Why use Generations to classify video game consoles?
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- Video game system classification needs an overhaul. What about computers and arcade games? What are your thoughts?
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#generations #consoles #classification - Hry
After seeing the reaction to this video, I wanted to add one disclaimer that I didn't include in the video but wish that I had.
My point of attack was the selection of generations as a basis for an organized form of classification of gaming hardware. When it came time to group everything in some sort of organized manner, we took generations and just... made them work. The results evolved into a bit of a monster.
I have no problem with using generations in casual conversation! I say things like "the 16-bit generation" or "Sony's next gen console" all the time. I feel these terms are obvious and easily understood. However, I also feel that we should use something else - different criteria - when it comes to sitting down and defining specific groups for the purpose of organization.
I want the casual use of "generations" to remain. That wasn't my target.
I enjoyed your video and kinda agree with it, but I was really hoping you'd suggest an alternative. :(
Honestly speaking, I don't have issues with the generations classification at all. We all know there is more - the classifications is there just to work as a taxonomy, not to be a historical document with all history grouped on it. So while you have some points on the video, I heavily disagree with it (for example, the 3rd generation lasting until 2003 - even if a console is still sold, the generation ends when another one starts).
@@stayskeptic3923 I agree with you
@@brazilmugenteam I'd like to think that there's some loosely defined notion of console capability that would allow a laggard from one generation to come out after an innovator from the next generation (like maybe the Super A'Can would still be in the fourth generation, despite coming out after the Jaguar); still, taken to an extreme, this would imply that the Uzebox (developed first as an emulator before any physical implementations) would be considered a third-generation console, despite coming out in the seventh generation.
Good because the generations work from the perspective of roughly what time those consoles were POPULAR. I was playing NES and then SMS in primary school, and then SNES and my friends SMD (Genesis) in high school. And SEGA CD doesn't count as the optical media period, because no one played it ;)
I'm pretty sure generations didn't start with Wikipedia, but as a marketing tool, with the term "next gen" in mid 2000s (or perhaps earlier?) to advertise consoles that succeeded PSX and N64. We then applied it retroactively to older consoles.
I totally hear you on the "next gen" subject. That is probably the only way that I use the term generation. What do you think about the Wii U and the Switch being in the same generation?
@@DisplacedGamers That's the issue, isn't it? Originally generations applied because several manufacturers released consoles with similar specs in similar timeframe... but ever since Wii, Nintendo refused to play by these rules. Wii, Wii U and Switch all buck the 'generation' descriptions.
Unless you want to claim that Switch was first console of ninth generation, released several years ahead of XBSX and PS5. Which is I guess the most logical way to frame this? But that holds its own problems.
Another fun fact: XBox and Dreamcast are in the same generation, even though by the time XBox released, Dreamcast was discontinued - so they never actually competed with each other, once again making 'generation' monikers useless.
@@DisplacedGamers agreed that there is a giant split in opinions with placing the Switch in Gen 8, it should be Gen 9, coming out way closer to the PS5 than the PS4
When I first heard “next generation” it was the Genesis and TG16. I was 13 and it was 1989. findyourinnergeek.ca/2018/02/magazine-rack-electronic-gaming-monthly-1-may-1989/#gallery/02ef7f2916c0941f661303053d2d1812/16827
Wikipedia definitely were the ones who came up with the current system of terminology. Some of the editors later came to regret it after it was widely adopted everywhere else.
I thought you were going to propose a new system for classification
I was planning to do so after getting some feedback from this video, but the results have been mixed enough that I have shelved it for the moment.
"Isn't the Sega master system still sold in Brazil?"
Yes, and I think every videogame company should keep supporting their old consoles.
The best 10min passive-agressive rage I've ever listened to
lol. 100% scripted. I actually had a more "boring" script that I thought needed some kick, so I went back and added deadpan humor. A lot of people didn't like it.
I think this criticism is pretty bizarre. Console generations are not intended to somehow deal with every possible form of analysis, or every possible outlier. Clearly. No system of classification could do that. It is simply an easy shorthand to refer to the main consoles that competed against each other at particular stages in the development of the industry. And it’s perfectly useful for that limited purpose.
stark generations is less intuitive and less truthful than a graident and or scatter chart, its simpleton classification to a complex history
But as mentioned here, there are many gaps in the current overly simplified system. Like the NES vs Genesis gap mentioned here, the 3DO and Jaguar didn't really compete against PS1, Saturn and N64 since those 2 consoles were practically dead when Saturn and PS1 launched. Same thing with the Dreamcast, it was dead by the time the PS2 arrived and never really competed against PS2, XBOX and Gamecube, does that mean 3DO and Jaguar should have their own generation defined then since it's all generally based on direct competition? Is the Dreamcast some sort of mid generation console or should it be grouped together with 5th gen since it was released in 1998/1999 and got to compete mostly against the consoles listed under that gen?
I understand why people would rather not complicate things and instead use the current generation lists, but it is in fact extremely inaccurate and maybe even unnecessary.
Also, for all his criticism, Displaced Gamers doesn't actually propose a viable alternative.
@@ropersonline Yes, he does. The viable alternative is to refer to each console individually instead of arbitrarily clumping a bunch of consoles that often have no particular similarity or relation to each other into a "generation."
@@RetrOrigin exactly. And what about Atari 2600, 5200 and 7800? They should belong to three different generations, since they were meant to succede one another. Yet 2600 and 5200 are considered part of the same generation.
I’ve always felt the idea of distinct generations was helpful as a broad, cursory way of finding a frame of reference for events, media, or people, but as you mentioned, I also feel that it often fails to impart the nuances of the heritage of ideas and technology, how generational overlap affects history, and the contemporaneous interaction of dissimilar ideas and technologies.
When displayed in simple visuals like the one you critiqued, generations seem to be merely a sequential procession of similarly powered and functioning hardware. Yet, just as you pointed out with SMB3 and the Genesis, it’s not as cut and dry.
I think a great modern equivalent would be Nintendo’s output post GameCube: the Wii, Wii U, and Switch have all used what many would, even at the time of their release, consider older generation hardware, yet they each have been categorized as fitting alongside the (relatively) cutting edge offerings from Sony and Microsoft.
Additionally, Nintendo’s left field choices of commitment to motion control and hybrid handheld/console technology is quite a distinction of function from the competition’s primary focus on iterative increases of horsepower.
Great video! I appreciate your perspective and the work you put into your channel.
Yes the 4th gen had CDs and yes the 5th gen had cartridges. It’s pretty obvious that CD was a defining aspect of the 5th gen because of it’s widespread use as the standard storage medium.
This one statement shows that you completely and utterly miss the point that this video is trying to make.
I get the point, in terms of things like overlap with console releases but that just comes across as nit picking
gravitone No, I think it shows that they understand why it is a bad point.
You may be overthinking this. Generations are useful to a point, and I agree some half steps like the Jaguar get shoehorned in. Not sure what you're proposing we replace the current system with though. Anyway, I very much concur with your point about bits being an arbitrary measure of console power.
