Some consider video games works of art that companies are built around making as their main source of income, but it wasn’t always that way. Video game consoles can be split into generations with the release of each improved console starting said generation. Video games have come a long since it’s popularization in the 1970’s.
One of the first ever computer video game to be created is Pong created on Nov. 19, 1972 and it was a simple tennis game. A few years before the first ever home console, the Magnavox Odyssey was created in 1972, and a few years later the Atari was released in 1977. They were both very influential in the video game industry, and not long after, arcades started to pick up some steam because of the release of Asteroids and Galaxian in 1979. This was along with Pac-Man in 1980, in addition to Donkey Kong and Frogger in 1981.
With everyone seeing how successful the consoles like the Atari and Magnavox were, other companies wanted a piece of the pie. Companies started rushing out games for those consoles that were unfinished and poor quality. Another way companies tried to take a piece of the pie was to make their own consoles. This combined with oversaturation because of games being released on multiple consoles with little to no differences, coming to a head in 1983, because the oversaturation and poor quality led to a crash that lasted two years and made sales of video games to go down 97% in the two years the crash lasted.
In 1985 the Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as NES, was released in the U.S. A few years later, it was released in Japan with the name Famicom or Family computer. It was released with Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt, along with the Light Gun and an extra controller. This was a success for the creators in Japan, so they set out for the U.S. market trying not to market it as a video game console but as an entertainment system. This push is what revived the video game industry, giving rise to the Sega Master System released in 1995 as well. The Legend of Zelda was released on the NES in 1986. And in 1989 the GameBoy, Nintendo’s first handheld console, was released which was successful for its portability and its battery life.
Nintendo was a dominating player in the video game industry. Though, with the release of the Sega Genesis in 1989, their hold started to slip, since Sega marketed it as a more mature NES. The release of the SNES in 1990 showed an improvement over the NES with the SNES being a 16-bit console compared to the NES which was a 8-bit console. Nintendo also decided to license exclusive games for the platform, which set it apart from most other consoles. In 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog released and it was very successful, making Sonic the mascot of Sega. 1994 would make their hold slip more, because back in 1988 when Nintendo was making the SNES they asked Sony to help them with a CD add-on to the SNES. Since they were helping Nintendo, they happily took it, making a deal with Nintendo that would make them a lot of money. Nintendo did not like this deal and so at the Consumer Electronics Show the day after Sony had talked about the CD add-on, Nintendo announced that they would be working with Philips on the CD add-on. This was a stab in the back for Sony. Feeling burned, they went on to make and release the PlayStation in 1994. The PlayStation was a hit being the first console to sell 100 million units.
Nintendo seeing its grip on the market slipping more, set out to create a console to compete with it. That console being the N64, the first 3D console released with Mario 64 in 1996. This console was revolutionary with the move to 3D but ultimately failed due to a lack of games, because they were too expensive to create since they chose to go with cartridges for the consoles over the less expensive CDs.
The 2000s came and the PlayStation 2 was released, it was even more successful than the first for many reasons, even becoming the best selling console of all time, with 158 million units being sold. A year later, the Xbox was released with the ever popular Halo, which would be the flagship game for Microsoft who decided to step in the video game market. That same year, the GameCube was released by Nintendo, along with the GameBoy Advanced or the GBA. The GameCube is generally considered a commercial failure, because of its lack of online play and its lack of third party support that the Xbox and PlayStation 2 had. The GBA on the other hand, was another success for Nintendo handhelds. In 2001, due to the failure after failure of the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast, had decided to become a third party game developer instead of making their own consoles. In 2005 the Xbox 360 was released, with the PlayStation 3 and the Wii being released a year later, as the Wii was a massive success for its use of motion controls along with it being made for everyone made it a massive success.
2012 was the year the Wii U was released, which did not receive great reception, making it a failure. A year later, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were released. The PS4 and Xbox One were similar to the last generation of each, except for the improved graphics. In 2017, the Nintendo Switch was released. And it was a massive hit. As the name implies, it’s able to switch from a handheld console to a console you can play on your TV. That same year the Xbox One X and S were released, but only continued to improve on the Xbox One. Three years later the PS5 was released and while it was successful it was plagued with being hard to find when it came out, because of software shortages after COVID. This is the generation we are in and is the generation where game graphics are getting close to looking real.
The video game market has come a long way with it at first being dominated by the big three Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, but now you can find many independent studios that work to create great games that aren’t associated with the big three.
