There’s no hard and fast rule that says how old a console needs to be for it and it’s games to be considered retro.
There are a lot of people that say that anything from two generations ago is retro. That would put the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the Wii in the retro camp.
Do you think the PS3 generation is retro or if not what consoles do you consider to be retro systems?
That’s a difficult one to classify as there’s no set period of time wherein something would be classified as retro (as you said). Personally, I’d say the PS2/original Xbox and earlier are retro consoles. The PS3/Xbox 360/Wii are on the precipice, but not quite over the hill yet. Give it another few years and they’ll be seen as “old tech”.
EDIT: I think everyone has a skewed version of what retro actually is. I hear retro and think anything that hadn’t progressed to 3D graphical capabilities; but I also forget the PS3/Xbox 360/Wii are all almost 20 years old!
I tend to think of anything pre-HD as retro so PS2/Xbox/GameCube generation.
Pedantic note: Wii could only output up to 480p, so technically it’s pre-HD
It’s released in an HD era
I thought the Wii could do 720p with component cables?
Nope. It can do 480 line in progressive, but so can the PS2.
Regarding the retro qualifications, I don’t think people realize that there is as much time between the Xbox 360 and now as between the NES and the PS2.
When people think of “retro” as pre-3D stuff they don’t realize they’re talking about maybe 20 years in commercial gaming history. Counterstrike has been online longer than all generations of 2D home consoles.
Well I feel old now.
Enjoy how old that makes you feel, because I was rounding down a bit. In 2026 you will be able to say that about the X360.
As in, by 2026 there will be as much time since the X360 as between the NES and the X360.
That’s less than three years from now. Tick. Tock.
N64 had 3d games.
Yes. I never said it didn’t. I think you may have misread what I was trying to say or maybe are responding to something else?
I read this as 3D being the last 20 years, but I assume from your response you meant there was only 20 years of gaming before 3D came into the picture?
Gotcha. Yes, that’s what I meant.
20 years is generous, actually. You have to go to very early gaming to get into the 70s and include all the Pong-likes. If you go by programmable home consoles and start with the 2600, that’s only 18 years between its 1977 launch and the PS1’s 1995 release.