history of video games the atari 2600 was a popular home video game console in the late 1970s and early 1980s pictured is the fourswitch model from 19801982 an atari 2600 game joystick controller which also had a button part of a series on thehistory of video games general early history of video games early mainframe games golden age of arcade video games video game crash of 1983 consoles 1st generation 19721980 2nd generation 19761992 3rd generation 19832003 4th generation 19872004 5th generation 19932005 6th generation 19982013 7th generation 20052017 8th generation 2012 genres history of eastern roleplaying video games history of western roleplaying video games history of online games history of massively multiplayer online games lists list of video games in development timeline of arcade video game history vte the history of video games goes as far back as the early 1950s when academic computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations as part of their research or just for fun at mit in the 1960s professors and students played games such as 3d tictactoe and moon landing these games were played on computer such as the ibm 1560 and moves were made by means of punch cards video gaming did not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and 1980s when video arcade games and gaming consoles using joysticks buttons and other controllers along with graphics on computer screens and home computer games were introduced to the general public since the 1980s video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern popular culture in most parts of the world one of the early games was spacewar which was developed by computer scientists early arcade video games developed from 1972 to 1978 during the 1970s the first generation of home consoles emerged including the popular game pong and various clones the 1970s was also the era of mainframe computer games the golden age of arcade video games was from 1978 to 1982 video arcades with large graphicsdecorated coinoperated machines were common at malls and popular affordable home consoles such as the atari 2600 and intellivision enabled people to play games on their home tvs during the 1980s gaming computers early online gaming and handheld lcd games emerged this era was affected by the video game crash of 1983 from 1976 to 1992 the second generation of video consoles emerged the third generation of consoles which were 8bit units emerged from 1983 to 1995 the fourth generation of consoles which were 16bit models emerged from 1987 to 1999 the 1990s saw the resurgence and decline of arcades the transition to 3d video games improved handheld games and pc gaming the fifth generation of consoles which were 32 and 64bit units was from 1993 to 2006 during this era mobile phone gaming emerged during the 2000s the sixth generation of consoles emerged 19982013 during this period online gaming and mobile games became major aspects of gaming culture the seventh generation of consoles was from 2005 to 2012 this era was marked by huge development budgets for some games with some having cinematic graphics the launch of the topselling wii console in which the user could control the game actions with reallife movement of the controller the rise of casual pc games marketed to nongamers and the emergence of cloud computing in video games in 2013 the eighth generation of consoles emerged including nintendos wii u and nintendo 3ds microsofts xbox one and sonys playstation 4 and playstation vita pc gaming has been holding a large market share in asia and europe for decades and continues to grow due to digital distribution since the development and widespread consumer use of smartphones mobile gaming has been a driving factor for games as they can reach people formerly uninterested in gaming and those unable to afford or support dedicated hardware such as video game consoles early history 19481972 early history of video games defining the video game the term video game has evolved over the decades from a purely technical definition to a general concept defining a new class of interactive entertainment technically for a product to be a video game there must be a video signal transmitted to a cathode ray tube crt that creates a rasterized image on a screen today however the term video game has completely shed its purely technical definition and encompasses a wider range of technology while still rather illdefined the term video game now generally encompasses any game played on hardware built with electronic logic circuits that incorporates an element of interactivity and outputs the results of the players actions to a display going by this broader definition the first video games appeared in the early 1950s and were tied largely to research projects at universities and large corporations origins of electronic computer games the first electronic digital computers colossus and eniac were built during world war ii to aid the allied war effort against the axis powers it was in this environment that the first video games were born the computer games of the 1950s can generally be divided into three categories training and instructional programs research programs in fields such as artificial intelligence and demonstration programs intended to impress or entertain the public because these games were largely developed on unique hardware in a time when porting between systems was difficult and were often dismantled or discarded after serving their limited purposes they did not generally influence further developments in the industry the earliest known chess computer program was developed by alan turing and david champernowne called turochamp which was completed in 1950 but not actually implemented by them on a computer the earliest known had been created as electromechanical devices the first games known to incorporate a monitor were two research projects completed in 1952 a checkers program by christopher strachey on the ferranti mark 1 tennis for two modern recreation perhaps the first game created solely for entertainment rather than to demonstrate the power of some technology train personnel or aid in research was tennis for