Xbox 360 should now be the start of Modern Gaming - PlayStation 2, GCN, XBOX = Classic Gaming

[parallaxscroll]

Classic Gaming - "Before Xbox 360" now going all the way upto PlayStation 2 - GameCube - original XBOX ... Those three consoles are 15 to 16 years old, as of 2015-2016.

Modern Gaming - From Xbox 360 to the present!

Discuss.

[FoxNtd]

Don't we have a thread about this at least once in the past already? It's a problem of age versus style. You can ask the same question for music. Do you slowly keep piling more bands into "classic rock" just because their old albums reach 20, or 30 years of age? Or do you never expand the genre of classic rock because it's a style not simply age.

[Gamevet]

Don't we have a thread about this at least once in the past already? It's a problem of age versus style. You can ask the same question for music. Do you slowly keep piling more bands into "classic rock" just because their old albums reach 20, or 30 years of age? Or do you never expand the genre of classic rock because it's a style not simply age.

There's a lot of bands from the 80s that don't get radio air time because they will never be considered classic. It's a shame.

[Aussie2B]

Honestly, I think it's less a point of contention and more a matter of the few people who have the ability to change the forum descriptions not being around and not caring to update them. Personally, I see the Modern Gaming section for discussing current gen stuff and Classic Gaming for everything older. In practically, that's usually how it boils down. Now, do I personally see, say, the PS3 as "classic" or "retro"? That's a different matter, but it's not of great concern of me which systems "deserve" these titles and which don't, anyway. I find that argument often comes down to elitism.

[bb_hood]

Don't we have a thread about this at least once in the past already? It's a problem of age versus style. You can ask the same question for music. Do you slowly keep piling more bands into "classic rock" just because their old albums reach 20, or 30 years of age? Or do you never expand the genre of classic rock because it's a style not simply age.

Yeah I agree about the age vs style. Personally I cant consider xbox, ps2 classic gaming at all. Stuff on these systems is very much like modern games on the current consoles.

But regarding the music topic, I think "classic rock" essentially refers to rock from a generally specific time period. I know radio stations will lump songs for whenever reason and call it classic rock, but you can really disect rock into many catagories. Like music from the 80s and 90s is much more accurately classified as something else.

[RP2A03]

Classic Gaming - "Before Xbox 360" now going all the way upto PlayStation 2 - GameCube - original XBOX ... Those three consoles are 15 to 16 years old, as of 2015-2016.

Modern Gaming - From Xbox 360 to the present!

Discuss.

You do realize that is a big undertaking, right? Unless you want PS2, GCN, and Xbox topics in two different forums, thousands of threads will need to be combed through and moved to Classic Gaming.

[eskobar]

Dreamcast has definitely a more classic feel on the games released for the console. PS2 and beyond there was a clear "evolution" of the genres and the classic style changed and has more in common with current trends than classic trends.

[Gamevet]

But regarding the music topic, I think "classic rock" essentially refers to rock from a generally specific time period. I know radio stations will lump songs for whenever reason and call it classic rock, but you can really disect rock into many catagories. Like music from the 80s and 90s is much more accurately classified as something else.

They just pick a few bands from that era and allow them to be played, but throw the rest aside. You'll hear Def Leppard, J Geils Band and DLR Van Halen, but no Haggar, MSG, Krokus or Tesla. I have to go to the more modern rock stations to hear the likes of Judas Priest and Motley Crue.

[Slate]

Don't we have a thread about this at least once in the past already? It's a problem of age versus style. You can ask the same question for music. Do you slowly keep piling more bands into "classic rock" just because their old albums reach 20, or 30 years of age? Or do you never expand the genre of classic rock because it's a style not simply age.

When I first joined here "Modern Gaming" was PS2/Xbox/Gamecube/Game Boy Advance/Nintendo DS and that was 2005. I'd like to think that generation is no longer "Modern" (as in "Current") since it's literally two generations of consoles in the past and are there any Walmarts around selling PS2 games this long past its prime? Plus, demand's low and the market's saturated on games from two game generations ago so the prices are dirt cheap in yard sales. Hey, I've even seen Xbox 360s, one generation newer, for $10 that I passed on. I don't know if they worked or not but still, example.