On the subject of your point on the CD-i: Phillips had started marketing the CD-i as a gaming platform in 1994 after they saw that their push for the CD-i as a multimedia platform wasn’t working
I'll be honest, I thought I was going to hate this video but I watched it anyway, and I will say that I don't really disagree with you. As someone who's been in to playing "old" video games since the 90's, the concept of console "generations" has always been a way to casually group consoles together, and was never meant to be some kind of hard-and-fast method of categorization. If someone said "8-bit generation", "16-bit generation", or "32-bit generation", you knew what they were talking about, as we had just sorted existing consoles released between the mid-80s and late 90's into those bins in an offhand way, even though some didn't really fit. For example, we considered the TurboGrafx with its 8-bit CPU to be a part of the 16-bit generation, but something like the Neo-Geo was just sort of "hors categorie". I don't remember when the Wikipediazation of console generations started, but I never cared for it because it simply doesn't make sense to try to apply rigid rules to the classification of gaming platforms, and I feel like this concept of having to have rigid definitions for things like this is something that really came about later. Same goes for game genres. People want to argue about what is an isn't an RPG, what's the difference between a platformer, an action-platformer, and a side-scrolling action game, etc. when none of that really matters. Not everything in the world needs a label, beyond just a casual means of description.
One thing that I wish I had considered when scripting this video was stating that the term "generation" is used in at least two ways
1: By those that want to loosely group consoles together (and I do feel this is appropriate) and using terms such as "next gen"
2: By those that want to sort everything ever made into numbered generations.
My approach was to focus on group #2 above, and I feel that I kinda lost group #1. I definitely want to be able to refer to things loosely most of the time - i.e. "the 16-bit generation." At the same time, I feel like those that sit down and separate things into specific groups (like the numbered generations on wikipedia) could do a lot better - so I made this video for group #2.
Your comment regarding genre is too true.
Yeah I get your point 100%. Digital technology has always been such a leviathan of a thing and trying to nail it down proves illusive. In the end there really is no way to actually do it, is there? The marketing side of things seems to be the standard of defining the generations but in reality, if you truly understand the technology, can you seperate it all? Old and new is probably the best we've got considering accuracy, unless we want to discuss Assembler to C++ toolkits and the designs of transistors in silicon beds and the appearance of co-processors and RISC, and even all this made different appearances at different times. I think the mainstream will use generations but to tech-heads, its just older and newer.
0:18 Larisa: "Dear King Phillip, Come Over For Great Soup"
I'm not saying you or anyone else has to like the CD-I, but it's most certainly a game console. It has multiple platform games, beat em ups, Myst, 7th Guest, light gun games, RPGs, a fighting game, even a Wolfenstein 3D type game that runs super smoothly. It also has a few games like Chaos Control that also appeared on the PlayStation and Saturn.
How is it not a game console?
The edutainment argument doesn't make a lot of sense to me since you can find edutainment software on every other console.
I feel that the library seems much more like an early multimedia PC. It certainly has games, but it also has a lot of other software that gives it much more of an edutainment balance vs games compared to the other consoles. The first CD-ROM I owned for a PC came inside an edutainment package, and the CDI would seem to pair quite well with the variety of software that came in that box. I believe I bought that CD-ROM in early 1993.
While the CDI isn't my favorite... console (ha!), I do own one. I don't hate it. If anything, I find it fascinating because of how different it was. Too many people focus on making fun of it - that was not my intention in this video.
@@DisplacedGamers Yeah, I don't think you were making fun of it or anything and I hope I didn't come off rude. I probably shouldn't have tried to quickly write a comment before a conference call lol.
I was just kind of befuddled by hearing someone say it's not a game console. It has like almost 200 games. I will say that the CD-I experience is GREATLY affected by what controller is used. It didn't quite feel like a traditional console to me until I got the 3 button style gamepad. Those TV remote style "controllers" it came with definitely made it feel like something else.
Agree. Two defining traits of a home console to me are: primary software is games and relies on consumer TV set for display.
It is kind of a weird case. The CD-i was not INTENDED to be a game console. It was envisioned as a multimedia entertainment device, capable of playing VideoCDs and interactive encyclopedias and animated read-along storybooks, all that jazz that was on everybody's tongue for a couple of years.
Then it turned out that the multimedia entertainment device market wasn't really all that large, and pretty much the only CD-i software anyone was buying was games.
Philips rapidly pivoted, increased their investment in interactive entertainment software, and started pushing the CD-i as the game console we remember it as.
Yeah, same goes for most 80s PCs. Although the generations thing is meant to be for products that competed among themselves so many PCs and other technologies were seen as on their own league, like the CPC competed against the Speccy but not against the Atari or NES, while there was some overlap in target demographic it was distinct enough.
Btw Arcade never competed with any of the home computers (inc. consoles and portables) as almost nobody would think: "Oh should I buy a Genesis, a SNES or a Mortal Kombat II cabinet??"
Generations charts are ment for simplicity. Kinda like a timeline of historical events, there are some important gaps but the jist of what you need is there. Which consoles were competing with each other is all it shows. As for computers being absent from the charts it's because computers evolved separately from game consoles, they have there only Generations of sorts. As do handhelds (although you'll sometimes see them thrown in to the main chart). You didn't really propose a better system either so it comes across as a nitpick.
I agree. The idea is to give a rough idea as to how one product compares with another and the time period they were released. If I am a guy from the 22 th century and I have never seen this stuff from the late 20 th century and there are 50 products, I want a quick overview of them all. When was it released, what price was it, who released it, what competed with what, what did a few of the popular games look like, what was the company's next product?
Yes, there is a need for simplicity, but the system is far from perfect. The Mega Drive/ Genesis was originally released to compete against the NES, not the Super Nintendo. And what about the 3DO, Jaguar and so on? Do they belong to the 4th or 5th gen? And what about the fact that Atari 2600, 5200 and 7800 should belong to three different generations, since they were supposed to succede to one another? And so on...
Since Dreamcast never compete against XBox, Switch never competed WiiU .. but jeah, the generation divide makes it much simpler to categorize and keep the look from above. In my oppinion is that the term it is mainly marketing, but for simplicity the term has established widely.
I like this guy
a) he involves people (i'm pretty shure he is or was heavily using Forums) not like 99% from the other gamer channels, who just create content to make $ and dont give a s*** about the people that watch there stuff.
b) he's very smart and know from what he is talking.
A taxonomical list would be pretty crazy cool. I was kinda hoping you were gonna propose one. It's kinda wild that the Genesis, Neo Geo AES, and Atari Jaguar all have the same main CPU, for instance. Or the transition from the main CPU on one system to the Sound CPU on another. e.g. ZX Spectrum (main) to Genesis (sound) or Genesis (main) to Sega Saturn (sound).
Graphics hardware is crazy. SNES could only scale a background layer in one mode (7). Neo-Geo could only SHRINK sprites, and had no background layer, so sprites were used for everything. It's also why there were no super-scaler-like pixelated graphics, and why the sprites in Art of Fighting were so huge. Saturn could scale sprites freely, and freely perspective-transform sprites so quickly that sprites WERE its polygons AND its texture maps, all in one.
I'm pretty sure that the PS2 used a PS1 chip for sound as well, and that allowed it be backwards compatible
And even then numbers tell not even half the story. Look up the video of 101 NES vs SNES games. The exact same game on "two generations" of consoles. Yet the games came out in the same year most of the time. Guess what, of those 101, 50 are best on the NES, 31 a tie, and only 20 were best on the SNES. So we can conclude althout the SNES was powerful on paper, game deisgners must have got headaches programming for the system.
I think the generation system actually works great for nintendo, sony, microsoft's consoles from the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox (dreamcast was there too kinda) through PS4/WiiU/Xbox One. And it sort of makes sense to extend it one generation backwards to the n64, playstation and saturn. For people who owned and played these consoles it makes sense and they can pretty easily tell games apart by generation of console they released on for the most part.