two designed by william higinbotham and built by robert dvorak at the brookhaven national laboratory in 1958 designed to entertain the general public at brookhavens annual series of open houses the game was deployed on an analog computer with graphics displayed on an oscilloscope and was dismantled in 1959 higinbotham never considered adapting the successful game into a commercial product which would have been impractical with the technology of the time ultimately the widespread adoption of computers to play games would have to wait for the machines to spread from serious academics to their students on us college campuses spacewar early mainframe games the mainframe computers of the 1950s were generally batch processing machines of limited speed and memory this made them generally unsuited for games furthermore they were costly and relatively scarce commodities so computer time was a precious resource that could not be wasted on frivolous pursuits like entertainment at the lincoln laboratory at the massachusetts institute of technology mit however a team led by jay forrester developed a computer called whirlwind in the early 1950s that processed commands in real time and incorporated a faster and more reliable form of random access memory ram based around magnetic cores based on this work two employees at the lab named ken olsen and wes clark developed a prototype real time computer called the tx0 that incorporated the recently invented transistor which ultimately allowed the size and cost of computers to be significantly reduced olsen subsequently established the digital equipment corporation dec with harlan anderson in 1957 and developed a commercial update of the tx0 called the pdp1 lincoln laboratory donated the tx0 to mit in 1958 as the computer operated in real time and thus allowed for interactive programming mit allowed students to program the computer to conduct their own research perhaps the first time that university students were allowed to directly access a computer for their own work further the university decided to allow students to set the computer to tasks outside the bounds of classwork or faculty research during periods of time no one was signed up to do official work this resulted in a community of undergraduate students led by bob saunders peter samson and alan kotok many of them affiliated with the tech model railroad club conducting their own experiments on the computer in 1961 mit received one of the first pdp1 computers which incorporated a relatively sophisticated pointplotting monitor mit provided a similar level of access to the computer for students as it did for the tx0 resulting in the creation of the first relatively widespread and thus influential computer game spacewar spacewar is credited as the first widely available and influential computer game conceived by steve russell martin graetz and wayne wiitanen in 1961 and programmed primarily by russell saunders graetz samson and dan edwards in the first half of 1962 spacewar was inspired by the science fiction stories of e e smith and depicted a duel between two spaceships each controlled by a player using a custom built control box immensely popular among students at mit spacewar spread to the west coast later in the year when russell took a job at the stanford artificial intelligence laboratory sail where it enjoyed similar success the program subsequently migrated to other locations around the country through the efforts of both former mit students and dec itself more so after cathode ray tube crt terminals started becoming more common at the end of the 1960s as computing resources continued to expand over the remainder of the decade through the adoption of time sharing and the development of simpler highlevel programming languages like basic an increasing number of college students began programming and sharing simple sports puzzle card logic and board games as the decade progressed these creations remained trapped in computer labs for the remainder of the decade however because even though some adherents of spacewar had begun to sense the commercial possibilities of computer games they could only run on hardware costing hundreds of thousands of dollars as computers and their components continued to fall in price however the dream of a commercial video game finally became attainable at the start of the 1970s the commercialization of video games by 1970 the introduction of medium scale integration msi transistortransistor logic ttl circuits combining multiple transistors on a single microchip had resulted in another significant reduction in the cost of computing and ushered in a new wave of minicomputers costing under 10000 while still far too costly for the home these advances lowered the cost of computing enough that it could be seriously considered for the coinoperated games industry which at the time was experiencing its own technological renaissance as large electromechanical target shooting and driving games like sega enterprisess periscope 1967 and chicago coins speedway 1969 pioneered the adoption of elaborate visual displays and electronic sound effects in the amusement arcade consequently when a recent engineering graduate from utah with experience running coinoperated equipment named nolan bushnell first saw spacewar at sail in late 1969 or early 1970 he resolved to build a coinoperated version for public consumption enlisting the aid of an older and more experienced engineer named ted dabney bushnell built a variant of the game called computer space in which a single playercontrolled spaceship dueled two hardwarecontrolled flying saucers released in late november or early december 1971 through nutting associates the game failed to have much impact in the coinoperated marketplace the magnavox odyssey the first home console meanwhile ralph baer an engineer with a degree in television engineering working for defense contractor sanders associates had been working on a video game system that could be plugged into a standard television set since 1966 working primarily with technician bill harrison who built most of the actual hardware baer developed a series of