Do you consider Wii a next gen console?

Couldn't have said it better myself. Ports that look worse than PS2 games and GC remakes with a new control scheme don't cut it.

 

Who cares if it's "officially" next-gen or not as long as it's fun. And that it is for sure

 

I dont count Wii as a next gen console. But I do consider it as something different.

Something like a sideproduct to compliment and complete my gaming experience in terms of what is available

 

You cant blame Wii for lazy devs doing bad ports to make a quick buck.

 

We can see terrible wii games due to that reason this games was designed for the ps3/xb2/pc first and was ported with a small amount of money to the wii.
In the future,when the big money will pushed into the wii,and the small maoney to the other platform we will see good wii games and paintfully bad ps3/xb2/pc ports.
Possibly we will say after a few years, "the first bx2/ps3 games was better than the current one".
Anybody remember for the rebell strike?This was the case in the gc.The first games on the platform was better than the later ones.Right now the 20 million is spended on the ps3,and they spend only a few million onto the wii.Later,when the 20 million will psended onto the wii,and a few million onto the ps3 the ps3/xb2 owners will be humilitated,and we will say sorry for them.

 

Might be just as well.
Since you seem big on logic, but didn't seem to appreciate my position, I'll spell it out in clearer form. A reasonably common trick in logic is to reverse positions and see where you end up - for instance the classical proof of the existance of an infinity of primes is to assume that there is a finite number, and show that this leads to contradiction. What I stated was that while the success of the Wii can't prove that my list was accurate, it does make holding the opposite opinion very difficult, i.e. the position that
- CPU or GPU complexity is a strong sales driver.
- online gaming is a strong sales driver.
- hardware support for complex shader programming is a strong sales driver.
- HD output is a strong sales driver.
becomes an extremely difficult position to support, particularly when the Wii is not playable in testing kiosks (not done due to wireless controls), can't be picked up by impulse due to lack of ready availability, and so on, and still manage to outsell the alternatives that score on all the above points.

And no, you never presented any particularly good arguments. You focussed on strawman logic rather than making a reasonable assessment of the situation.

Shifty Geezer and others are perfectly justified in questioning the sustainability of the Wii success on novelty-is-short grounds, on the other hand all industry accounts point to general game availability improving greatly in the future, availability of the console will obviously improve, Nintendo is well positioned in terms of being able to reduce prices if need be et cetera. Only the future can authoratively answer the question of market shares three years out. And it doesn't change the present.

This whole thread is based on questioning if the Wii is a "next-gen" console. Is it at all comparable with the other two contestants? The perpetual resurfacing of these questions, the unwillingness to acknowledge that the Wii apparently is the most attractive proposition to the majority of the stationary console buyers today, is not too impressive and leads nowhere. Far more interesting to figure out what can be learned from the success of the Wii, and extrapolate/speculate on future developments from there.

I don't own any of the consoles, btw. Been thinking to buy the PS3 to tinker with programming the CPU, but realize that I just don't have the time. There is no bias of ownership.

 

Well non of the games look as good as the best on xbox or even ps2.

Perhaps it was released in the same time frame as 360 and ps3, but the hardware is as last gen as it could be.

And as far as the controller goes, i have yet to a single game make use of it in any meaningful way, beyond simple eyetoy like gimmicks..

So no i dont consider it next gen..

 

I voted "No", but could have voted "Yes" just as well. I think the Wii spells the end of conventional console generations. You can only talk about next-gen if there is a clear shift in generations. As we've had comparable consoles being launched in a similar time-frame to a similar market in the past, we could talk about certain console generations. However, that requires a certain generalisation. And as generalisations go, they rarely do full justice to reality and ignores stuff, like, say, the SNES being launched in Europe 3 years later than in other regions, for example.

You could just as well talk about next-generation consoles in the context of the manufacturor. For Nintendo, Wii is its next-generation model. As I understand it, DS wasn't meant to be a next-generation GameBoy, but I now consider it highly unlikely that we will see a more conventional successor to the GameBoy, and so it has become the official next-generation handheld from Nintendo.