I don't think you can extend the generations back any further though, and with the switch coming out in the middle of a generation it seems that going forward will be less cut and dry as well.
Of course, there's all sorts of exceptions and overlaps and other gaming platforms and stuff but that doesn't change the fact that at least those generations were significant enough to exist as a valid way of classifying home consoles.
IMO by that logic (games can be telled apart clearly) everything PS2/Gamecube/Xbox/Dreamcast onwards would be a single generation and everything earlier would be another. The line would be more clear if we exclude Dreamcast though. Gamecube seems to have way ahead of time graphics, Xbox and PS3 was way under-utilized, and Wii stayed at SD while both Xbox and PS2 can do HD, all these considered the graphics quality transition become rather gradual when you don't just look at one specific brand of consoles.
There’s the pre-Atari gen, the Atari gen, the nes gen, the 16 bit gen, the ps1 vs n64 gen, the ps2 vs Xbox gen, the ps3 vs x360 gen, and then there’s just today’s gen which is less rigid since it’s currently happening.
Gens are defined by paradigm shifts in the industry which largely displace or make irrelevant the previous paradigm/gen. Ps2 was better than ps3 but once ps3 was out the ps2 wasn’t going to sell anymore since there was a paradigm shift in hardware.
Obviously there’s tooooons of details left out when classifying by major players but that’s just how history works. You start with an outline determined by the biggest influencers, then you work your way inward until you get to the context or degree of focus you’re seeking.
Boomers is such a good gen divide because it had a huge influence in demographics. Nothing of that scale of influence has happened since then so it’s still really useful to just reference pre boomers and boomers and post boomers. Now if (when) ww3 occurs, we will say ww3 babies to reference the generation who survives it.
I agree with many that this video seemed like meandering and thinking out loud, but I nonetheless enjoyed the perspective it provided. Thanks!
Thanks, Michael. The intention of the video was to generate discussion rather than provide answers. I appreciate your input.
@@DisplacedGamers perhaps mention that in the vid? I understood it lol, but seeing some reactions maybe others didn't. Really enjoyed the video, thank you.
That ignores the whole post-16-bit pre-64-bit era of Sega's massive failures
just like we all ignored it at the time
@@KairuHakubi also I don't know where the wii fits, which seems like a problem
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Yeah that confuses me a lot too.. being a nintendo guy really makes it more confusing because from my POV the other guys are just.. doing their thing, and nintendo defines the gens.
Same reason we have assign generations to human beings when it clearly isn't an exact science. Classifications systems can be useful tools as long as you don't get too hung up on "perfecting" them. That's impossible and a waste of energy. They're always inherently limited artificial constructs. You'll never iron out all the freaks, exceptions, corner cases, etc. If it works at least okay for most users' purposes most of the time, mission accomplished.
But what if nobody or most people don't use them? Does that matter at all? Is that all the more reason to leave it alone or should it be simplified rather than expanded upon?
@@DisplacedGamers I'm not sure what you mean. I see terms like "X generation system" used all the time in online discussions. Plenty of people have adopted the convention.
I do not think that the current classification of consoles is so bad. It just takes the consoles as the initial parameter.
A video console is just a device whose main objective is to play video games, so if it can do something else, that's fine, but it's not its primary function.
As for the determination of the years, they can overlap since unlike people, the hardware does not change, so the Sega Genesis can be the beginning of the fourth generation, in the same way Nintendo Switch is the change to the 8th generation even though the competition still stays a little longer in the previous generation.
I'd really love to learn about how the handhelds and computers (and arcades!) overlapped with console "generations".
I know that the lines are blurry, if they even really "exist" at all, but I feel that it's hard to really see the complete picture of gaming history -- there's too much focus on console games in the West, imo!
Being a 90s kid I called them 8-bit era, 16-bit era and then 32/64-Bit era and then I found wikipedia in 2006
The only American sin is not recognizing that the Master System has games in quality (not quantid.) at least (if not better) equivalent to the NES...
6th Generation was my favorite, it had 2 of my favorite games, Super Smash Bros. Melee and Sonic Adventure 2.
I've never used generations. It's always been 8-Bit, 16-Bit, 16-Bit add ons, CD Consoles, and 64-Bit consoles. There is some generalisation (and loose terminology) within these definitions, but if someone says to me "8-Bit micro" I know exactly the group they are talking about. Similarly, "16-bit console" is infinitely more identifiable than 4th gen console.
I like your style
OK, now I want to learn more about the hardware relationship between the SG-1000, Mark-III, Master System, MSX and Colecovision.
One possibly consistent method of classification could be raster rate, or raster rate multiplied by color depth. When you classify systems that way, you tend to achieve a grouping similar to the typical generations. So for example, the SNES had a raster rate of around 4 Megapixels/s, the Saturn, PS1, N64, and Neo Geo AES were around 28, 53, 62, and 24 Megapixels/s, respectively. Then the PS2, Gamecube, and Dreamcast were 1176, 648, and 500 Megapixels/s, respectively.
You could also classify them based on the CPU speed, video memory, etc. An interesting comparison that you can do is looking at a normalized visual complexity, by dividing by the bitrate of the output display. There you could logarithmically group based on comparable complexity, though you end up with weird results when considering modern resolutions (the PS2 is 233x more visually complex than the SNES, whereas the PS3 is only 32x - a result of the bitrate of the video output).
I think bringing up non-console things up with the generations is not a strong argument. It was not intended to encompass all video games and the major attempt to expand it by including handhelds is a disaster as you already said.
Though the issue with any attempt at a classification system that covers all video games is just how frightfully large that is. Trying to fit MUDs in with the 2600 or Shockwave adoption with CD-rom adoption in a way that covers everything as something holistic is pretty much looking into the into the of madness. On the other hand you can't treat things separately either as the rise of browser games latter fed back into consoles with various indie titles or how MUDs became MMORPGs that became a part of gaming from browser games, handhelds, consoles, phone, and what have you.
To use biological classification video games are like single celled organism. We try and make species and genus and all that kind of lines but then they go around swapping genes all over the place and having virus pull bits off and putting them on something radically different or just get absorbed and become part of something larger yet having it's on genetic line that continues at the same time. I say we just go like history does and have vague high level date ranges that doesn't even apply to everywhere that people yell at each other about but only exist to give you a vague idea of context and location. Location is this case would be something like handheld or browser. Not perfect at all but at least you can pull out a coherent narrative from what historically was "one damn thing after another"
Love your points, tasrill. I pushed toward combining things as a possibility, and perhaps the new structure could include the opposite - splitting categories apart early-on.
While I don't feel that a full taxonomy approach would be applicable, one could always split certain categories - TV consoles, handhelds, arcade hardware, computers, and mobile games - at what would amount to the "Kingdom" level and go from there.
If computers and arcade machines can't be added to a common release structure, I think handhelds deserve their own system. Whatever vague timeline the console generations have, the handhelds really do feel like they are just along for the ride in the present system.
except back in the day home consoles were in direct competition with home computers, even if you did not live in that time its not hard to find examples of lets say atari selling the XEGS as a direct competition to the NES, or the vic 20 selling in direct competition to the VCS
@@DisplacedGamers One big difference is that computers tend to offer continuous improvement across compatible models released at least every 2 years: C64 to C128, Apple II Plus to IIe to IIGS, PC to XT to AT to PS/2 to whatever else. It's as if every console had Xbox One, S, X, Series.
