The definition of "last generation"

Wii U is a next gen with a hardware closer to this gen than the others next gen machines.

The games that launch only on PS360 will be last generation. Games that launch for PS360 and Wii U/Ps4/XBoxN will be transitional games. Games exclusives to Wii U/Ps4/XBoxN will be next generation games.
 
720fps@30fps with current game assets and effects is not a speculation.
Quick ports often don't take advantage of specialized hardware all that well. Even not so quick, as things like this prove.

Yes, seemingly simple things like that can make a huge difference. No, devs don't always do a good job.

Just saying, you know? No? Now you do. Hopefully.

Note: you don't have to get the mod because Bethesda implemented it eventually, though not to the extent the modder claimed possible. It also annoyed me that they pretty much implemented it in the same exact manner, which means there's a slight visual bug with light sources changing intensity when you first approach them, which didn't happen before the mod and then the patch.

And yeah it's speculation to say what it's closer to since WiiU is still quite an unknown quantity but more than that the other systems are near 100% unknown (btw Perkel you also fail to mention how it often maintains that while rendering double the assets due to having an independent view on the GamePad, unless you also don't know how that can affect performance, especially when it's not even split screen which you could say balances it a little by halving the resolution). Though I guess dark10x merely assumes the other systems are going to be more powerful (even if by a little) and so meant they're further away from current gen than the WiiU is, not that the WiiU is closer to current gen than it is to those, it was a little ambiguously worded.

And yeah, nobody here is trying to proclaim WiiU is this or that powerful and will easily handle anything in the next 10 years or whatever (because it's unknown, though people like you try to claim the opposite end of course, but anyway) so, no, people calling it next gen aren't having delusional fanboy dreams of grandeur for the system or whatever some claim.

But regardless, that's not what will qualify it as next gen or not. Whether it is or isn't underpowered like the Wii (hell, even if it was an overclocked Wii), whether it gets or doesn't get games and ports you personally want, it's a next gen system that will compete against Sony's and Microsoft's next gen systems, regardless of how any of them will end up doing in the long run. The PS4 could be 10x more powerful than the Nextbox (which could be 10x more powerful than the WiiU), cost $1599 and flop in its first year with no support beyond that and no game that takes full advantage of it at all. All three systems would still be of the same generation.

Anyway, back to Dishonored (on PC, so current gen).
 
Pure speculation.
One part speculation, many parts founded on evidence from multiple developer accounts, leaks and Nintendo acquiescing to the fact that their goal was pretty much current gen hardware parity and not much more.

At this point, pretty safe to assume.
 
Sengoku Basara 3 is on Wii and PS3 but not 360, thus PS3 and Wii must be Gen 7 and 360 is Gen 6.

Then again, PS3 is so last-gen it doesn't even have Just Dance Disney Party like Wii and 360!
 
This will boil down to PR Spin and Fanboy dreams

It does not help the Wii U to be in between generations at least when it come to perception of hardware power.
 
Another one of these threads huh.

Sorry bud but technologically the Wii U will most definitely be last-gen when the PS4 and Durango hits. Nobody has ever considered the original Wii "next-gen". Wii U is frankly one of the lamest graphical "leaps" I've seen. Seems to be to the PS360 what the Wii is to the Gamecube, maybe not even that, with a cpu reported to be weaker than PS360's.
 
Another one of these threads huh.

Sorry bud but technologically the Wii U will most definitely be last-gen when the PS4 and Durango hits. Nobody has ever considered the original Wii "next-gen".

Wii is current gen since Nov/Dec 2006 and will be last gen a month from now.

Edit: what has the cpu to do with this?
 
Many times the minor competitors are ignored, and the major competitors tend to release not too far from each other since, well, they are competing obviously...

What i described was not some minor competition. Sega was big player and was churning consoles one after another with each being completely new system with new games (and this is why Sega got in trouble) Your point about correlation to new console release and timeframe simply don't hold itself. By those standards we should be like 10th or more generation now not 8th now. Generation was used to describe whole array of consoles that were alike and played alike games only only big change created new generation and this was mainly thanks to technological aspects of consoles be it bits (8-16) or moving from 2D to 3D.

There was never any problem with next-gen current gen until Wii. Nintendo changed and they drop off from arms race at level of GC. And Wii U is continuation of this.

