^ Hehe, you are entertaining. The PS Triple is 8th gen.

Consoles and handhelds have their own separate generational time lines and the 8th generation hasn't even begun yet.

     The Wii cpu is three to four times slower than those of the 360 and PS3 whether it is a current gen console or not.

Accoring to who?  Because according to the media (such as myself), the publishers, the console makers and investors....Wii is 7th generation just like PS3 and X360.

Does it actually bother you to consider them a part of the same generation?

"Does it actually bother you to consider them a part of the same generation?"

No, but it does bother me that a lot of people buy the Wii because they think it has the same graphical abilities and cpu power at a cheaper price than the PS3 and that that accounts for quite a bit of its sales as someone else pointed out earlier because the Wii's sales success may lead to certain third party games becoming Wii exclusives if sales continue to be as they are, and if you are a fan of certain types of games and series, those games due to the Wii's technological limitations are simply not going to look as good on the Wii as they could on the PS3.

I like to see game graphics improve significantly from generation to generation.  I do like strong gameplay too.  I don't know why there can't be a console that offers both as the Super Nintendo did in its day.

     That was one of the problems of the NES to me back in the day.  I had been playing pc adventure games like King's Quest for a couple of years before the NES was released in the states.  And when I got the NES it never really wowed me.  Plus there was the knowledge that systems like the Sega Master System offered much better graphics and I was always thinking I really wish these NES games had Master System quality graphics and that difference only became more apparent when the Genesis was released.  Then The SNES came out, and I had to admit it was a great system.  It had much better games than anything on the Genesis in my opinion, but its graphics were just as good as well.  The N64 kind of dropped the ball for me by not getting any Square games or really any rpgs besides Paper Mario (which was always doomed to be an inferior game to what Super Mario Rpg:  Secret of the Seven Stars 2 would have been) and Tactics Ogre; the Gamecube didn't live up to the expectations that many had for it.  And again only had a couple of good rpgs.  The GBA like the SNES was actually a good system  and the DS has actually gone the way the N64 should have gone if everything had gone right for it instead of wrong with it.  Still I wish the Wii did have PS3 and 360 level graphical technology combined with great gameplay (that always seemed to be the promise inherent in the console when it was code named the Revolution).  If it had a ton of hd jrpgs, then I would like it much better.  JRPGs always looked and sounded better on the SNES than they did on the standard Genesis.

     Maybe the days of the types of console games that I enjoyed the most are reaching their end much as the types of pc games that I enjoyed the most came to an end in the early to mid nineties.

I'll address your post in separate parts.

1. The volume of consumers that purchase a Wii expecting the graphics to be equal to that of the PS3/X360 are very small.  So isignificant they are not worth your time contemplating. 

The Wii gaining exlusives over the PS3/X360 are going to happen and it's a two fold effect that will realize it.  For one, as you noted, the increasing sales of Wii won't be ignored by publishers and some exclusive 3rd party titles may jump ship to Wii...like Monster Hunter 3 did.  Then there is the fact that PS3/X360 development is just incredibly expensive.  Publishers are not getting the same amount of money back on development they did last generation because the cost increased too much.  Because of this the Wii will see other exclusives jump from the HD consoles. 

The cost development cost factor is an issue you need to take up with Sony and MS...not Nintendo.  It was not Nintendo who drove up the cost of development.

I can understand how you think some games would lose their appeal if they were moved from HD consoles to Wii but as long a syou can remember having fun on the PS2 or Xbox with the graphics they presented, you know Wii can still do a litle better.

Keep in mind that regardless of what generation the Wii would be considered, it would't change these facts.

2.  A large jump in graphics is starting to come at a cost.  This is something we in the industry have all known would at soem point start to happen.  For example.  Mortal Kombat was made by just 4 guys for $100,000 and took just a few months.  Mortal Kombat Deception last generation took well over 100 people, 2 years and several million dollars to make.  A new one is expected to need 500 people, 3-4 years and $30-40 million to make.

That kind of money, time and resources make publishers cringe and alternative production environments like handhelds, mobile phones and Wii make an attractive platform.

Your desire for better graphics each generation is not a bad thing it's just becoming increasingly difficult to achieve while remaiing profitable.

3.  A high quality graphics offering plus the revolutionary input methods sounds great on paper (and in all reality probably would make a great system) but in going with the notion I stated in part 2 is that the costs associated with that kind of development would mean publishers would be really struggling right now because HD development is costing them far too much money and if all 3 were HD money hogs....well, we'd start seeing even more studio closures than we already have this generation.

Take a look at this chart.
http://www.edge-online.com/files/profit_or_loss.gif

It really illustrates how the companies putting a lot into the HD consoles are lossing billions of dollars.  There is also the fact that some publishers have admitted that the Wii profits are funding their HD game projects.  Ubisoft being the biggest.

Whether you, or any of us for that matter, like it not, the industry truly needs the Wii to stay alive and that makes it one of the most important consoles of the 7th generation.  I'm not saying you have to like Wii or even play Wii but you should try and respect just how important its' contribution to the gaming industry has been.

Exactly.  It's understandable that people who loved those console games dislike the Wii.

I hated console games, wasn't even going to buy a console, so it makes sense I love the Wii.

Paul_Warren:"Still I wish the Wii did have PS3 and 360 level graphical technology combined with great gameplay (that always seemed to be the promise inherent in the console when it was code named the Revolution)."

That would've been nice, but it sales wouldn't have been half what they are now with the price tag reqs.

this thread is awesome

This thread would be full of win if the gamecube never existed.

When people say wii is last gen, they mean:

6th generation: Dreamcast, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gamecube

7th Generation: Nintendo Wii

8th Generation: Xbox 360 and PS3.

By looking at it this way, we can easy understand why Sony and Microsoft employees only talk about each other when the term "competition" is brought up, because Nintendo doesn't have a 8th generation console on the market. So clearly the 7th generation is in fact one of the worst of all time, having only sold just under 35 million consoles.

So in fact Developers are supporting 3 generations of consoles, PS2 (6th), Wii (7th), 360 and PS3 (8th).

(NOTE: this entire post was a joke. I figured it was implied, but just in case, i'll say it out loud. JOKE POST)