Hey, have you ever thought about...maybe it doesn't fucking matter what generation the console is, only what it can do and what games are available for it?
The 8th generation arrived.....last year.
- Thread starter KazeAizen
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I'd say it has to do with the fact that in a few years, the WiiU will have little to no multiplatform games coming out on it simply due to its lack of power, so the third party developers won't see a reason to try and port it down to the WiiU. Any PC gamer would actually know that frustration of when they do try to do that. Nintendo home consoles are basically used solely for Nintendo games. Whether for better or worse, Nintendo stays as sort of its own section. That might be good, in that we can always look to Nintendo for something much different in the gameplay department(ever since the 3D world gameplay trailer, I've had a fair bit of faith restored in Nintendo) and not worry about them being bogged down by others. On the other hand, it leaves the Nintendo console a little isolated.
But I digress. Most modern gamers ignore Nintendo, that's why they don't see the next-gen to have been started just yet.
But I digress. Most modern gamers ignore Nintendo, that's why they don't see the next-gen to have been started just yet.
It's a silly discussion. Consoles are per definition always technologically behind. What matters are the games.
In fact having a vastly different system than the others makes it possible to give it a different audience and different kinds of games.
For the Wii one of their main strengths were light-gun games thanks to the similarity of technologies. House of the Dead Overkill was probably one of my favorite games of last gen. Trauma Team also made great use of the Wiimote.
On the WiiU Monster Hunter 3U made the pad a perfect quick access method to many functions of the game.
PS and Xbox have been way too similar in the first place. People should start profiting from the differences between the consoles and perfecting the games along those lines.
In fact having a vastly different system than the others makes it possible to give it a different audience and different kinds of games.
For the Wii one of their main strengths were light-gun games thanks to the similarity of technologies. House of the Dead Overkill was probably one of my favorite games of last gen. Trauma Team also made great use of the Wiimote.
On the WiiU Monster Hunter 3U made the pad a perfect quick access method to many functions of the game.
PS and Xbox have been way too similar in the first place. People should start profiting from the differences between the consoles and perfecting the games along those lines.
Own "Last-gen" in the "Next-gen" with the WiiU!
I guess you can technically call the U a next-gen piece of hardware but any PC gamer (and soon XBone/PS4 gamer) will just scoff at that crappy piece of hardware. I regretfully bought it December of last year and sold it about 5 months later when it became painfully obvious that the system is a total shitbox and nintendo has little to no clue how to support games for people who don't want to play children's games 95% of the time. It's barely "next-gen" that's for certain.
I guess you can technically call the U a next-gen piece of hardware but any PC gamer (and soon XBone/PS4 gamer) will just scoff at that crappy piece of hardware. I regretfully bought it December of last year and sold it about 5 months later when it became painfully obvious that the system is a total shitbox and nintendo has little to no clue how to support games for people who don't want to play children's games 95% of the time. It's barely "next-gen" that's for certain.
In the past the limitations were largely theoretical. The Playstation could, for example, handle video thus making Resident Evil possible while the N64 was functionally the more powerful piece of hardware. The difference in technology between platforms has always existed but, again, it mattered little in practical application. This generation, the PS3 was more powerful than the 360 and yet rarely showed it's muscle for example. But the Wii simply wasn't the same category; not only was the device remarkably less powerful in a way that would be noticeable in many games (smaller texture sizes, reduced polygon counts), it wasn't even capable of displaying at "High Definition" - a feature noticeable in any game on a modern television.MetalDooley said:
Simply put, the Wii was so vastly inferior on a technology front that it actually showed clearly and plainly even to the casual observer.
The problem with this logic is that someone has to make software to move consoles. AAA games do precisely that. No third party studio wants to jump into that mess leaving it to Nintendo to solve the problem themselves - something that they're excruciatingly slow at. Hell, they apparently failed to notice just how much harder it is to make High Definition games when they jumped generations and have pointed to that difficulty as a cause behind many of the delays in high profile titles. This more or less means Nintendo's strategy of "doing it differently" is folly because they don't seem to know how to do it differently.amaranth_dru said:
The funny thing is, the same argument could be made with this logic to say that the Xbone and PS4 are last gen to, considering how big a difference there is between them and the top-tier PCs. That's what happens when you wait too damn long to get your next console gen out.KazeAizen said:
But thankfully that logic is completely flawed. Gen listings aren't about specs, but time periods.
