First of all: I didn't say power didn't matter, I said it has only minor influence on the success of a system.

But let's dive a bit deeper. You claim power is the reason for generations. But actually it is not. The reason for generations is money. People tend to be more excited about their new thingy, than about their old thingy, including a higher willingness to make additional spending for this thingy. For game consoles that means, people that start to be content with their yearly FIFA or whatever can buy a new console and start looking for new games that their new machine is doing. Hell, you could even sell them the same game a second time (or a third time *cough* Skyrim... GTA V *cough*). New generations exist mostly for this reason.

Naturally you need a *justification* for the new gen, and power often has been it. But not always. While Nintendo in the last few gens upgraded their tech, they advertised their new gen mostly with new inputs or additional features (dual screen, motion control, glass-free 3D, tablet-controller, hybrid). I see that VR may become a possible justification for gens going forward, but so far it isn't clearly attached to gens.

Yes, people probably wouldn't want a tech in a new gen, which is massively outmatched by current tech. But I think what massively outmatched means is defined differently by forumgoers and the general public.

Also as a reminder: PC gaming is gen-free since decades, and it works as well. And no, not every PC gamer has the newest tech, many play on tech that is behind current console gens.

You are right about power coming at a price. And I think you miss one also: the price on developing games. With better tech the expectations on looks in the game increase, which has impact on the cost of development.

"So Switch obviously has an advantage over a hypothetical half as powerful Switch."

I really don't think that is the case. Except if the games would look massively different. If Breath of the Wild looked more or less similar, people would still buy the half as powerful a Switch (whatever half as powerful means, as power really isn't one variable alone). And let's not kid ourself, most consumer don't notice the difference forum goers fret over in high resolution screenshots - "look, it has three grass objects more" - that was a real discussion back about GTA on X360 and PS3.

"If Switch was only as powerful as the 7th gen consoles or Wii U ("power" as in realized results, not some hypotheticals), that would have hurt its longevity to some extent, reduced the number of 3rd party ports, and prolonged the porting period of some games and made them more expensive."

I am not so sure about this either. Well, obviously Switch is more powerful than the WiiU and we knew it from the get-go, only some people on forums were hyperbolic and claimed Switch being WiiU-levels (and as they were hyperbolic before and claimed WiiU was PS3/X360 level they claimed that for Switch as well). Obviously Switch was more powerful than WiiU and we knew it from the start, illustrated by Breath of the Wild. We also knew Switch had 4GB RAM compared to WiiUs 2GB and the 512MB RAM on PS3 and X360. So yes, we all knew that the claims Switch is no more powerful than WiiU were hyperbole and nothing more.

But the power isn't guaranteeing the higher longevity. The library does. See, Switch has gotten some games from WiiU which was mocked and hyperboled into: Switch has the same library as WiiU. But it really hasn't. While some games that basically died on WiiU because of the low sales got a second life on Switch, Switch has a library that by far extends the WiiU. Switch got Super Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Arms and Splatoon 2 in the launch year, additionally to the games WiiU also got like Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8. Gamers care about games, not power. Switch early on really expanded on the WiiUs library, that and not power is the reason Switch can live longer.

Naturally we have the question how much power is needed to make a game possible. And that is not an easy question. In the past some technological advances made new games possible, especially 3D games. But I think we are already hit hard with diminishing returns. People declared a lot of games impossible on Switch, yet "miracle" ports happened. This shows that power maybe a bit restricting for devs, but really isn't preventing any game type really at this point. Yes, we will not see Raytracing on Switch, but still you could play similar (or even the same) games, just with less fancy.

"Every Playstation console barring PS3 (which is complicated) and PS5 were the most -or arguably the most- powerful consoles at the time of their launch, not to mention they were the better value propositions than the competition."

PS1 and PS2 were not more powerful than consoles in their gen, although you worded it: "at the time of their launch". Yes N64 launched later, but it still competed pretty much with PS. It's a weird way to word it. You could also say the WiiU was the most powerful console at the time of it's launch. Nobody does, as it doesn't matter, as everyone knows WiiU competed with PS4 and Xbox One, even if they launched a year later.

And then you add the better value proposition. Which is exactly what I say. The post you quoted, I said literally: "Much more important is how the perceived (subjective) value measures up." And that is the value proposition. But this value is done with games, not power. Which is why PS succeeded over N64 and PS2 over Gamecube. Because power has a very minor influence on the perceived value.

"The relationship between the different selling points is a very complicated one to breakdown."

That is not completely wrong. But there are some clear patterns: power had only minor influence on mass market success in all of gaming history. Game library had always a massive influence. There are other factors as well: CD/DVD for PS and PS2 (although that may had influence on the games, as other games were possible) or the form factor of handheld vs. stationary.