prototype systems between 1966 and 1969 based around diodetransistor logic dtl circuits that would send a video signal to a television set to generate spots on the screen that could be controlled by the players originally able to generate only two spots the system was modified in november 1967 at the suggestion of engineer bill rusch to generate a third spot for use in a table tennis game in which each player controlled a single spot that served as a paddle and volleyed the third spot which acted as a ball in 1971 sanders concluded a licensing agreement with television company magnavox to release the system which reached the market in september 1972 as the magnavox odyssey the system launched with a dozen games included in the box four more sold with a separate light gun and six games sold separately most of which were chase racing target shooting or sports games these games were activated using plugin circuit cards that defined how the spots generated by the hardware would behave due to the limited abilities of the system which could only render three spots and a line most of the graphic and gameplay elements were actually defined by plastic overlays attached to the tv set along with accessories like boards cards and dice like computer space the odyssey only performed modestly and failed to jump start a new industry however the system did directly influence the birth of a vibrant video arcade game industry after ralph baers design ingenuity intersected nolan bushnells entrepreneurial ambition a new industry early arcade video games 19721978 see also arcade game and first generation of video game consoles pong was the first arcade game to ever receive universal acclaim in 1972 nolan bushnell and ted dabney decided to strike out on their own and incorporated their preexisting partnership as atari after seeing a demonstration of the magnavox odyssey ahead of its release bushnell charged new hire allan alcorn to create a version of that systems table tennis game as a practice project to familiarize himself with video game design alcorns version ended up being so fun that atari decided to release it as pong available in limited quantities in late 1972 pong began reaching the market in quantity in march 1973 after which it ignited a new craze for ballandpaddle video games in the coinoperated amusement industry the success of pong did not result in the displacement of traditional arcade amusements like pinball but did lay the foundation for a successful video arcade game industry roughly 70000 video games mostly ballandpaddle variants were sold in 1973 by a combination of recent startups like atari ramtek and allied leisure and established chicago firms like williams chicago coin and the midway subsidiary of bally manufacturing the video arcade game market remained in a state of flux for the remainder of the decade the ballandpaddle market collapsed in 1974 due to market saturation which led to a significant drop in video game sales smaller manufacturers attempted to compensate by creating cocktail table cabinets for sale to nontraditional venues like higher class restaurants and lounges but this market failed to fully develop larger companies like atari and midway turned to new genres to remain successful especially racing games oneonone dueling games and target shooting games early hits in these genres included gran trak 10 1974 and tank 1974 from atari and wheels 1975 gun fight 1975 and sea wolf 1976 from midway wheels and gun fight were licensed versions of speed race and western gun developed by the taito trading company of japan marking the start of japanese video game penetration into the united states gun fight was also one of the first arcade games to incorporate a microprocessor starting a shift away from video arcade games engineered using dedicated ttl hardware to video games programmed in software the video game was one of several concepts that helped to reform the image of the arcade as a seedy hangout for delinquents this in turn aided the growth of arcades in suburban shopping malls the principle pioneer of the shopping mall arcade was jules millman who established an arcade in a shopping mall in harvey illinois in 1969 by banning eating drinking and smoking and maintaining a full staff at all times to keep an eye on the facilities millman created a safe environment where parents could feel safe leaving their older children while browsing other stores in the mall millman founded american amusements to establish more shopping mall arcades which was purchased by bally in 1974 and renamed aladdins castle other entrepreneurs imitated millmans format and arcades became a mainstay of the shopping mall by the end of the decade the emergence of solid state pinball in the late 1970s in which electromechanical technologies like relays were replaced by the newly emerging microprocessor temporarily stole the limelight from video games which once again entered a period of decline in 1977 and 1978 while individual games like ataris breakout 1976 and cinematronics space wars 1978 sold in large numbers during this period overall profitability began to lag the market surged once again however after the introduction of the taito game space invaders by midway in 1979 first generation of home consoles and the pong clones 19721978 magnavoxs 1975 odyssey game console the magnavox odyssey never caught on with the public due largely to the limited functionality of its primitive technology by the middle of the 1970s however the ballandpaddle craze in the arcade had ignited public interest in video games and continuing advances in integrated circuits had resulted in largescale integration lsi microchips cheap enough to be incorporated into a consumer product in 1975 magnavox reduced the part count of the odyssey using a threechip set created by texas instruments and released two new systems that only played ballandpaddle games the odyssey 100 and odyssey 200 atari meanwhile entered the consumer market that same year with the singlechip home pong system designed by harold lee the next year general instrument released a pongonachip lsi and made it available at a low price to