As Generals 3 pointed out in regards to Nuclear reactors, generation there doesn't only mean time period but also improvements over predecessor. The same holds true for pretty much any field where the technology develops. A fifth generation fighter jet isn't just a fighter jet developed past the year 2000, but a rather specific type of fighter jet that is expected to have certain features (such as limited stealth) and capabilities that puts it above and beyond its' predecessor. That's why the F-22 can be a fifth generation fighter (introduced 2005) while the Eurofighter (introduced 2003) isn't, because even if they are contemporary to each other, the Eurofighter lags so far behind technologically that they can't be said to be of the same generation.xPixelatedx said:
I mean, with your reasoning if Lockheed decided to release a polished F-104 Starfighter it would be a fifth generation fighter, despite lacking all the things that make fifth generation fighter jets superior to their predecessors. While time frame plays a part, the technology is probably a more important part in determining generation. I don't see why consoles should be any different than CPU's, GPU's or any other piece of technology in that regard. The Wii U is, at best, gen 7.5. That's not an insult against the Wii U, but rather a simple statement about the relatively inferior hardware it operates on when compared to what the Gen 8 consoles will use.
According to the Wikipedia entry, WiiU is 8th genKazeAizen said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console#Eighth_generation
I totally agree with the OP, not that I really care about the argument in question. A generation, by definition, is defined by the succession of game consoles in a series. For example, the Playstation 2 succeeded the Playstation 1, therefore it's the next generation. You wouldn't look at your child and say "well Wii'um is only slightly better than the neighbour's kids so I'm going to count him as generation 7.5 of the Nintendos. My next child, Frank Nintendo, will be the TRUE next generation of our family!" I'm pretty sure anyone who treats their kids like that could be reported to Child Services.
Consoles are about the games, not the specs. It's only since the console makers have become obsessed with specs and making their games look as nice as possible that we've started adopting the same mindset and forgetting the characters completely. 90% of the reason I got a PS3 was so I could play the Ratchet and Clank games (the other 10% for God of War 3), not because I wanted HD upgrades of the old ones or because I thought Blu-Ray was the future of home entertainment (frankly, if the economy goes the way it is, Cup-and-Ball will be the future of home entertainment). But I did buy it and I've got a wealth of other great games because of it. That's how the console war is supposed to go, each side puts up their IPs to gain your backing and then you buy their other games which are less known and sometimes better. But now, you've got games that have no interesting IPs other than the franchise itself and game developers who care more about how clear the whiskers on a disheveled old man's chin are as seen on the 200 inch TV their testing their game on.
If the console war was about specs, everyone would have computers hooked up to their TVs and console controllers setup to play the games on them. Quite frankly, the only reason we don't all do that now is entirely because of the mindless loyalty that the IPs of last generation have fostered.
Consoles are about the games, not the specs. It's only since the console makers have become obsessed with specs and making their games look as nice as possible that we've started adopting the same mindset and forgetting the characters completely. 90% of the reason I got a PS3 was so I could play the Ratchet and Clank games (the other 10% for God of War 3), not because I wanted HD upgrades of the old ones or because I thought Blu-Ray was the future of home entertainment (frankly, if the economy goes the way it is, Cup-and-Ball will be the future of home entertainment). But I did buy it and I've got a wealth of other great games because of it. That's how the console war is supposed to go, each side puts up their IPs to gain your backing and then you buy their other games which are less known and sometimes better. But now, you've got games that have no interesting IPs other than the franchise itself and game developers who care more about how clear the whiskers on a disheveled old man's chin are as seen on the 200 inch TV their testing their game on.
If the console war was about specs, everyone would have computers hooked up to their TVs and console controllers setup to play the games on them. Quite frankly, the only reason we don't all do that now is entirely because of the mindless loyalty that the IPs of last generation have fostered.
Technically speaking, yeah - I agree with the OP.