That doesn't really solve any problems, it merely replaces what you call "numerological bullshit" with your own brand of bullshit based on "technological specs" which conveniently ignore the advances made by the Wii and Wii U (motion controls / asymmetric gaming etc.) and overvalue graphical improvements.

As i said whole package not only technological spec don't misquote me.
 
Another one of these threads huh.

Sorry bud but technologically the Wii U will most definitely be last-gen when the PS4 and Durango hits. Nobody has ever considered the original Wii "next-gen".


A "Next-Gen" in the console sector was always and will always be tied to a technical leap.


Wii U is frankly one of the lamest graphical "leaps" I've seen. Seems to be to the PS360 what the Wii is to the Gamecube, maybe not even that, with a cpu reported to be weaker than PS360's.

Although i believe the WiiU is slightly more powerful than the 360/PS3 we haven´t seen any graphical improvements for now, the games are not even on par with the finest PS3/360 have to offer yet.
 
Another one of these threads huh.

Sorry bud but technologically the Wii U will most definitely be last-gen when the PS4 and Durango hits. Nobody has ever considered the original Wii "next-gen".

meh my vote is the Wii U fell in between this ten and next ten so by the time the PS4/720 hits the lines will blur a bit but no one but fanboys will come out and say last gen.

If you can point to what the Wii U has and PS360 are missing you just can't lump them together anymore.

“What surprises me with Wii U is that we don’t have many technical problems. It’s really running very well, in fact. We’re not obliged to constantly optimize things. Even on the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions [of Origins], we had some fill-rate issues and things like that. So it’s partly us – we improved the engine – but I think the console is quite powerful. Surprisingly powerful. And there’ a lot of memory. You can really have huge textures, and it’s crazy because sometimes the graphic artist – we built our textures in very high-dentition. They could be used in a movie. Then we compress them, but sometimes they forget to do the compression and it still works! [Laughs] So yeah, it’s quite powerful. It’s hard sometimes when you’re one of the first developers because it’s up to you to come up with solutions to certain problems. But the core elements of the console are surprisingly powerful.

“And because we’re developing for Wii U, we don’t have to worry about cross-platform optimization.

“We can push what the console can do; push it to its limits. And of course, we have a new lighting engine. In fact, the game engine for Origins was mostly just classic sprites in HD, but now we can light them and add shadows and all these things. So there is some technical innovation with the engine itself. “

Rayman creator: Wii U “surprisingly powerful”, Legends using new lighting engine

but by the time PS4/720 hits Wii U will be lacking many things so pick and choose where to put it is going to end up being PR Spin or Fanboy talk.

It will fall somewhere "in between" thus the confusion

In Nintendo's eyes they see the Wii U as a huge leap beyond because they only see where the Wii is as a starting base.
 
What i described was not some minor competition. Sega was big player and was churning consoles one after another with each being completely new system with new games (and this is why Sega got in trouble) Your point about correlation to new console release and timeframe simply don't hold itself. By those standards we should be like 10th or more generation now not 8th now. Generation was used to describe whole array of consoles that were alike and played alike games only only big change created new generation and this was mainly thanks to technological aspects of consoles be it bits (8-16) or moving from 2D to 3D.

There was never any problem with next-gen current gen until Wii. Nintendo changed and they drop off from arms race at level of GC. And Wii U is continuation of this.

What systems does SEGA have that is counted in the same generation?

MegaDrive, Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast are considered 4 different generations.
 
meh my vote is the Wii U fell in between this ten and next ten so by the time the PS4/720 hits the lines will blur a bit but no one but fanboys will come out and say last gen.

If you can point to what the Wii U has and PS360 are missing you just can't lump them together anymore.



Rayman creator: Wii U “surprisingly powerful”, Legends using new lighting engine

but by the time PS4/720 hits Wii U will be lacking many things so pick and choose where to put it is going to end up being PR Spin or Fanboy talk.

It will fall somewhere "in between" thus the confusion

In Nintendo's eyes they see the Wii U as a huge leap beyond because they only see where the Wii is as a starting base.

I fear more that it will not be just in between. Even technological demo of WiiU (zelda) back then used to amaze but here we are in 2012 expecting new consoles to deal with 1080p native better AA (finally) and AF and mainly way more joice for developers to create amazing things, (like we saw already Watch dogs)
 
This thread (and every argument of the kind thus far) pretty much comes down to Wii U being "next-gen" in technically, but for all applicable and useful purposes is more akin to "current-gen" consoles (360/PS3), so it's kind of irrelevant what gen it technically is in if it's technologically half a decade behind, which is ultimately what matters.
 
