Video Game Console History

During the early years of video games, it was incredibly popular for young children to go down to the Arcades and play video games.

In the modern ages, children now save themselves the journey of a five to ten minute walk and now easily plug in and play their desired games in their very own home.

Playing video games at home began in 1977 when the company, Atari, released their video game system, ‘VCS’ (later known as Atari 2600) for a princely sum of $249. In the same year, Nintendo released their console, TV Game 6, to rival the Atari 2600.

Arcades were very popular in those days, as it still is in the modern world, as Midway released the first video game that could keep high scores.

It’s name? The world-renowned ‘Space Invaders’.

In 1980, many classic arcade games were made. Video games such as Atari’s ‘Asteroids’ and Namco’s ‘Pacman’ which can now be easily played in handheld consoles such as the Nintendo DS.

By 1994, many sagas of Video Game history came and went. There was a Video Game Console market crash which made many companies pull out of the business leaving Nintendo, Sega and Atari – the leading competitors of the market.

In 1995, Atari pulled out of the market and a new competitor emerged – Sony – which would famously go on to lead the console market. In that year, Sony released the ‘Playstation’ – a 32-bit CD-based video game console, Sega released the ‘Saturn’ and Nintendo released the ‘Nintendo 64’ which was the last video game console that used cartridge media.

By the year 2000, Sony had a firm grip on the Video Game Console market as it released the Playstation 2 with many loyal game developers such as Namco (Ridge Racer, Tekken) and selling over 100 million units. The Playstation 2 was the first console which was able to play games of its predecessor.

In the following years, Microsoft entered the market with the ‘Xbox’, Nintendo released the ‘Gamecube’. Nintendo led the handheld console with the release of Gameboy Advance which could play Gameboy and Gameboy Color cartridges.

Sega eventually left the Console industry, happily residing to be a software-only designer.

Now in 2006, there seems to be a gradual switch of the market leader with Microsoft releasing their Next-Gen console faster than Sony and Nintendo.

The ‘XBox 360’ features razor-sharp graphics and enables users to play online with each other. It was released at Christmas 2005 but many consoles were sent back to the manufacturers because of faulty parts.

The Sony Playstation 3 is set for launch on the November 2006 after the delay of its original release date Spring 2006 because of copyright complications. It is rumoured that there will be over 30 launch titles. It is also rumoured that Sony has invested over $800 million in development, research and production.

Nintendo will release its console ‘Revolution’, now renamed as ‘Wii’ (pronounced We) shortly after the PS3 with its release date being scheduled for Christmas 2006.

The end of 2006 will certainly entail some turning points in Video Game History.