Another is that home computers deliberately lack the attempt at locking out unauthorized software found on practically every console since the NES and 7800. Even the Game Boy's "Nintendo" logo check is lockout.
For older consoles, the generations roughly match up to how they were marketed. Sure, that might not be the most objective way of defining generations, but objective systems all lead to the contradictions mentioned in the video. The 16 bit consoles replacing 8 bit consoles and in turn getting replaced by 3D consoles is something all of us remember happening. Even if we didn't have all of these consoles, or had some less popular ones, there were friends and there was marketing, and so it was a shared experience. It has always been fuzzy and that's fine. We're not trying to decipher evolution of life from the clades of living organisms. It's fine for it to be imprecise.
For a more recent history, the usage is a bit different. We are using console generations heavily in game development. It's important to us what will be considered "last" "current" and "next" generation on the mainline consoles, and anything adjacent is getting roughly grouped in. This impacts sales and so it dictates how we make games and when the release dates need to happen. Again, there is no systematic, objective definition, but there is practical classification into groups. The caveat to all of this is that I haven't encountered numbered generations very often until very recently. And the cause of the numbers coming back has been the nightmare of the release that PS5 and XBSX/S have seen. Normally, we'd be thinking of that as current generation, but is it? Or is it still the "next" generation? Based on the game sales, we're still definitively in PS4/XB1 generation. For something like two years asking, "Hey, are we targeting current gen for this," has been ambiguous. So to avoid the "last/current/next" confusion, everyone in game dev has very suddenly remembered the old numbering system and "gen 8" and "gen 9" are heavily used terms in game dev community. If I'm saying, "We're targeting gen 9," there is no ambiguity. It's a shorthand for saying the game is optimized for PS5 and XBSX/S with everything else being ports. Is this usage going to survive another year? Probably not. People will go back to just calling it "current" generation and PS4/XB1 the "last" generation. Oh, and I can see some people wondering, yes, mid-gen upgrades have thrown a wrench into this, but because full backwards compatibility was required for so long, it wasn't as big of a distinction as when games went from 7th to 8th gen.
This kinda feels sisyphean. Like the folks who want to do away with the term "metroidvania." Sure, your points are valid, but it's so entrenched at this point, everyone knows what it means, it's an easy shorthand, so I just don't see anyone giving it up.
It has been around a long time, hasn't it? I asked several people I know if they ever use generations when referring to groups of video game consoles, and most of them said they did not. On the other hand, some of them said that they had friends that do use generations in any conversation they have about game consoles.
So usage is out there, but I don't think it is as prevalent as it could be.
Also - While I personally would like an overhaul, I don't think it is wrong to perhaps make adjustments to the generational approach if no classification revolution is possible - something as simple as resorting a bit and giving things a proper name.
Something to think about here that's way more important than video games is how we tend to classify things, particularly people. People newly arrived from Ghana don't always have much in common with 5th-generation descendants of slaves, but people call both groups "Black." People from Mexico are very different than those from Chile, both ethnically and economically, but both might be considered by some as "Latino." Let's take a look at where we make really different choices based on relatively flimsy categories: school or healthcare funding, for example, or how we track crime. The categories only matter insofar as the different actions we apply to them.
I think generations are defined in a general sense by what the market looked like at the time by those who lived it. I don't think anyone has tried to construct very strict definitions of what these generations actually are. In other words, it's just not that important to wring our hands over this. It's a frame of reference and nothing more.
Another thing to consider is that not everyone has the latest hardware. I was playing an Atari 7800 while knowing kids with a Sega Genesis.
Usually the first console able to show a leap in technology and (moslty visual) improvements not possible to be recreated on earlier consoles defines a new generation.
The Neo Geo is a misfit in this categorisation, but just because it is stuffed with arcade technology.
And nope the N64 is not able to outclass the PSone just because it handles a Z-buffer and foggy-AA.
I wouldn’t consider the Neo-Geo a misfit, due to the fact that the MVS arcade units released in 1990, while the AES home console released in 1991, both released pretty close to the Genesis/MD and the SNES.
I'd certainly like to see a PSone try and run GoldenEye if that's the case. :V
Great video. As an objective taxonomic system, "generations" just don't work. I suspect their longevity is a case of uncritically accepting the marketing discourse. I also agree that ignoring computer platforms devalues the whole approach. The whole approach seems quite blinkered; it gets to the point where some gamers refuse to play anything from the "wrong generation." In the computer realm back in the day we tended to talk in bits - 8 bit computers, 16 bit, and so on. But that had its limitations, too - the Amiga 1200 was classed as 32 bit, but the processor sat on a 16 bit memory interface (if I remember rightly). In my view, it's more helpful to do away with all attempts to group platforms together and instead focus on each architecture separately.
I'm Brazilian and never saw a master system being sold anywhere
It's like being in lecture hall all over again
I could not agree more! Thanks a lot for putting all those points in a single video that we can use to discuss the matter with our friends.
Nice video! Hope a follow up on this topic is coming.
The Ps1 was a 1st generation console for Sony but in roughly the same year the N64 was a 3rd gen console for Nintendo
Millenials right now are, in general, between 40 and 25yrs old. As a 40 year old I have nothing in common with a 25 year old despite being in the same generation. So even these commonly held generations are not entirely accurate, but it's human nature to try and group things together.
So the logical follow up question is this: how would you classify consoles? What is your taxonomy?
For 8 vs. 16 vs. 32/64 bit, I've found a strong correlation to the widest data bus on the motherboard. Neo Geo CHR ROM is 32-bit. Nintendo 64 RAM is in fact 72-bit (9 lanes octal data rate).
One exception I've found is the placement of the Sega Master System, which has a 16-bit VRAM bus (like the TG16) but otherwise feels very 8-bit because of the relatively small VRAM and 25% sprite overdraw. It also makes the GBA 16-bit because the only 32-bit memories (BIOS and IWRAM) are inside the SoC.
This made me think quite a bit about this topic and honestly its a fascinating discussion point and a lot of the comments so far seem to reflect on the topic quite earnestly. While I am not sure why we use that system, I remember the first time I heard someone refer to a "console generation" being in either 6th or 7th grade in relation to the release of the ps3 and xbox 360. Someone said "yeah the 7th generation is going to be tight!" and that phrase stuck with me and I asked them about it, and while they got some details wrong (For example the labeled the 2600 as a 1st gen system) it was something that my sheltered self assumed was common knowledge and I just didn't know due to my parent's censorship and stuck with. Years later now really thinking about it as a whole I'm not really satisfied with the system of "generations" either. I always thought it was odd to separate the 2nd and 3rd generations when they're each 8bit and my assumption was always the leap in power of components was the defining line, when really something like intellivision and the master system share so much DNA they're practically cousins. Additionally generations get harder to define by my assumed definition in the modern era where everything is x86/64 based anyway and 32/64bit was blowing us away in the late 90s! Things get even weirder when I heard someone refer to the ps2 as "128bit" and took this as fact for years until some very (un)kind people informed me (in the rudest way possible) that there was simply no such thing as a 128bit CPU in a consumer device. While I am no scientist or historian I do think finding a better taxonomy for consoles should be defined in a simple way, a way so simple that even a middle schooler would be able to understand it, as the generations at this point in time have stuck because its kind of easy to accept them as such. (or perhaps we've just been seeing them for so long, who knows really!?) As for the lack of including PCs in the system I always assumed PC gaming had its own generation definitions based on other arbitrary divisions. However including modern pc gaming with windows and the like, how would you even include that in a generation as in many cases something made in the 90s can still run on a windows machine natively today. There are a lot of questions to answer concerning this topic and it might be interesting and fun to spend a good chunk of time trying to figure out a better system and trying to persuade others to use it until it ends up the new norm for the community.