Another one of these threads huh.

Sorry bud but technologically the Wii U will most definitely be last-gen when the PS4 and Durango hits. Nobody has ever considered the original Wii "next-gen". Wii U is frankly one of the lamest graphical "leaps" I've seen. Seems to be to the PS360 what the Wii is to the Gamecube, maybe not even that, with a cpu reported to be weaker than PS360's.
Enough people on Wikipedia/gaming sites agreed it belonged with the current generation and I prefer the simpler explanation that consoles should be catogorised in the same generation as the other consoles it competes with.
 
It certainly doesn't help the case for Wii U being 'next gen' when something like 75% of its launch line-up is ports from current consoles.
 
This thread (and every argument of the kind thus far) pretty much comes down to Wii U being "next-gen" in technically, but for all applicable and useful purposes is more akin to "current-gen" consoles (360/PS3), so it's kind of irrelevant what gen it technically is in if it's technologically half a decade behind, which is ultimately what matters.

I'd say it's much more applicable to consider systems that are competing with each other as the same generation.

Calling Wii U Gen 7 isn't useful at all because the Gen 7 war has finished. There's no more competition to be made. Wii U is for all intensive purposes, competing with PS4 and the Nextbox, people will be making their purchase decisions between these three systems.
 
Your point about correlation to new console release and timeframe simply don't hold itself. By those standards we should be like 10th or more generation now not 8th now.

So if you take for example Wikipedia's list of console generations, what parts do you think they should change in order to be in accordance with release timeframes? Just one example is enough (from major competitors, not some uncompetitive little console).


As i said whole package not only technological spec don't misquote me.

But how do you take the whole package into account? That is even harder than grouping consoles by timeframe which is just one factor. When you start mixing graphical improvements with controller improvements you turn a 1-dimensional problem into a 2-dimensional problem, not to mention all the other factors you could mix in to see the "whole package". Seems like unnecessary complication, what's the point?
 
If only there was a way to look up the definition of words.
Why would we do that when we could change definitions to arbitrary values of strength and complicate statements such as "this generation has seen a lot of..." to "the N6/S4/X3 generation has seen a lot of..."

Gamers are proud to make language a complete impediment to understanding.
 
At the end of the day, I go with Wikipedia and industry definitions of what a generation of product is. Otherwise this conversation always falls apart into subjective, arbitrary fan wars over which game device is awesome enough to win the coveted tag "NEXT GENERATION".

It isn't about what's awesome. What has the hot technology to impress gamers, or arguing over whether a console has enough "new games" in its launch line up to be forever labeled "next gen" or "last gen". At the end of the day, it's about what devices are released within a single generational changeover in the same market.

The Wii is current gen, no matter how much one may be personally offended by its existence. It was the successor to the Gamecube and the 6th generation of consumer game consoles. The fact that it isn't anywhere near as powerful as the PS3 or Xbox 360 is irrelevant to objectivity.

Wii U is 8th generation, as will be Durango and Orbis, regardless of what technology is contained within the box. The fact that Wii U is launching with a number of ports from the 7th generation is a matter of timing - the other consoles are still dominant, therefore, they are a source for ports and potential multiplatform titles until Durango and Orbis are released.
 
Another one of these threads huh.

Sorry bud but technologically the Wii U will most definitely be last-gen when the PS4 and Durango hits. Nobody has ever considered the original Wii "next-gen". Wii U is frankly one of the lamest graphical "leaps" I've seen. Seems to be to the PS360 what the Wii is to the Gamecube, maybe not even that, with a cpu reported to be weaker than PS360's.

I thought the utility of the term "generation" was to compare performances of the main competitors on mindshare, marketshare and game development, so what made the most sense was to group consoles by who was competing with who on those fields.