But you really can't blame people for not taking the Wii U into account considering how much of a 'meh'box that console was. Hell, I would know. I owned one for about 4 months. There was nothing good on it besides Monster Hunter, in my opinion. And I could play that on my 3DS. There was no reason for me to keep it around.
Most games that people consider to be good for Nintendo consoles were franchises that I cannot even feign interest in, at this point. Couldn't care less about Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, Super Smash Bros., etc. Come to think of it, I can't think of a good reason why I got that system.
But you really can't blame people for not taking the Wii U into account considering how much of a 'meh'box that console was. Hell, I would know. I owned one for about 4 months. There was nothing good on it besides Monster Hunter, in my opinion. And I could play that on my 3DS. There was no reason for me to keep it around.
Most games that people consider to be good for Nintendo consoles were franchises that I cannot even feign interest in, at this point. Couldn't care less about Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, Super Smash Bros., etc. Come to think of it, I can't think of a good reason why I got that system.
It can still be useful to know what a gamer probably means when he or she says something like 4th generation or 5th, even if this will never be an exact science, so here goes:
First of all, many people like to think in dualistic terms, so take the biggest, fiercest two competitors and root for one. Then you get:
3rd gen: NES vs Master System
4th gen: SNES vs Mega Drive
5th gen: N64 vs PSone
6th gen: PS2 vs Xbox1
7th gen: PS3 vs Xbox360
(nobody cares about the 1st or 2nd gen)
Hardly anybody talks about the Atari7800s, 3D0s, Jaguars and Dreamcasts that played on the sidelines at the time and when some old fans do, they are usually specific.
That doesn't mean that a console like the Wii was a failure, but it certainly was the odd one out that did things differently. When the odd one doesn't fit into the generalization that is the generation, it simply doesn't get included.
So there you have it. No more confusion.
First of all, many people like to think in dualistic terms, so take the biggest, fiercest two competitors and root for one. Then you get:
3rd gen: NES vs Master System
4th gen: SNES vs Mega Drive
5th gen: N64 vs PSone
6th gen: PS2 vs Xbox1
7th gen: PS3 vs Xbox360
(nobody cares about the 1st or 2nd gen)
Hardly anybody talks about the Atari7800s, 3D0s, Jaguars and Dreamcasts that played on the sidelines at the time and when some old fans do, they are usually specific.
That doesn't mean that a console like the Wii was a failure, but it certainly was the odd one out that did things differently. When the odd one doesn't fit into the generalization that is the generation, it simply doesn't get included.
So there you have it. No more confusion.
since the middle stages of the ps2 i switched to PC gaming. i bought a ps3 fairly early, around the second run of them (so once they removed backwards compatibility) and did a bit of both, and now i'm back to only using my PC, so honestly i've never really paid much attention to the next generation of consoles in my life, apart from the switch from ps1 to ps2. i'm still not going to pay much attention to the next switch, other than my PC will finally be pushed to its limits, rather than breezing through everything out there without breaking a sweat
This pretty much sums it up. Though I don't know if I'd say the nintendo is "generation 7.5" so much as I just wouldn't classify nintendo with the rest of gaming. Really the only reason the "generation" thing exists is because we assume these companies are in a box where they have to compete with each other on an exact "this is a response to this" level. I think from nintendo's standpoint it benefits them NOT to have the wiiu as something that's not held in direct comparison with the ps4 and xbone, but rather as something that exists in its own space. It's excluded from pretty much all big universal game releases that any other platform can play and it operates almost entirely in exclusives developed 1st party.Doom972 said:
Think of it this way. You're a buxom young lady at the beach and the three companies are guys at trying to catch your eye. Microsoft and Sony are chiseled tan hunks of men letting the sun rays glisten off of their perfect washboard abs as they come out of the water in slow motion. Nintendo is the scrawny pasty guy on the shore, introspectively staring off into the horizon and painting a picture of the sea.
Your analogy made me laugh, but I can still improve upon it.Guitarmasterx7 said:
Again you're a young lady at the beach, only the PS3 and 360 are two 17 year old jocks, wrestling with eachother, while the wii, an 11 year old kid, is building a sand castle. The PC is your middle aged dad. Who will you date and why?