Two years too late, but I know what bits are... On a cartridge, they're the literal dedicated i/o pins. 8/16 individual pins for processing. In pc terms, it's the bus. It can send x amount of ones and zeroes in tandem to be processed. It's the real bottle neck in computing. It doesn't matter if you have 32gb ram if you're running an 8 bit bus. You can only send it in groups of 8.
When I was a sophomore though... What's a bit? I don't know, but this one has 32 of 'em! And the game disc's are black!
What about mobile devices? Tablets? Laptops? Micro consoles? Edutainment consoles? Plug and plays? Retro game consoles? VR headsets? In-flight entertainment systems? Smart watches?
I know that the generation counting thing exist, but I've never realized that we don't have it mentioned on the german wikipedia page. It exist in the france language though.
I can't remember anyone in german refering to the console generation a lot beside the 8-bit, 16-bit era. As of the PS1 and N64 comparison, bits got lesser mentioned, since it didn't really help to describe it. At least in the circles I was in, we just reffered to the next (upcoming) generation or named the specifig system in a conversation.
Living in europe, things were quite different as of many of the older consoles never released and often years after the us releases. Moreover they were less popular so they hadn't the same amount of people talking about it till the mid-90's.
For me personally, I don't see a point in using numbered generations. I think Xbox360+PS3 and XBoxOne+PS4 makes sense as a generation. But thats about it.
Game genres is a thing that boggles me more. Every Company and gamers alike put nearly random genres on each game. Basically every game is a RPGs these days, just because you gather exp and level up. Many games share multiple genres strongly. I can't decide where to put Brütal Legend. RTS+Action-Adventure+(RPG?). How is the genre Action defined anyway? As opposite to inaction? Like not playing at all or Visual Novels are a the only non-action games. What defines Indie as a genre?
Categorizing is a very hard topic.
Btw I really enjoy your content. I can't understand why your channel is so unknown.
Originally, the idea of generations had to do with technological developments, such as the 16-bit processor, or particular events, the 3rd generation being after the Atari crash and introduction of Nintendo.
But since the so-called 7th generation, it's largely marketing. It's just "a new console that runs like a PC"
This seems more a problem with the general interpretation of the generations than an inherit flaw with said generations- people want to misremember competition as simple and straightforward, when it is anything but. Much like the Genesis, Dreamcast competed mainly with "5th generation" consoles, but is remembered (much like the Genesis, mind you) as the thing that kick-started the era. Dreamcast died before the major players even hit the shelves, and can't be classified as competition to other "6th generation" hardware. Rather than chucking out the whole 'generation' system, I agree that each era labeled should be re-defined to better match the historical accuracy of competition in the first place.
wow. is it really hard to understand that basically it divides the major players on the market and then fits everything else that didn't make the real impact? this stuff was too aggressive, let alone there is one major flaw in this rant. instead of explaining why generations are bad, you singled out multiple parameters and showed why it doesn't make sense to use them alone. noone actually argues that. but it doesn't render current generation concept invalid, cause it doesn't work the way you described. i mean, how sm3 example is even remotely an argument against current classification? what's your point, nes and snes should be in the same group?
I don't mind the casual use of the words generations to differentiate groups of consoles. In retrospect, I wish I had included that acknowledgement. Casual use makes sense.
My point was that when it comes down to thoughtful organization of everything - sorting things into groups, naming those groups, spending more time thinking about the subject than most people... that we could do better than using those generations for classification.
It's a consequence of the Internet and the digital age at large to try to apply "definitive-ness" to absolutely everything.
This video is spot-on. It should just be a shorthand, not definitive. "16-bit generation," key here being that "generation" is used colloquially.
I had never thought of the fourth generation being 20 years long despite knowing how long the NES was in production.
The NES living so long is just one of those things that happen sometimes. The VW Beetle (Bug) was made until 2003 in Mexico but that doesn't mean the Mk1 Golf (Rabbit) which officially replaced did not belong to a newer generation of car.
I'm not opposed to philosophical looks this sort of subject but I really do think you're splitting hairs here. 'Generations' of consoles suit manufacturers down to the ground. It creates competition and promotes improvements in consoles (just look at the cars which came out to compete with the aforementioned Golf). This stuff is the bread and butter of marketing departments and that's much of the reason 'we' use the terminology. Of course it's not consistent, it was never supposed to be. It was business.
It may sound flippant but, if you don't like it then don't use it and move on. If your beef is 'people' comparing consoles erroneously because a system of classification has failed them then you're getting het up about what other people think and that's just about the biggest waste of time since Bubsy 3D.
The formula for remembering which console generations we are right now is N+4, where N is the number of the latest PlayStation console.
Generations do make sense, but for exactly the reasons given. Each generation is going to consist of consoles that competed against each other in the market at relatively the same time much the the same way that they do in professional sports. You may not be able to take Johnny Unitas and plug him into 2010's NFL but we can compare his achievements fairly against other quarterbacks of the 1960s. So while the N64 didn't have an optical drive itself, that's the technology it and its games were competing against at the time. The biggest problem, in my view, lies in the designation of the 2nd generation to include early 80s consoles with late 70s tech at a time that it was rapidly progressing out of its infancy. So the Atari 5200 and Colecovision are placed in the same NES-centric designation as the Fairchild Channel F and the 2600. If it is not its own generation, it's at least 2.5 much as the Wii U might be 7.5. If you're looking for a scientific classification to match exact times that particular events occurred (such as the referenced SMB3 release), we have that type of measurement of time. It's a calendar.
And Arcades certainly do have their own generations that include strictly mechanic devices, and machines that run on the CP1, CP2, or NAOMI architecture.
They've been called generations my entire life. Back when the n64 and ps1 were around and everyone was starting to talk about the GameCube and Ps2 we always said they were Next Gen consoles.
I think that's the first time I recall the successor consoles being called "next gen." Prior to that, they were referred to by "bits". So there were the 8-bit consoles, the 16-bit consoles, and then the 32/64-bit consoles (Jaguar and N64 messed that generation up a bit by jumping straight to 64). With GC/PS2/DC/Xbox, the "bits" weren't changing, so another more general term was needed, hence "next generation."
Then the term "generation" was backported, but when it got to 8-bit consoles, things got messy because it spanned two decades, so some other criteria for breaking up the 8-bit era into multiple generations were created.
split each "generation" by manufacturer individually. then cross reference based on hardware ability and range of sale.
key word being "Range" it has to have some fuzziness to the overlap.
simple
Only 23 k viewes on this video? Geez. You deserve more, especially with this one
The switch throws a real wrench into things by popping up right between the "equivalent" Microsoft and Sony consoles. I assume the generations were only taken seriously because the gamecube, ps2, dreamcast and Xbox all came out pretty close to the same time and the next major consoles did as well.
I think we can best classify consoles by the common denominator of their graphical capabilities:
- No sprites.
- Few sprites (5-8), one background layer.
- Many sprites (32+), one background layer.
- Multiple background layers.
- 3D graphics, one texture per polygon.
- Multiple textures per polygon.
From this point onward it's more complicated. I was going to list features of programmable shaders but after some research I realized that puts the Wii behind the Xbox. Maybe the number of texture combination operations per polygon can divide them neatly into categories, since the 6th generation were all pretty limited in that regard, regardless of whether it was a programmable pipeline or not.