In that case, grouping generations by time is the way to go. When regular people went to buy a console this generation they picked between wii/360/ps3 because they were the consoles being supported in this timeframe, it's not like the wii and the other two existed in different worlds, they interacted and those interactions (e.g. popularization of motion controls, dragon quest 9/epic mickey/wiifit outselling halo meltdowns, the boom of dance games, the boom of fitness games) are best described if we frame them in the same generation

Personally I prefer this classification because (besides being way more useful for discussion) it's less open to interpretation: it's the time interval where the main part of flagship consoles' life cycles happen. If we go by tech, how do we say what defines a gen. Cpu? Polygons? Bits? Controls? Other services? Ram? What is exactly a ballpark? What if a console is behind in X but ahead in Y? Endless fruitless discussion

edit: sorry, meant to quote this

This thread (and every argument of the kind thus far) pretty much comes down to Wii U being "next-gen" in technically, but for all applicable and useful purposes is more akin to "current-gen" consoles (360/PS3), so it's kind of irrelevant what gen it technically is in if it's technologically half a decade behind, which is ultimately what matters.
 
there are two camps here:

1 camp about time and iteration of release

1 camp about the strength power, tech relative to its competitors at the same time of the gen
 
Enough people on Wikipedia/gaming sites agreed it belonged with the current generation and I prefer the simpler explanation that consoles should be catogorised in the same generation as the other consoles it competes with.

But other gaming sites suck compared to GAF. If we did a poll on GAF, and asked if Wii was current gen... would it pass?

Another one of these threads huh.

Sorry bud but technologically the Wii U will most definitely be last-gen when the PS4 and Durango hits. Nobody has ever considered the original Wii "next-gen". Wii U is frankly one of the lamest graphical "leaps" I've seen. Seems to be to the PS360 what the Wii is to the Gamecube, maybe not even that, with a cpu reported to be weaker than PS360's.

I personally think the generations are defined by third parties and which systems they make their engines for. First parties have to support their own consoles no matter what and first parties can release a system when they feel like it but when the industry moves forward and next gen engines are created... that is the start of generations to me.
 
I'd say it's much more applicable to consider systems that are competing with each other as the same generation.

Calling Wii U Gen 7 isn't useful at all because the Gen 7 war has finished. There's no more competition to be made. Wii U is for all intensive purposes, competing with PS4 and the Nextbox, people will be making their purchase decisions between these three systems.
Well said, Wii prove it's not necessarily the highest specs that have to drive the future of the industry.
 
there are two camps here:

1 camp about time and iteration of release

1 camp about the strength power, tech relative to its competitors at the same time of the gen

So what about the SNES? It had a 8 bit CPU, but was considered 16 bit generation, same with the Neo Geo, which had a 24 bit CPU.

See what happens when you just depend on tech, instead of the generational iteration, which is where consumer electronic have functioned for decades?

The WiiU is not current gen.

Even with the tech argument, what about the WiiU Gamepad? What it the Sony/MS only give you more horsepower and similar controls.

You're discounting the fact that generational leaps are just in terms of raw horsepower.
 
There's definitely a gray area where current generation and next generation consoles are around at the same time and it's definitely a little confusing.

I generally say the PS4/WiiU,720 are next generation until they're all out. And the 3DS was next generation until the Vita came out.

But yeah, there are different, valid ways to think about it. Except for whatever gets people to call PS3 and 360 "next generation" in like 2009. That's stupid.
 
I've tried words many many times in these threads. Now I'm trying what I'm hoping is a helpful image. Any feedback to improve it would be certainly appreciated.

00esi.gif


Sorry its big.
 
I tend to see generations within the company's themselves not the game industry as a whole.

The Wii U is the Wii's successor, so clearly its Nintendo's next generation machine and from the 30th November it will be Nintendo's current generation as it will become they main machine.

What the hardware is capable of should have nothing to do when defining it as next-gen or not
 
"Generations" are marketing bullshit.

No, they're convenient labels to declare a statement about products that co-existed in the same market at the same time for marketshare.

The way many people are using it in this thread though, yes; idiots buying into blast processing style marketing.
 
Wii U gamepad? really you wanna go there?

it's single touch!

If you really wanna go down this road: How capable is the touchscreen inside the PS3/360 controller? Because hey, it's the same generation. And because we're at it, how are the fps pointer controls on 360? The ones on the last gen console Wii are pretty damn good.
 
So what about the SNES? It had a 8 bit CPU, but was considered 16 bit generation, same with the Neo Geo, which had a 24 bit CPU.
SNES did not have a 8bit CPU. You may be thinking of TG-16. Nor did the Neo Geo have a 24bit CPU.

Fun Fact: Sega Genesis and Neo Geo have the same processors (Motorola 68000 16-bit and Zilog Z80 8-bit).
 
Why is there 7 pages worth of people discussing hardware and attaching an arbitrary definition of 'current gen', 'last gen', or 'next gen.' It's ARBITRARY. Unless there's something concrete it's pointless.
 
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