Topic: Nintendo Console History

[JonLeung]

Since the Switch turned five years old yesterday, I was thinking how no Nintendo console has gone six years in North America before being replaced, and it got me thinking... how do the Nintendo consoles compare to each other?  So I made this:
https://vgmaps.com/temp/NintendoHistory.png

Click on the image, or better yet, the link, to see it in full 4K glory.  Yeah, it's crowded, I don't know how I'm going to fit another one in there.  Maybe I could reduce the launch games displayed from two to one, but with the last three, I had trouble deciding which game to choose.  Interesting how there's always a Mario or Zelda game, and at least one other game specifically meant to highlight the capabilities for the new console (except for the GameCube, unless you count Luigi's Mansion as a Mario game, and Wave Race: Blue Storm as... showing water physics?  I dunno.  I heard Wave Race 64's was more groundbreaking... or "wave breaking"?)...

I learned from posting this everywhere, that there's always someone that doesn't understand leap years, and points out "5 years and 365 days" for the Wii, thinking that should be "6 years".  No, "5 years and 365 days" is absolutely correct.  We can all agree that 5 years from Nov. 19, 2006 is Nov. 19, 2011.  Then count 365 days.  Because of February 29, you only get to Nov. 18.  You need to count to 366 to get to Nov. 19 for a full six years.  6 years would be Nov. 19.  One day less would be Nov. 18.  Hence, 5 years and 365 days.  It's not hard.  I knew it would come up, so I thought about just putting the number of days, but it's hard to comprehend what I mean if I say "2191 days" for the Wii.  If I did that, people would probably divide by 365 to get the number of years, but then that would give 6 years and 1 day which is clearly incorrect.  (People should be dividing by 365.2425, that's what I do, as that is even more accurate especially over large amounts of time as it accounts for the century exceptions, as well as the every-400-year exception to that exception.)

People have been asking for an image showing the handhelds, instead of the consoles.  I dunno, I just felt like making this one one a whim.  Maybe I will later.  I will have to research how many games there are for each, which I think might be trickier.

[Grizzly]

The fact of being replaced after at least 6 years is quite interesting. If you ever decide this for handhelds, I'd like two replacement counts: 1. The time between release dates of previous handheld and successor, 2. The time between original handheld and first successor that wasn't backwards compatible to said handheld.

And well, the Switch basically replaced the handheld line, too. At least it felt that way to me as a New 3DS owner - seeing no new releases for years.

[JonLeung]

Happy 6th birthday to the Switch!  A Nintendo console made it to six years (without a successor) after all!
(Though some say it's a handheld, and I guess the original Game Boy did last nine years before the Game Boy Color came out...)

I posted this again on reddit, on r/videogames and r/nintendo, and was once again annoyed with how many people don't understand the whole leap year thing that makes the Wii's life span of "5 years 365 days" look weird.  It's one day short of six years, but that was a leap year!  Fine, if it's so hard to understand, then is it better to say it's 2191 days old?  Sure doesn't seem as intuitive to me, but at least days aren't variable like months and years are...

And today the Switch is also 2191 days old.  Sure doesn't feel like it.  Probably a consequence of getting old, but the NES and Super NES eras felt so much longer!  And I didn't get my NES right away, but like at least a couple years later (though I did rent games most weekends so I caught up pretty quick), so it wasn't even five years with that, but it really felt like... ten!  Or more!  I sure have a lot of memories and experiences that I can recall even to this day, in just the two-three years with it, and if the Switch is multiple times that, it's sad that I don't feel that way about it.  I mean, I love the Switch and its games, but I don't know if there's anything that has affected me for the rest of my life like the NES and Super NES did.