Or maybe just group them by spans of 5 years from the 7th onward.
The Nintendo Switch and Valve Steam Deck made this even more complicated.
10 months later, have you thought more about this? Do you have a draft for a new classification system?
My intent was to generate discussion about it amongst all of us, but not many people provided feedback.
@@DisplacedGamers I am sure you have herd of the MiSTer device, I don't know if you have one. The MiSTer device does something funny with the arcade cores now. Every arcade game as a "shortcut" file or rather it is a text file that describes how to load which ROMs the game, and which arcade core to use for the game. It also includes several points of Metadata, which a script called the arcade organizer makes use of (which got popular because it was included or run as part of the excellent update_all script which is a better way to update the MiSTer), the arcade organizer makes symlinks in useful folders using all these points of Metadata, like year of release, who released it, genre and so on. I just though you might find it interesting, or maybe to play with the Metadata. I at least know that you know a few people who champion the MiSTer if you wanted to look at that way to organize arcade cores.
Classifying people by generations is an equally nebulous and mostly useless system as well. The transition period between GenX (which was more or less created as a marketing concept anyway) and Millennials is one example: those born in the early 1980s tend to have MUCH more in common with people from the 70's compared with those born in the 90's. So much so that there is now a sub-group known as the Oregon Trail Generation.
The main takeaway from console generations is a combination and it's not absolute. We mix in the generation of the console itself (nes > snes > n64 > etc) and compare it to it's relative peers, regardles of the specs from the console (Turbografx vs snes vs genesis). The idea of generations is that we get a general idea of what range of consoles you talk about rather than an arbitrary system.
Even the concept of human Generations is kind of messy. I know someone who has an older niece. That's right she was an aunt before she was born. Her parents' first child gave her parents grandchildren before she was born.
Quickly joining My Life in Gaming as the ultimate game channel for hardcore viewers. Great work.
Dang, I was really hoping you would propose your own classification system.
I like to separate consoles into blast processing and non blast processing
It really would take a lot of thought! I talked it over with a fellow member of the gaming community, and I ultimately decided it would be best to present the point as a gamer questions video so everyone could comment with their thoughts.
I probably will do so after discussion some other individuals I know that are interested.
@@DisplacedGamers I feel like generations are there to contextualize a period of time. I agree the naming sucks. 3rd gen doesn't mean much to me in a vacuum. But I do see value in talking about what was happening during a certain generation.
Perhaps it makes more sense to describe systems in a matrix, with loose generational columns and manufacturing family rows. You would probably need branching lanes within rows, to account for things like handhelds and mid-generation upgrades. Manufacturer generations would need to be allowed some lenience from the actual columns, though.
But now reading this, I'm not sure if what I'm describing solves anything, or brings anything new to the table. It's certainly tricky! Your comparison to taxonomy is apt, but even then, we also describe ecosystems in terms of eons and epochs in addition to their DNA ancestry.
Personally, I treat the current console generation system as just a rough outline of the new hardware capabilities each one introduced, especially in the early days. for example, the term "third generation" means nothing more to me than the introduction of true tile-based graphics; for the fourth, it was support for multiple layers in hardware; the fifth was hardware support for polygon-based graphics.
This approach still breaks down at around that point, and it breaks hard. How do we define what the "sixth generation" introduced? More polygons and higher texture or display resolutions? Better filtering techniques? We all know what the sixth gen consoles are - Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, XBox, Gamecube - but how do we clearly qualify / quantify what made them "sixth generation" consoles? Why don't we consider the Wii as the "sixth generation" as well, since it was basically (from a hardware perspective) an overclocked Gamecube and didn't support HD output like the PS3 and XBox 360? What about the Wii U? It was basically just a Wii with HD support and a new controller; wouldn't it fit better in the seventh gen? Are it and the Switch both "eighth gen" machines? Do add-ons like the Sega 32x or Super FX chip count as separate machines or cause their respective consoles to straddle the line between generations?
As a result, I fully support your "named generation" approach, removing all this ambiguity in favor of self-explanatory and much more useful names based on unambiguous hardware features. Up to around the fourth or fifth generation, this would be just a simple renaming, but for the more recent generations, it would require the current "generations" to be rearranged and merged.
Here is my proposal for this hypothetical scheme (some names could be better):
- Simple Renaming
1. Discrete Logic Generation --> "first generation" - games "baked" into console, no later releases
2. ROM Generation --> "second generation" - programmable, CPU-based systems, multiple releases
3. Tile Generation --> "third generation" - Tile-based graphics
4. Parallax Generation --> "fourth generation" - Hardware support for multiple layers
- Rearrangement and regrouping
5. Raw 3D Generation --> PS1, Saturn, 32X, Jaguar, 3DO - affine-only texture mapping, if any
6. Filtered 3D Generation --> N64, Gamecube, Wii, PS2, XBox - perspective-correct texture mapping
7. HD Generation --> Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XBox One - high-definition video output
I indeed liked your aproach. A discution about this implementation is more than welcome. People around there could and should think about this.
Well put together, quality video. I don't necessarily agree but it's a unique perspective.
I feel..."you know whats bullshit" vibe...
I'm sure that the idea of "generations" of consoles is largely caused by the marketing idea of "next gen", so generations only increment when a marketing team decides they do, and whatever console (specifically) happens to "win" that generation defines what consumers think of as the core of that generation. I agree with your points, though. The generational method of organization is inane. I prefer just using time or technique descriptions ("mid 2000s pc shooters", "early 3d character platformers") because I'm largely interested in game design trends and how they match up with graphics techniques, but I'm also usually talking about games as a developer, not primarily as a consumer.
The Phillips CD-I actually had a really great port of Lemmings, that's about it lol. A game with not advanced graphics, but a very faithful port and one of the most similar to Amiga
counterpoint: we all intuitively understand the generations taxonomy as it exists. its fine, and not that important anyway
Starting from the "3rd generation" with the NES and Master System, I basically go off of "what the next console from the manufacturer is" for what "next gen" is, and if a company enters the race (like Sony in the 5th and xbox in the 6th), I just go off of what they competed against. I know this kind of puts the dreamcast in the same generation as the OG xbox, PS2, and gamecube, and then the switch in the same generation as the PS5 and Series X, but to me that makes sense.
Also, by my definition, the PC is gen 3, maybe even gen 2 or 1, and PC gamers are still living in the 80s/90s. If PC was so great, why hasn't there been a PC-2 instead of endless add-ons to extend the life? Like, say what you will about consoles, they at least make it pretty clear if a game will work on your machine, and don't expect you to check if you have the right expansion to make sure the game is compatible.
As someone who likes video game history, this video gave me anxiety O-o. I never really thought about how we use game "generations" before and how so much is left out of it.
(Long comment warning)
Honestly, I think that a console generation should be year of the first console of the generation, to the year before the next generation
Example: Generation 3 is 1983-1988
A problem with that though is that NES games were still being made until 1993, and it may even be the case that a majority of the most critically acclaimed, well loved, and highest selling NES titles were released between 1988 and 1993 (I haven't verified that, but if its not true it has to be at least close). Thus, perhaps a better compromise would be to define a generation from the year the first console is released, to the year the last published game is released for that generation (which is much more conservative than defining by the last year the console was in production, which imo is just absurd). Going this route, there will still be minor overlap, but its much more limited, and in line with reality (there has to be some overlap if you think about it - it's not as if society collectively en masse moves on to the next gen in one fell swoop).
