No, plain and simple. You do not get to choose what "Next generation console" means. Sure, hardware is a part of the next generation but I don't believe that it COMPLETELY DEFINES next generation. Nintendo is still an option in next generation consoles. It's not a very good one, but it's still there.
"Being an option" doesn't make you next-gen. We might as well be discussing the Ouya and the Nvidia Shield and the iPad here, too, if we're going by that logic. The PS2 was an option for most of the PS3's lifecycle, for christ's sake. The Wii is still selling more than the Wii U.
But what did the PS2 not have that the PS3 had? Games and hardware. Same with Wii and Wii U.
And what does the Wii U not have that its competitors do? Games and hardware.
Frankly, I don't see how my definition of next-gen is any less objective than yours.
Boom, here's our disagreement. I don't believe the point of a generation is hardware. I believe, in many cases, software and features (Which sometimes are linked with hardware) are increasingly being more of the point.
Software and features
tag along with the hardware. A new console generation is an
excuse for new software and features. Microsoft tacked DRM onto its console because it thought it could get away with it, seen as they were starting fresh. But that's not
why they started fresh. Sony and Microsoft are creating all this new content as an incentive for gamers to migrate from their long-loved consoles with established libraries to something totally unknown. But hardware is the reason for everything else.
How are they gimmicky? I can just as easily say the controller for the Xbox is gimmicky. I don't believe the gamepad is gimmicky.
No, the controller for the XBox adheres to time-tested and widely accepted standards.
The difference is the Wii U's controller tries to push a new scheme that neither games nor gamers are asking for, and does it half-heartedly. Oh geez, a second screen. There hasn't been a single implementation of the GamePad that couldn't be either totally scrapped with little impact or replaced with an in-game menu. Even the idea of playing without a TV is retarded, because A who the hell wants to do that and B that defeats the touch-screen thing.
It's not even "innovative", strictly speaking. We've had tablets for ages now, we've gamed on tablets for ages now. And the controller itself is a cumbersome, poorly-designed piece of hardware. When will Nintendo start making controllers like the GameCube one again, made for human hands, instead of freaking rectangles?
Then, you go on to talk to Nintendo as a company making rehashed games which doesn't really link to the console.
Oh but it does link to the console! Your principal argument when I say it has a poor library, and pretty much that of anyone who defends the Wii U, is "but it gets Nintendo exclusives so it has games". The games are fundamental to the Wii U, because it has no audience otherwise. Criticizing them is absolutely pertinent to a discussion of the console.