"It's not an insignificant power gap"

And that is a highly subjective part. Yes, as I said before, gamers on forums tend to count grass to prove power superiority of their platform of choice. But the majority only cares about games. Are the games they want to play available. And in that regard the power gap is apparently insignificant enough to allow for many gaming experiences people care for.

And yet the Wii sold more than any of Nintendo's previous home consoles in spite of not being a real power upgrade over the Gamecube.

There is actually more going on to generations than just power.

Power matters in so much as it enables certain games and gaming experiences; BOTW couldn't have been done on the Wii or 3DS for example.

It certainly hasn't hurt the Switch that it has just enough juice to handle ports from PS4/Xbone as well as Wii U/PS3/360. It's a factor in sales and success, just not one of the leading ones in Switch's case.

Some people seem to forget that it is the end result that dictates whether or not you got your power requirements right and that is made up from a number of factors that go into making a console, like price point - form factor - feature set etc and if that leads to a platform that satisfies its audience by meeting its potential to produce a better gaming experience than it's predecessor than those requirements have been met regardless of whether or not it has the most powerful specs.

On the question of if power didn't matter gens wouldn't exist my answer is no one is saying it doesn't matter its more about how much, especially in a console world where you have budgetary constraints and competing needs for that budget.

Consumer history shows us that even heavily refined products with little if any real development potential left in them often still have gens or refreshes happening.

I already said it: thinking the Switch wasn't significantly more powerful than PS3/360 was buying into hyperbolic exaggeration. We all knew the WiiU was more powerful than PS3/360, starting with 4 times the RAM. The hyperbolic exaggeration was, that the differences basically didn't matter so it was *the same power*. Then the Switch was obviously more powerful than the WiiU (twice the RAM again), but the hyperbole was, that it was again the same. Putting together two completely unrealistic statements makes an even more outlandish statement: that the Switch wasn't much more powerful than PS360. But the reality was and is different, and everyone thinking through it with calm mind knew that Switch obviously outperformed PS360 by a lot. So if you say:

"Pretty sure the vast majority didn't think it had a 2x+ advantage over PS360"

you are basically saying the vast majority was complete morons. Everyone programming know the importance of RAM and in clear numbers Switch has 8 times as much as PS360. That is only one factor, others are much harder to pinpoint, but the more modern architecture surely does a lot here.

"And no, Mnementh! It isn't weird to consider the launch of the platform because having a headstart is arguably the bigger advantage unless the power gap is absolutely massive and the price is around the same. PS2 launched a year before GameCube and Xbox, the realized power gap between them was nowhere near generational (the same goes for PS1 which launched like 2 years before N64?), but it was still a big enough selling point that helped Xbox outsell the GameCube; a decent achievement from a newcomer."

"Wii U on the other hand came out 6-7 whole years after the aging PS360, and a single year before the actual next generation systems (yet many games played and looked worse IIRC). Of course price, form factor, and other Nintendo screw ups contributed to its failure but you can't even make a shadow of a comparison between Sony and Nintendo's approach on power since the Wii. At no point were Sony's consoles severely underpowered, the PS1 and PS2 had a huge wow factor that helped them selling and being supported. They were powerful consoles."

So you construct the weird statement, the PS2 was the most powerful at start, while denying the same factor for WiiU, although it absolutely is? That is incredibly weird.

"I know you aren't saying power is completely irrelevant, but I feel like you're underselling its relevance."

I don't think so. No evidence points in any way to the power being a deciding or even major factor in any generation.

You may believe that, I just don't see that backed up by real world data. But maybe our differences are just the scale. I already said that WiiU was much more powerful than PS3/360 and Switch is more powerful than WiiU. Maybe that just suffices as the power difference you claim has to justify a new gen. And maybe that is true. I don't know, because never a major console was just on the level of previous gen consoles in term of technological abilities. You though compare the power increase of WiiU and Switch with the ones taken by Playstation and Xbox consoles and see in comparison these increases as insignificant. But these increases may just be enough to justify a new gen and after that other factors are more relevant.

So maybe you are right: if we ever see a console on the same powerlevel as last gen, then it indeed might stop this console from being successful. It just haven't happened yet, which is why I find no data for the claim power has a big influence.

Seems like we all agree that power is a factor but not the be-all end-all, and that disagreement boils down to just how significant a factor it is.

For example, I think we can all concur that if Switch been on par with 3DS or Vita in power, it wouldn't have been nearly as successful, foremost because that would have severely limited the games it could get.