any interested company toy company coleco industries used this chip to create the millionselling telstar console model series 197677 while dozens of other companies released models as well overall sales of dedicated ballandpaddle systems in the us grew from 350000 in 1975 to a peak of 56 million in 1977 a similar boom hit the united kingdom and other parts of europe with much of the market supplied by clone manufacturers in hong kong after 1977 the dedicated console market in the united states collapsed a new wave of programmable systems hit the market starting with the fairchild channel f in 1976 that offered the possibility of purchasing and playing a wider variety of games stored on cartridges containing mask rom that could be plugged directly into the cpu of the console as older model dedicated consoles were heavily discounted and consumers with more purchasing power transitioned to the new programmable systems newer dedicated systems with more advanced features like video pinball from atari and the odyssey 4000 were squeezed out by their lower priced predecessors and their more sophisticated programmable replacements this caused a brief dip in the market and the exit of industry leader coleco which failed to transition to programmable hardware fairchild remained in the new programmable market alongside atari and magnavox which released the vcs 1977 and odyssey2 1978 respectively mainframe computer games 19711979 the onscreen instructions from will crowthers 1976 game colossal cave adventure in the 1960s a number of computer games were created for mainframe and minicomputer systems but these failed to achieve wide distribution due to the continuing scarcity of computer resources a lack of sufficiently trained programmers interested in crafting entertainment products and the difficulty in transferring programs between computers in different geographic areas by the end of the 1970s however the situation had changed drastically the basic and c highlevel programming languages were widely adopted during the decade which were more accessible than earlier more technical languages such as fortran and cobol opening up computer game creation to a larger base of users with the advent of timesharing which allowed the resources of a single mainframe to be parceled out among multiple users connected to the machine by terminals computer access was no longer limited to a handful of individuals at an institution creating more opportunities for students to create their own games furthermore the widespread adoption of the pdp10 released by digital equipment corporation dec in 1966 and the portable unix operating system developed at bell labs in 1971 and released generally in 1973 created common programming environments across the country that reduced the difficulty of sharing programs between institutions finally the founding of the first magazines dedicated to computing like creative computing 1974 the publication of the earliest program compilation books like 101 basic computer games 1973 and the spread of widearea networks such as the arpanet allowed programs to be shared more easily across great distances as a result many of the mainframe games created by college students in the 1970s influenced subsequent developments in the video game industry in ways that spacewar aside the games of the 1960s did not in the arcade and on home consoles fastpaced action and realtime gameplay were the norm in genres like racing and target shooting on the mainframe however such games were generally not possible due both to the lack of adequate displays many computer terminals continued to rely on teletypes rather than monitors well into the 1970s and even most crt terminals could only render characterbased graphics and insufficient processing power and memory to update game elements in real time while 1970s mainframes were more powerful than arcade and console hardware of the period the need to parcel out computing resources to dozens of simultaneous users via timesharing significantly hampered their abilities thus programmers of mainframe games focused on strategy and puzzlesolving mechanics over pure action notable games of the period include the tactical combat game star trek 1971 by mike mayfield the hideandseek game hunt the wumpus 1972 by gregory yob and the strategic war game empire 1977 by walter bright perhaps the most significant game of the period was colossal cave adventure or simply adventure created in 1976 by will crowther by combining his passion for caving with concepts from the newly released tabletop roleplaying game rpg dungeons and dragons dd expanded by don woods in 1977 with an emphasis on the high fantasy of jrr tolkien adventure established a new genre based around exploration and inventorybased puzzle solving that made the transition to personal computers in the late 1970s while most games were created on hardware of limited graphic ability one computer able to host more impressive games was the plato system developed at the university of illinois intended as an educational computer the system connected hundreds of users all over the united states via remote terminals that featured highquality plasma displays and allowed users to interact with each other in real time this allowed the system to host an impressive array of graphical andor multiplayer games including some of the earliest known computer rpgs which were primarily derived like adventure from dd but unlike that game placed a greater emphasis on combat and character progression than puzzle solving starting with topdown dungeon crawls like the dungeon 1975 and the game of dungeons 1975 more commonly referred to today by their filenames pedit5 and dnd plato rpgs soon transitioned to a firstperson perspective with games like moria 1975 oubliette 1977 and avatar 1979 which often allowed multiple players to join forces to battle monsters and complete quests together like adventure these games would ultimately inspire some of the earliest personal computer games golden age golden age of arcade video games 19781982 golden age of arcade video games space invaders was a popular game during the golden age the