The only thing that helps making generation distinctions possible in the first place on consoles is the fact that consoles are meant to provide a fixed hardware platform for a certain period of time. This fact will probably help keeping the whole next-generation discussion alive for a little while yet. This combines with the advantage that exists for certain developers in releasing games that share assets across platforms, something which will always exist (but with new tools will also become easier to do and eventually become much less relevant than it is today, which is already less relevant than it was in the past).

The market is becoming more than large enough for competitors on this market to not have to target each other's generation directly with competing products, and the Wii is one first clear example of this.

In other words, my real answer would have to be "neither" or "both". It's Nintendo's next-generation console, but it doesn't belong to the multi-platform next-generation of PS3 or 360, but instead creates a new generation (let's call it the "Touch" Generation ... ha ha).

 

It´s the next gen console from Nintendo but i don´t expect next gen games from it.

Wii is the one night stand of gaming, quick satisfaction and funny controls. This time i´m waiting until it drops in price before i buy it, there just isn´t any games for i want to own, though the controller is a nice gimmick (with the current games) i think the Wii still needs games with depth.

 

As opposed to what great looking Wii games? In general they are not pushing the hardware graphically or gameplay wise in my opinion.

 

Nope! The Wii is not a real next gen system. It's not much more powerful than the gamecube and the motion controls could've been easily implemented on the Gamecube (proof being that Gamecubes were early Wii dev machines).

The Wii can never match what the PS3 and 360 can do in terms of graphics capabilities. Microsoft and Sony (Sony already has) can add motion controls to their consoles easily. So No, the Wii is NOT next gen. And yes I do own a Wii and love it.

 

I don't think Nintendo had a plan when they decided to go overclocked GameCube. This is the main reason I don't think the Wii is "next-gen". The way I see it. Nintendo couldn't get backward competability working on a faster CPU and decided to stay with GameCube+. I think the success of the Wii is more to do with its packaging than performance.

Now that's not to say that I think the Wii is a "fab". The cheaper the consumer electronic, the more important the packaging is. For example, iPod was never a better machine than its competitors (until maybe the Nano) but the packaging and overall software won over the market.

Another item I use to define "next-gen" is how forward looking the machine is. I don't think Nintendo is very forward looking at all judging from 1) How many unit they planned to make initially 2) genre of the announced Wii games (which are all sequels of the GameCube games)

The Brain Training phenomenon just doesn't happen that often. Maybe once in a decade. But Nintendo is welcomed to prove me wrong.

 

I really wonderi if some in here have had reasonable time with Wii. Since E3 I was skeptical of the system after launch and seeing my own reaction as well friends it be stupid to say this system is a novelty idea. Wii sports is proof this system can reach out to a older casual audience and reel them in. Godfather, blur, and zelda are all clear examples of how it can make tranditional gaming better. Also why is it some are using power of hardware as the only factor of what makes a system next gen, while ignoring controller interface?

 

I don't recall making any "strawman logic". I was certainly using "reductio ad absurdum", similar to your thought experiment that highlighted things that Wii didn't need to have (affirming the consequent), my thought experiment demonstrated the fallacy of that reasoning.

But fine, let's argue the point:

You suggest that the Wii sales strongly indicate you don't need HD graphics and other high end features to drive sales. I say, the Xbox 360 has sold > 10 million units and that's nothing to sneeze at. So, apparently, HD graphics and other high end features apparently can drive sales. It just so happens that you don't have to have those features in order to also be successful.

 

Interesting topic, it reminded me about something I saw on a French online retailer website, Alapage (a company owned by France Télécom for the financial blokes among us).

This topic about Wii being worthy of the "next-gen" moniker or not seems to be more than a forum topic of discussion only. The press discussed the topic, barely or badly, as usual with the gaming press; but now it seems that even a retailer is anecdotally confused about the, albeit nothing but symbolic, next-gen-ness nature of the Nintendo Wii.



It's just a an amusing anecdote, by the way.

Now, with that humorous part put aside, what do I have to say on the subject of the Wii being a "next-gen console" or not?

Simple, it boils down to what definition of a next-gen console do we agree with?

If one believes that a new product released on the public market and which succeed to an older product defines as being a next-generation product, or that the manufacturer of the product is the only one who can declare the nature of their product then yes, the Wii can be called next-generation.
Now, on the other hand, if someone considers that it takes a technological leap, not necessarily in terms of performances, since it can be architectural first and foremost, between two product to be considered a next generation product and not just a "refresh", then no, the Wii can't be called next-gen, seeing that the its architectural differences and the performance leap over the Gamecube are not not large, nor order of magnitude higher than the previous product.

