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Nawara_Ven t1_ix3axry wrote

The concept of "generations" only really gained traction in terms of Xbox 360 marketing buzzwords, touting it as "next generation" gaming for like a half-decade. I recall redditors struggling to re-phrase things as "current" generation when "next" became especially absurd. MS also called their UI update "NXE" or "New Xbox Experience" pretty much forever too, which has the same kind of absurd timeliness sensibility to it.

Anyway, it's no secret that Nintendo consoles seem to release "between generations," and I've witness somewhat absurd debates online about which "gen" this or that console should be regarded as. I feel like the easy answer would be simply stating things like "X is the contemporary of both Y and Z," but that doesn't slot nicely into a Wikipedia entry.

In the end, I don't think the concept needs to be stricken from polite conversation, but it does become functionally useless this far in to be talking about a specific numbered generation in most contexts. I think we're fine with just saying "current generation," "last generation," and (sparingly and where appropriate,) "next generation."

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Nawara_Ven t1_ix3qb2p wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#590,195)

It's true that the categorization describes things that are relatively old because one can track the generations backwards fairly easily, but no one was like "oh man, look at those amazing fourth-gen graphics!" when busting out Street Fighter II on the SNES in 1992. Kind of like how we can describe Cleopatra as being born 69 BCE.

If you absolutely need to discuss console generations and you don't like my idea of simply putting the Wii/Wii U/NS each into two generations, and you absolutely need to use numbers in your discussion, you could always just use the year, or a range of years.

Even then it's a highly-contextualized distinction. PS1/N64/Saturn games all kind of had a certain "look" to them, and there wasn't a huge difference between the hardware requirements and visual fidelity of a high-budget vs. a low-budget game in that era. But nowadays you can have God of War: Ragnarok and Skylight Freerange 2: Gachduine on the same machine.

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GodWillShowYouTheWay t1_ix3w9wg wrote

Arent half generations already a thing? Last gen had Ps4 pro, xbox one x for example.

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TheBloatingofIsaac t1_ix3y1zk wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#590,791)

It would be much better if xbox would be getting its exclusives to match the ps5. Ragnarok single handedly destroys any xbox exclusive up to date. Xbox is yet to have a single game that was good enough to be a goty nominee. It is pathetic really

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