8 Game Consoles

The Evolution of the Game Console

Game consoles have gone through an astonishing evolution since they were first brought to market. Below is a brief history of the evolution of the game console.

1970s The first home console was the Magnavox Odyssey (1972). The Odyssey came packaged with cards, overlays, paper money and dice to enhance the games as graphics of the time were limited to dots and lines.

Following this, the most well-known and successful console at the time was introduced – the Atari 2600 and the popular game Pong, released in 1975. 1980s The 1980s saw an influx of developers entering the industry but due to the production of low-quality games and the over-saturation of the US market, the industry crashed in the US in 1983.

This paved the way for Japan to step up and the introduction of 8-bit consoles which could now include sprites and multiple colours. in 1983, Nintendo released the Family Computer (Famicom). This was redesigned for a post-crash US market and was released in 1985 as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), best known for Mario Bros. This console, and Mario Bros. games in particular, were hugely successful!

1990s Sega entered the market at the tail end of the 80s, releasing the Mega Drive/ Genesis in 1988. Although not as successful as the NES, Sega has also had a massive impact on gaming through the introduction of its most popular franchise – Sonic the Hedgehog, released in 1991. The 1990s also saw the successor to Nintendo’s popular NES console – the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1990. This led to what has since been dubbed as the ‘Console Wars’, where Sega and Nintendo competed for dominance over the console market. Both these consoles were 16-bit which gave game developers more to work with and better colour options and range of sound.

In 1994, Sony debuted the PlayStation and found immediate success. This brought into popularity the compact disc format for games over the cartridge format previous consoles had used and included a memory card. This meant that games could now be much longer and more complex. 2000s In the year 2000, PlayStation continued its market dominance by introducing the PlayStation 2 and to this day this is still the highest selling console ever made with over 155 million sold. Microsoft also entered the console market and released the Xbox in 2001. The mid 2000s brought Sony and Microsoft into direct competition with the release of their next consoles, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. These consoles had improved graphics and memory and were both very popular, mostly splitting the market evenly. In 2006 Nintendo came fighting back with the release of the Wii which focused more on a family-friendly image compared to the teens and young adults that Sony and Microsoft were targeting. This proved to be a very good move for Nintendo as the Wii was a massive success! The Wii controller included an infrared detection sensor which allowed users to be more actively involved in games and for motion to be tracked by the console. cont...

The Evolution of the Game Console cont... By Clare Izquierdo

2010s The 2010s followed a similar pattern with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all releasing new consoles – the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The capabilities of these consoles gave developers more detail and the ability to create more realistic looking graphics. Although some forms of Virtual Reality (VR) headsets had been previously available, they hadn’t been capable of keeping up with the input of the user which created a delay and broke immersion. The introduction of the Oculus Rift in 2016 brought VR to the general consumer and massively reduced this delay. VR brought 3D immersion into specially designed games. 2020s and the Future So far in the 2020s, we have had both Sony and Microsoft release new consoles. As we are currently only in 2022, it is unknown how these consoles will compare to previous releases. However, the graphical capabilities of these devises far outshine previous generations. But what will the future bring? Currently, developers are looking at improving VR so that they can become more immersive, with developers looking into how to bring in the other senses. This means that in the future we could have VR that can include smell and even touch through the use of specially designed suits/gloves. There is even research into how to include taste into future VR technology! We have gone from having the capability of only lines and dots to near photo-realistic graphics with the ability to include hours of content over the past 50 years, just imagine what the next 50 years could bring!