@@mchevre good point
Rebel without a cause. We should only rethink definitions if it will add actual productive value.
How does "stop presenting a false history" sound?
1. Wikipedia's generations compress all of pre-crash history into two generations(roughly speaking, dedicated game units and programmable game units).
They ignore that there is a move from B&W-only to color, and fight very hard to consolidate some very different systems into a single category(and in one case, classify a system and it's successor platform into the same generation). This is, I believe, an intentional move to downplay the influence of pre-Nintendo platforms rather than any decision based on logic and reasoning. (A pro-Nintendo bias is strongly present in most Wikipedia video game articles.) There's no rational argument for grouping the Fairchild Channel F, Atari Video Computer System(later renamed to the 2600), the Mattel Intellivision, the Atari 5200, and the Coleco ColecoVision as a single generation.
2. Wikipedia's generation list presents an illusion of lockstep hardware releases all the way back to the release of the Magnavox Odyssey and Atari Pong box. While I do not believe this was intentional, it is an illusion that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. That marketing artifact didn't actually begin until the Playstation and Saturn releases aligned mostly through coincidence, and was not really a concrete rule until the PS3 and XBox 360.
It has already been noted that Nintendo's releases have never aligned with everyone else's, but... the Dreamcast didn't align with the Playstation 2(and many argued for a long time that it was part of the PS1 generation because of it), and neither did the Microsoft XBox. In the pre-crash era, no one aligned. Systems simply came out when they were ready, each one was the best that was feasible at the time, and the state of the art advanced at a pace of weeks and months rather than years.
There's a smooth ramp of increasing performance from 72's release of the Odyssey through to the end of the first era in 1983. The Wikipedia list of generations discards this gradual slope of evolution and replaces it with a stairstepped history of revolution that simply is not reflective of reality.
@@CptJistuce wow long comment
You’re pickin mad nits my dude. It goes by competition.
If it was up to me the criteria would be...
1) had to have at least 5% of market share by the end of the console’s life cycle, this would eliminate irrelevant consoles that fucking NOBODY had like atari 7800, Turbogrx-16, cdi, neo-geo, jaguar, etc. while still keeping consoles that may not have sold well but sold enough to make an impact on the cultural zeitgeist, such as master system, saturn, & Dreamcast.
2) no handhelds included in console gens, handhelds should have seperate gens
3) no arcade games, as tgey are their own thing like PC games are
4) goes by competition, it makes sense for N64 and PS1 to be in the same gen while it doesn’t make sense to for PS3 and Xbox One to be grouped together.
Gen 3 - NES, Sega Master System
Gen 4 - SNES, Genesis
Gen 5 - N64, PS1, Saturn
Gen 6 - Gamecube, PS2, Dreamcast, Xbox
Gen 7 - Wii, PS3, 360
Gen 8 - Switch, Wii U, PS4, Xbone
Gen 9 - unnamed Nintendo console, PS5, Series X
It’s not complicated at all.
Nah, console generations are a pretty solid way to group consoles, especially since the intent of consoles in the post Genesis/SNES console wars world is to directly compete with the other major players. The Playstation and N64 all came out shortly after the Saturn to be direct competition and all released with similar design philosophies. Just the the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox/Dreamcast Gen 6, and just like the upcoming Gen 9 with the Xbox Series X/S and Playstation 5 releasing within 2 days of each other with essentially the same features.
Handhelds get lumped in there because, outside of VERY few game phenomena (e.g. Tetris and Pokémon on Gameboy), handhelds aren't that impactful on the gaming world as a whole (like, what did the Game Gear give us outside of battery murder memes?), and so they get treated as an afterthought. Computers (pre-Windows) have always kind of been their own thing, and in the post-Windows world, because you're not necessarily bound to any specific piece of hardware, just exist on an infinite spectrum of system specs and requirements (I bet my dad's new Acer box he uses to look at Google Earth, send emails, and watch CZcams can't run games as well as my 2012 gaming PC).
So yeah, consoles tend to get released in clusters with similar specs that get superseded by another round of consoles (most of the time by the same manufacturers) that also get released in a short window of time. It's easier to call it "The Seventh Generation (of Game Consoles)" rather than the "PS3/Xbox 360/Wii Era."
I don't buy the "handhelds are not important" argument. Look at the DS. For all intents and purposes, it kicked off the casual revolution and era of alternate input methods which the Wii directly built on, and which in turn standardized things such as motion control. It was also the birthplace of the 2D revival - despite the hardware being capable of 3D games, 2D was still popular, so eventually they tried it on consoles again. New Super Mario Bros. was the flagship of this change in attitude.
It is also the second best selling game system of all time, just barely behind the PS2.
It makes sense but what's your replacement classification system? I would definitely enjoy seeing that and have it make much more sense than the 'generation' scheme we use now.
Game History should be based on the software, not the hardware.
You made reference to "competing hardware" being a potential distinction, but didn't really go into it. I think this is the core of what defines a generation - what other hardware a system competed with the most. While Master System is still produced in Brazil, I don't think anyone suggest that it's competing with the PS4.
To your point about Sega CD being CD based but in the 5th gen, personally, I think Sega CD / 32X should never be listed as it's own console. You can't use either as a standalone system, so they should be considered add-ons. But you're right that CD drive isn't a great sorting trait.
I don't understand your confusion about the Famicom. If it's meant to be hooked to a TV, it's a game console. To a greater effect, pre-HDMI consoles follow TV video / broadcast standards that aren't conducive to monitors without adapters.
"If it's meant to be hooked to a TV, it's a game console."
British micro-computers and early Japanese home computers such as the MSX series of computers have composite and scart outputs and not VGA outputs, intended to be hooked up to TV's, does that make them consoles and not computers?
@@RandomAccessDreams if the primary function is to play video games, then yes I would consider it a video game console. Otherwise, a PC.
I guess in the past you could distinguish by if running video games was the *only* purpose, then it'd be a video game console, but that gets messy later on with streaming and web browsers.
There will never be a perfect classification system, but I think what we have now is apt. Living creatures aren't classified perfectly, there will always be a platypus in the mix.
I feel that at 3:00 a point gets missed in how console generations are defined. If we look at the systems
This has nothing to do with date of end of production and everything to do with when it was released.
Systems are defined by their hardware. Its just how it is.
from my experiance this is what I see as how it is set out.
Gen 1 is TV games mostly with a colored film you probably put on your screen for a play field.
Gen 2 is distinct by the fact that it moves away from paddles and toward joysticks and also have "real" games with interactive graphics
Gen 3 is where ever important joy pad was introduced by Nintendo on the Famicom/NES
Gen 4 is the switch to 16bit consoles and some moderate dabbling in CD technology but, mostly 16bit
Gen 5 is where CD technology started to really take off and become affordable. Nintendo is the clear outlier betting on the success of the ill-fated Nintendo 64DD
Gen 6... Gen 6 is the generation that people started to talk about "generations" it became a marketing gimmick.
Gen 7, 8 and 9. its just a marketing ploy to give a general understanding of when in time a console was released by the console companies to show off.
I've always hated the generational system and it's never really worked for me.
I have no idea what is being talked about when someone asks about a generation and I always have to look up a chart to make sure I'm in the right place.
I really feel like if we're going to put things into categories it should be by game types, which doesn't really fit into a generational mold.
But the I think the generations, if anything, should be based on when the hardware was developed, what it was developed for (portable or not, computer or console), not really when it was sold.