- Austin

[retroman]

Classic gaming to me is the Sega Dreamcast and back. That will always be it for me. Anything after that does not count for me.

[Nature Boy]

Classic gaming to me is the Sega Dreamcast and back. That will always be it for me. Anything after that does not count for me.

And for me the Dreamcast is laughable as a classic system, as anything disc based is modern IMO.

But let's face it, they're all just dumb labels anyway. Who cares what anybody calls them?

[FoxNtd]

And for me the Dreamcast is laughable as a classic system, as anything disc based is modern IMO.

But let's face it, they're all just dumb labels anyway. Who cares what anybody calls them?

PC Engine and Mega Drive have CD expansions and I still consider them classic despite the storage medium used for the game software.

[Nature Boy]

PC Engine and Mega Drive have CD expansions and I still consider them classic despite the storage medium used for the game software.

That's nice.

The point being it's all labels. Who cares?

[BlastProcessing402]

Personally I think the best cutoff is the year 2000.

[kupomogli]

PS2 JRPGs are far better than anything released on future consoles. There's your answer. PS2 is classic. :P.

Even if we go by style, PS2 is similar to PS1, so should PS1 be listed in modern gaming? Tomb Raider on the PSX is a fairly story driven straight forward game. Fast forward to Tomb Raider Legends on the 360 and other than better graphics, the game is pretty much identical in how the game progresses and plays. Gran Turismo has drivers licenses, you purchase cars, and you do races. Nightmare Creatures is pretty much the original form of Devil May Cry, or could even be considered a precursor to the style of games like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne. Compare Street Fighter Alpha 3 to the newest Street Fighter titles, it hasn't progressed much more since, and in a lot of opinions, SFA3 is still the best in the series, or Marvel vs Capcom to MvC3, or Bloody Roar 1 and 2 to Bloody Roar 3.

If it's style, then the PS1 would also be considered a modern gaming machine.

[CRTGAMER]

Do we really need to categorize what is a modern game console? After all many new consoles have game titles with retro style graphics of the older era. The label is all based on one's own perception and perhaps age.

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/ab/ab54ab431b60377a1e19c1b597607651514a52166670e22e13 825749a3cea5c3.jpg

[Guntz]

I'd argue that the polygon-based games of the past 15 years have developed a plateau of sorts that should be taken into consideration here.

Let's compare - for just a moment - the landscape of the PC. If we were in the year 2000 and you asked if a 5 year old PC could be used for every day purposes, I'd tell you not really no, there were massive jumps in power and application of that power over that short span of time. Ask the same question in 2016, I will tell you 2011 hardware is perfectly usable today for nearly any kind of every day task. Heck, I'd even argue 2006 PC hardware is still completely usable. All I use are machines from the middle of the 2000s.

The same can be applied to our perception of modern games. Unlike previous game consoles where there were huge leaps forward in power and the application of that power, Colecovision to NES to Genesis to 3DO to PSX to N64 to DC, nowadays we are facing far shorter leaps forward. I suppose if you were really, REALLY picky, you could argue increased resolution and more polygons and better textures qualify as big leaps forward, but when you compare to what had happened previously (like going from 2D to 3D, entire genres being made possible with better hardware), it's not hard to see how short those jumps have been.

tl;dr summary: Not much has changed between PS2 and PS4 in terms of modern vs vintage. I argue that the window for modern should increase because of that lack of change.

[Ze_ro]

Do we really need to categorize what is a modern game console?

Well, this very forum has sub-forums for "Classic" and "Modern" to separate the two, which seems reason enough to discuss the difference. The forum description for Classic specifically says "before Playstation 2".

