer support for follow up hardware platforms. This is the product cycle stage the 7th hardware generation is currently in. It will continue well after all 8th gen consoles are on the market.



greenmedic88 on 30 April 2013

I think about the only thing anyone might possibly agree on is that the current gen begins when the first entry hits the market.



PlaystaionGamer on 30 April 2013

Obviously when all 3 stop production.



Playstationfan12 on 30 April 2013

A gen doesn't end till all the consoles in the gen are discontinued. The 6th gen didn't end till January of this year when the ps2 was officially discontinued.



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blublibla on 03 May 2013
platformmaster918 said:

Just asking because I've seen this argument coming up a lot.  Personally I think it ends when every console has sold its final piece of hardware.  In this way I think the 6th gen is still active but with only 1 player now.  Also the 7th gen won't end until 2017 or so most likely.  I just can't discount the 50+m consoles PS2 has sold and all the SNESs that sold after its gen was over.  If you can stay in the consumer eye longer and keep selling you deserve to have that counted.  It shows that your product had more longevity in consumer interest than the competition if it keeps selling even after successors are out.

Neither of them. It's not a matter of consoles being released neither being stopped.

But when there is more people buying next-gen consoles than old gen consoles and publisher releasing more next-gen games than old-gen games.

At this point you can say, the old-gen is definately over and the new-gen is the prime focus.



AshKetchum1992 on 03 May 2013

I think a generation is over when most games are being released on next gen consoles and next gen consoles sell more than old gen consoles, this year is still 7th gen because most games are being released on PS3 and Xbox 360 and two next gen consoles aren't in the market.