I subscribed because of this video 👍
100% agree with this video. Years ago, I pointed out this exact same argument on Wikipedia. A few other users agreed with me and wanted to get rid of these contradictory, confusing, and pointless classifications, but were steamrolled by some aggressive editors who said- and I paraphrase- "It would take too much effort to undo all the made up generation groupings here on the site, so we're stuck with them."
Well, tbf if none of you are gonna do that work then it comes off as pointless bickering.
Oh man... I’m working on a video covering this very topic now. It’s in the editing process. Should be interesting to watch and see how different the approach is.
Awesome! Drop another separate comment on this video to let me know when you are done.
@@DisplacedGamers smh Displaced Gamers hasn't subscribed and clicked the bell for Jenovi
Ahh man. I feel shame.
I associate the machines that were around at a certain time rather than use the confusing generation number method.. For example, I was one of the few people at my school who had an import, Japanese Mega Drive. Soon after, I saw the Neo Geo hardware in a magazine. I never saw the home console anywhere but could play the MVS games in the arcades. I never saw a PC Engine either. I include the Super Famicom in this period. The change, for me, was the Saturn and PlayStation. Finally, we had machines which were able to get extremely close to the level of quality of arcade games. It was a fantasy for so long for arcade-quality games to be available at home and to be affordable.
The truth is I was disappointed when I had them as I hadn't considered that a major part of the arcade's impact was those special, RGB monitors they use. Massive, rich in colour and much better than Sony Trinitron, 14'' TV's intended for the home. I only realised this when I bought a high quality Japanese Candy cab with a 29'' screen and could see the massive difference in graphical quality of the games running on it. I still have my 30 year old Sony TV so I can compare them. Colours are much more rich on the cabinet's screen. It's about 400% better looking than the Sony TV. Once you see it, it's difficult to be satisfied with TV's intended for the home. I actually prefer it to the modern, soulless 4K tech.
It works out pretty nicely if you're someone like me who's basically backed every Nintendo home console since the NES and always considered the handhelds to be a separate, less important product line. Generations also work really well for people who are the same way, but prefer Sony, since they even consecutively number their Playstations. It's harder when looking at Sega since they kept launching and killing radically different consoles and add-ons to try and follow up the success of the Genesis until their home console division died trying.
The main problem with the generations originating with Wikipedia is that Wikipedia is supposed to document the system people already use, not create a new system for everybody to use.
4:14 Roadblasters is AWESOME!
I thought I was the only one that had a problem with this, glad to know it’s not just me
I do think that that console generations are helpful from a history standpoint.
I also agree that software and hardware should be involved in grouping generations.
It's ridiculous that handhelds don't have their own generations.
It's a good idea to have named generations. That makes it easier to discuss. That said, having correctly organized generations will help discourse. For instance, Atari 5200 and ColecoVision are a part of their own generation that gets skipped by the Wikipedia classification system. Those console are written off by people I know and met because they're not interested in 2600-style games, but in reality, as you know, they're not even the same generation; the Wikipedia classification doesn't reflect reality. Now, I've shown people that ColecoVision is a lot more advanced than a 2600, and they enjoy it.
What we need is a new system of classification. Well, not a totally new one, but one that massages the current one to better reflect how consoles are actually related to one and another.
I put forward a proposal to do this in a video on my channel today. It's long. But basically the gist is that Odyssey and other consoles with discrete circuitry come before the start of the "first generation," which is really kicked off with Pong. I add a "third wave" generation between the 2nd and 3rd that consists of ColecoVision, 2600, and some other Japanese consoles. I break up the 4th generation into three groups, one for the 2D consoles like CD32, one for the rudimentary 3D consoles (Jag and 32X), and one for the consoles that have come to define the era.
Oh, and @Jenovi put up a video today about where console generations come from. Since you asked. ;)
It's a great channel.
Anyways, I really enjoy this and just posted it to my subreddit (r/retrogaming). Looking forward to seeing more of your videos. :)
To be fair, people were using a similar system before the modern system of numbered generations. As you mentioned, Gen 3 & 4 were simply referred to as the 8-bit & 16-bit Eras. The PS1/Saturn/N64 era was referred to as the 32-/64-bit era. After that generation, referring to systems by bit numbers became kind of pointless as the Dreamcast, GameCube, and Xbox were all 32-bit systems (how many bits the PS2's CPU is is kinda vague). The numbered generations system predates Wikipedia, and was found in a handful of sources. Those sources disagreed about the classification of the pre-Crash of '83 consoles (the 2600, et al.), sometimes splitting them into two separate generations, and one of them didn't even count the Pong machines era as the first generation (and to further complicate things, Coleco referred to the ColecoVision as a "third-wave" system). But they all agreed on what systems belonged to what generations from the NES onward, as those were fairly straightforward.
After the "Wikipedia Consensus" was finalized, everybody just kind of agreed that all the pre-Crash of '83 cartridge-based systems, from the Channel F and 2600 on up through the ColecoVision and 5200, were all part of the same generation (I assume it's because the 2600 didn't start to really hit the mainstream until the Intellivision was released and was still the dominant system all the way through to 1983 when the console market became to collapse). There wasn't any more confusion until the Switch launched right in the middle of an ongoing generation, leading to debates as to whether it was a Gen 8 or Gen 9 system (FWIW, the NPD Group, the primary sales tracker in the U.S., considers it a Gen 8 system, and Nintendo has tacitly signed off on that).
Counting generations makes sense to me starting with PS3-versus-Xbox 360 (with Nintendo doing its own thing), but it's too messy before that point.
In 1999, I thought the Dreamcast was of the same generation as PS1 and N64 because the Saturn had already failed at that point, so I assumed the Saturn must have been the previous generation. Sure, I knew that the Dreamcast was the most powerful of the trio, but I thought that was simply a matter of one console focusing more on graphics than the others and having a few more years of technological advancement behind it.
Aw I thought you were going to actually design your own classification system.
I had some ideas. I wanted to get feedback from viewers, but the responses to the video kinda went in a different direction than I had hoped. I may revisit it someday.
@@DisplacedGamers loved the video and the concept of it. But it seems like it needed a framework. like “let’s brainstorm a new system and I’ll draw some conclusions in the next video”.
It also needed the clarification that you mentioned in the pinned comment about the casual usage of generation, people got angry about that.
I’d love to see your conclusions and hypothetical system. Please don’t abandon the topic!
I really really really love ❤ the Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Switch Lite, Spider-Man and Batman Plug N Play TV Games, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5, the original Xbox, and many many many more different types of video game platforms.
I genuinely expect it to stay as it is.
console generations are endlessly confusing. i just refer to half of a decade at a time (ie. latter half of 90s) because that better encapsulates concepts of culture, design, and hardware when speaking to people. it also paints a much bigger picture than just being the games, which is important context.
I don't expect more
That sure makes things easier.
I agree that handhelds should have their own classifications. But it isn't true that the generations aren't related to the iterations of hardware technology. And we do use terms like 8-bit generation and 16-bit generation. Doesn't mean we don't want a numbered list of generations dating back to Pong, at least.
If it was possible to click "like" several times, I would for this video! Really interesting!
Console generations are labels and like any, has its limitations. They are result of marketing and product life cycles. You can also think of generation in terms software or more specifically, genre instead of the usual or standard hardware classification. This is actually how I prefer to look at games. "Generations have always and will always be defined by time." And with that time is movement of what is cool, in, marketable or have fallen out of fashion/favor.