--Zero

[Gameguy]

Well, this very forum has sub-forums for "Classic" and "Modern" to separate the two, which seems reason enough to discuss the difference.
Those sections could just be merged together, the forum isn't busy enough anymore to need separate sections for game discussions.

My personal view, PS1 era was the last of classic gaming. N64 is on the fence either way but to me that's a modern console.

[TonyTheTiger]

Thread topic: How old are you?

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

In the past, two generations back seemed to be considered the starting point for classic. For instance, when the 8th generation systems (Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii) came out in 2005-2006, the 6th generation systems (PS1, N64, and Saturn) finally crossed into "classic", meaning that standard gaming stores such as GameStop no longer typically carried them and that there had become a very wide gap in technical specs between the current systems and the classic systems.

8th -> 6th gen (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii to PS1, N64, Saturn)
7th -> 5th gen (PS2, GCN, Xbox to Genesis, SNES, TG16) Dreamcast is 6.5
6th -> 4th gen (PS1, N64, Saturn to NES, SMS)
5th -> 3rd gen (Genesis, SNES, TG16 to ColecoVision, Atari 5200, Vectrex)
4th -> 2nd gen (NES, SMS to Atari 2600, Intellivision)
3rd -> 1st gen (Atari 2600, Intellivision to PONG-like games)

There's a huge difference between each of these sets. With what we have now, 9th -> 7th gen (PS4, Xbox One to PS2, GCN and Xbox) there's still quite a difference. Though much less than the biggest gap (which would probably be 6th -> 4th gen) and less than most of the gaps listed above, there's still quite a large gap between the 7th generation and today's games. Today's games are often nearly photo-realistic and have much larger development budgets whereas the games of the 7th generation still look quite stylized and much lower resolution. Plus online play was in its infancy and the functionalities of the consoles were far more limited. For instance, my PS4 is used to get streaming television, whereas a PS2 is just a game console and DVD player. So there's definitely a big difference.

With that said, although the 7th generation shouldn't be lumped in with the current generation, it's clearly not in the same category as the 2D gaming systems. With that said, I'd be in favor of a three (or even four) category system for forums.

Classic gaming would be anything pre-6th generation - anything prior to the Sega Saturn, PlayStation, and N64.
Older gaming (or "3D era gaming") would be 6th and 7th generation.
Modern gaming would be 8th and 9th generation.

I could even see splitting "Classic Gaming" into pre-video game crash (1st-3rd generation) and post-video game crash (4th-5th generation).

[SparTonberry]

finally crossed into "classic", meaning that standard gaming stores such as GameStop no longer typically carried them
GameStop's selection was based on what was popular and still selling.
NES was available in stores until 2004, yet I've never seen Master System games sold there.
I'm pretty sure Game Gear was dropped in the early 2000s, yet GB/GBC lasted until I think 2009. Can't recall ever seeing Lynx games there, either.
PSP was phased out while it was still current-gen. (I think it was like 2011 when GameStop announced it was being dropped from poorer-selling locations, and it was probably gone by like 2014 everywhere.)

[BlastProcessing402]

GameStop's selection was based on what was popular and still selling.
NES was available in stores until 2004, yet I've never seen Master System games sold there.
I'm pretty sure Game Gear was dropped in the early 2000s, yet GB/GBC lasted until I think 2009. Can't recall ever seeing Lynx games there, either.
PSP was phased out while it was still current-gen. (I think it was like 2011 when GameStop announced it was being dropped from poorer-selling locations, and it was probably gone by like 2014 everywhere.)

Gamestop wasn't really a place yet in many areas when some of those systems were modern, but its "precursors" certainly carried Lynx, I bought my Lynx from EB, since merged into GS.


Do we really need to categorize what is a modern game console? After all many new consoles have game titles with retro style graphics of the older era. The label is all based on one's own perception and perhaps age.

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/ab/ab54ab431b60377a1e19c1b597607651514a52166670e22e13 825749a3cea5c3.jpg

Stupid meme is stupid. Clearly people care or no one would have ever responded to the first post.