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OkayPhysicisttoday at 12:59 AM2 repliesview on HN

Nintendo's strategy isn't the absolute worst. They mostly just give new names to new console designs, with modifiers to specify next-gen-without-major-changes. So the SNES was a next-gen NES, the N64 was its own thing, the GameCube was its own thing, the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advanced were iterations on the same thing, DS, DSi, 3DS were all generation steps. WiiU was a next-gen Wii, Switch 2 is a next-gen Switch.

They probably should have called the WiiU the Super Wii or Wii 2 or something, but on the whole they've got a mostly coherent naming convention.


Replies

Machatoday at 2:54 AM

I don’t think Nintendo’s scheme was ever that great as it blurred the difference between variant form factors (Game Boy Pocket vs Game Boy, Game Boy Micro/SP vs Game Boy Advance, DS Lite, 2/3DS XL, Wii Mini), pro models with limited exclusives (Game Boy Color, DSi, New 2/3DS), and full on new generations (Game Boy Advance, 3DS, Wii U).

somattoday at 2:53 AM

I would put the would put the wii firmly in the gamecube family line. it's a uprated gamecube with a weird controller.

    nes:snes = 6502
    n64 = mips
    gamecube:wii:wiiu = powerpc
    switch:switch2 = arm