Will the 8th generation of consoles be considered the most interesting someday?

[burningdoom]

33 million units at $149 a piece (and that's generous, it stayed at $199 for quite a while) equals $4,917,000,000.

Yeah, not a flop in any sense of the word. Couldn't beat PlayStation, but that doesn't make it a flop.

[sworddude]

Losing their huge market share ending with a mere fraction of the past. Pretty much all 3rd party support leaving Nintendo and all that in just 1 single generation.

If you call that a succes be my guest.

n64 and gamecube era where a rocky road for nintendo, mainly the first party titles that carried them. all I'm saying.

[oldgamerz]

Sega Saturn didn't do so hot in the 5th generation. Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 1 dominated in the 5th generation, otherwise I could actually find more than 2 Sega Saturn games in my local area. nope I can't find a single game for the Sega Saturn other then what I used to have, Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter 2 and one console, in the middle of a rural area close to where I live today.

Atari was dead and Sega was dying

[dhaabi]

Pretty much all 3rd party support leaving Nintendo and all that in just 1 single generation.

Super Nintendo: 721 games
Nintendo 64: 296 games
PlayStation: 3078 games

When you actually look at raw numbers, the flop even looks worse. Sure, Sony was much more accepting of third-party support (and rightly so), but the fact that there is such little third-party support for Nintendo during this time is embarrassing.

[sworddude]

Pretty much all 3rd party support leaving Nintendo and all that in just 1 single generation.

Super Nintendo: 721 games
Nintendo 64: 296 games
PlayStation: 3078 games

When you actually look at raw numbers, the flop even looks worse. Sure, Sony was much more accepting of third-party support (and rightly so), but the fact that there is such little third-party support for Nintendo during this time is embarrassing.

Japan had allot more support for the super famicom, we where missing tons of games in the west mainly rpg's but also a ton of beat em ups platfomers all that funn stuff

1448 games in Japan compared to usa 721.

But yes N64 era was not a great era for nintendo, they lost a hell lot more than just a very large chunk of their past almost monopoly position.

Nintendo lost their biggest quality 3rd party names during this era, all the others that left where just the cherry on top.

[pzeke]

I don't think newer generations are ever going to match the mystique of the older ones no matter what happens. The lost and obscure stuff from the older generations is because of limited knowledge, information and documentation. The newer stuff will for sure lose a lot, but that is because of specific (and really crappy) practices where everything is run server side so it's hard or downright impossible to archive correctly. Something like Stadium Events on the NES, with an interesting history for it's rarity that wasn't known widely until way after is probably going to remain more interesting than a Limited Run Games style release where the express purpose is to make a collectable, or Call of Duty 164354 that is online only and basically gone in a year when the micro-transactions only make $1 billion instead of $2 billion. I really like Limited Run for it's pressing of physical media, but it just doesn't have the same effect of knowing you had to ask behind a counter for a pornographic NES game that nobody knew existed even then. I think LRG games in the long run will plateau whereas old systems (specifically in the pre-internet age) will continue to increase in demand.

All the indie stuff of this day and age will probably be preserved well most of the time. There are future problems with preservation of digital platforms like Steam down the road for sure, but it won't result in total losses of information most likely. The attitude of people is also just much different, where gaming went from a somewhat niche thing to very broad appeal. In the end, many generations later (That is being wishful, though, as I bet before then console generations will not be a thing due to some kind of horrible 'games as service' singularity) the 8th gen will probably be looked at with some kind of novelty as probably being on the tail end of physical, but I doubt it will ever even come close to even future collectors to the systems and games of the even more distant past.

Here's a thought. What if with all these mid-gen releases or different models of the same thing....

... what if gaming is moving to more of a cell phone model. No one cares about the older model phones they had. What if eventually, there's a new Playstation or Xbox or Nintendo every year and the older ones become obsolete so quick that no one cares about them.

No thanks.

As for the rest of this topic...

[Warmsignal]

IMO it's been quite underwhelming. I'm partial to the 7th gen over 8th, except for Nintendo's offerings of which I consider about equal. Indie games were also around during the 7th gen, they just didn't get a lot of unnecessary physical prints for collecting purposes. And unless you are a die-hard physical collector like a lot of us dinosaurs here, having a print or not won't impact ones ability to discover games from the 8th gen.

I still miss the days of the 7th gen, the last of the classic Japanese studios, lots of third party games with a budget behind them, trying new things, ambition for new IPs, a handheld with physical media like the DS could be a thing with tons of software on it. 7th gen was the end of an era, and 8th gen was a rebirth. Now it's either a huge studio cranking out X amount of installments, or it's a indie game that may or may not get a physical print.

[oldgamerz]

 I think video game companies, in the future are just going to keep re-releasing only hit stuff. From previous generations, in digital format, Otherwise, mostly everything that people don't have nostalgia for or a physical copy  of will be lost. Just like mostly of every other type of media, that was not popular. take music for example. a lot of hit music, that most people remember got a re-release. and a re-master in the modern day.  and as far as music goes, that's the way it is today. only difference is, Movies and Music are still getting a physical   release and most newer video games are requiring online download off a live server.

[dreama1]

I think video game companies, in the future are just going to keep re-releasing only hit stuff. From previous generations, in digital format, Otherwise, mostly everything that people don't have nostalgia for or a physical copy  of will be lost. Just like mostly of every other type of media, that was not popular. take music for example. a lot of hit music, that most people remember got a re-release. and a re-master in the modern day.  and as far as music goes, that's the way it is today. only difference is, Movies and Music are still getting a physical   release and most newer video games are requiring online download off a live server.

Probably, but there's far to many games for it to be done, and there will be weird copyright laws preventing it eventually for some titles.

[oldgamerz]

I think video game companies, in the future are just going to keep re-releasing only hit stuff. From previous generations, in digital format, Otherwise, mostly everything that people don't have nostalgia for or a physical copy  of will be lost. Just like mostly of every other type of media, that was not popular. take music for example. a lot of hit music, that most people remember got a re-release. and a re-master in the modern day.  and as far as music goes, that's the way it is today. only difference is, Movies and Music are still getting a physical   release and most newer video games are requiring online download off a live server.

Probably, but there's far to many games for it to be done, and there will be weird copyright laws preventing it eventually for some titles.

vary true, but newer companies could always buy the license to re-release it. It's probably all those generic sports games that will get lost in time, for sure I could imagine, I don't think too many would want them, except for myself.

But as a music collector I've noticed that pretty much every single rock band in the 1960's on forward has been getting there older albums re-released, mostly on CD and I don't mean just the greatest hits compilations either. You can still find re-mastered versions of older rock, pop, country, and metal  albums today on  mostly every single band from the 1960's onward.