So, the answer is just that, it's up to each and everyone to decide what they want to consider the Wii. A sizable chunk of the most technological versed folks, not uncommon in the B3D fauna, can be heavily tempted to go with the "if its technology, silicon wise, is not a lot more advanced compared to the product it replaces, then it's a refresh, not a next gen." Just as the gaming versed crowd could go with the "it plays new games, has a different control scheme, thus it's new" motto. But, the thing is, both are right when described in their own terms.


The sociology fans around there might try to argue, rightfully so, that everything is right when described in their own term. While true in nature, when it comes technology, unlike many other topics, strong consensus do exist. And whereas it would be considered completely preposterous to argue that in technological term the Xbox 360 and the PS3 are just refreshes of the PS2 and Xbox architecture, with some more RAM added to them, it would be considered as an valid topic, albeit simplistic in itself (and you probably know how much I do not appreciate simplifications when it comes to technology.)

With that said, I agree with the folks who say that it takes more than more performances to be considered "next-gen." Architectural changes are as much important, if not more. Well, that doesn't help the Wii case, though.
If we take a look to our other favourite subject of discussion here at B3D, the graphical chips and cards, we'll find interesting case studies. For instance, is the very low end part (64bit, cheap and slow RAM, slow clocks, small number of working ALU arrays, low number of ROPs etc...) of a new architecture can be considered "next-gen" when compared to the "last-gen" high end (256bit, fast RAM, lots of it, high speed, lots of working shader cores, high filtrate, etc...)?
There again, a debate could take place, although, personally, even in the unfair case of a comparison between a very low end part and a high end one, I would consider the new architecture as worthy of the term next-gen, even though the real world performances are ridiculous once put side to side with the last-gen high end part. Simply, because the new part represent a (relative, and more often than not, incremental) paradigm shit technologically speaking. Now, of course, it's easier to call something next-gen when it's both architecturally new and perfoms better than the last parts on the market, but it was a point I wanted to address, nevertheless, performances at not all, it's true. Just in Wii case, it doesn't have any to pledge in its favor, when its next-gen nature is argued on a technological level.

The tl;dr sum up
It's up to anyone to decide wether the Wii is next-gen or not. Someone who could follow the cannonical behavior of the technologists, could surely deny the Wii's right to be called "next-gen" and would refer to it as a "new product" or a "refresh." While someone, technologicaly savvy or not, who is more open to the gaming side of it all could be more eager to take things to face value, it's a new console that succeed to another one, it plays new games and it has a new control scheme, and declare that, of course, it's "next-gen," why not?

P.S.: you'll note that I succeed in writting a long post about the possible answer to a question without even responding to it. Awesome, isn't it?

 

Yes. And no.

To wit: the distinction is meaningless by itself, as it is subjective towards what an individual personally believes "generations" to be. Some can't distinguish iPod generations and mainly rely on product name changes. Some don't count "enhancements" or rebrandings, and look for major differentiations. Some have one very personal trait they feel like stressing, and think true "next-generation" should apply to only THAT, thereby making the term even more like arbitrary commentary rather than anything remotely concrete.

Personally, the surface answer is the best. "Yes, this is Nintendo's next-generation console." If you want anything anything more specific or informative, you're going to have to tell me what you're looking for.

 

But you can blame developers for lazy nintendo doing low-end consoles to make a quick buck ofcourse.

The classical chicken or the egg dilemma.

At this moment, I agree with Joshua Luna but consoles can only look brighter in the future, whether they are 'next-gen' or not.

 

Oh please. Yeah we all know nintendo are a bunch of baddies trying to rip the consumers off will MS and Sony are giving away their hard and software for free.

Seriously its a poor attampt at trying to flame nintendo for building something you dont like and it has nothing to do with the point of devs trying to make a quick buck.

 

Nope and .. nope.
I'm just saying that you can't blame developers for not being able to perform miracles. Part of it can be blamed on the developers but a part can also be blamed on the hardware including the controller.

 

In what way can you blame hardware 3/4 times faster than ps2 for generating mid range ps2 gfx because devs use ported ps2 engines?