game introduced many elements which would become standard in video games by 1978 video games were well established in the us coinoperated amusement industry but their popularity was secondary to the industry stalwarts of pool and pinball that changed with the introduction of a new game developed in japan while video games had been introduced to japan soon after hitting the united states the japanese arcade industry had remained primarily focused on electromechanical driving and shooting games and a type of slot machine called the medal game that accepted and paid out in medals instead of currency so as not to be classified as a gambling game in 1977 the arrival of breakout distributed locally by the nakamura manufacturing company and the advent of tabletop game units pioneered by taito created new demand for video games in snack bars and tea houses taito designer tomohiro nishikado decided to build on the popularity of breakout by replacing the paddle in the game with a gun battery and the bricks in the game with rows of aliens that would descend linebyline while firing at the player taito released this game in 1978 as space invaders games such as galaxian galaga and donkey kong were popular in arcades during the early 1980s space invaders introduced or popularized several important concepts in arcade video games including play regulated by lives instead of a timer or set score gaining extra lives through accumulating points and the tracking of the high score achieved on the machine it was also the first game to confront the player with waves of targets that would shoot back at the player and the first to include background music during game play a simple fournote loop with its intense game play and competitive scoring features space invaders became a national phenomenon as over 200000 invader gamescounting clones and knockoffsentered japanese game centers by the middle of 1979 while not quite as popular in the united states space invaders became the biggest hit the industry had seen since the great depression as midway serving as the north american manufacturer moved over 60000 cabinets the onetwo punch of space invaders and the atari game asteroids 1979 which moved 70000 units and popularized the recording of multiple high scores in a table resulted in video arcade games completely displacing pinball and other amusements to become the central attraction of not just the shopping mall arcade but also a variety of street locations from convenience stores to bowling alleys to pizza parlors many of the bestselling games of 1980 and 1981 such as galaxian 1979 defender 1980 missile command 1980 tempest 1981 and galaga 1981 focused on shooting mechanics and achieving high scores starting with pac man in 1980 which sold 96000 units in the united states a new wave of games appeared that focused on identifiable characters and alternate mechanics such as navigating a maze or traversing a series of platforms aside from pac man and its sequel ms pacman 1982 the most popular games in this vein were donkey kong 1981 and qbert 1982 according to trade publication vending times revenues generated by coinoperated video games on location in the united states jumped from 308 million in 1978 to 968 million in 1979 to 28 billion in 1980 as pac man ignited an even larger video game craze and attracted more female players to arcades revenues jumped again to 49 billion in 1981 according to trade publication play meter by july 1982 total coinop collections peaked at 89 billion of which 77 billion came from video games meanwhile the number of arcadesdefined as any location with ten or more gamesmore than doubled between july 1981 and july 1983 from over 10000 to just over 25000 these figures made arcade games the most popular entertainment medium in the country far surpassing both pop music at 4 billion in sales per year and hollywood films 3 billion second generation consoles 19761982 second generation of video game consoles intellivision was a home console system introduced in 1979 after the collapse of the dedicated console market in 1978 focus in the home shifted to the new programmable systems in which game data was stored on rombased cartridges fairchild semiconductor struck first in this market with the channel f but after losing millions in the digital watch business the company took a conservative approach to the programmable console market and kept production runs of the system low as a result by the end of 1977 fairchild had only sold about 250000 systems atari followed fairchild into the market in 1977 and sold between 340000 and 400000 systems that year magnavox joined the programmable market in 1978 with the odyssey2 while toy company mattel released the intellivision in 1979 which featured graphics superior to any of its competitors after both atari and fairchild made a strong showing in 1977 the market hit a difficult patch in 1978 when retailers resisted building inventory believing that the newly emerging electronic handheld market would displace video games atari for example manufactured 800000 systems but proved unable to sell more than 500000 to retail this helped precipitate a crisis at the company that saw cofounder and chairman nolan bushnell and president joe keenan forced out by ataris parent company warner communications which had purchased atari in 1976 largely on the potential of the vcs ultimately home video games did well in the 1978 holiday season and retailers proved more amenable to stocking them again in 1979 new atari ceo ray kassar subsequently harnessed his companys leftover stock to help transform video game consoles into a yearround product rather than something just purchased by retailers for sale during the holiday season the real breakthrough for the home video game market occurred in 1980 when atari released a conversion of the popular space invaders game for the vcs which was licensed from taito buoyed by the success of the game ataris consumer sales almost doubled from 119 million to nearly 204 million in 1980 and then exploded to over 841 million in 1981 while sales across the entire video game industry in the united states rose from 1857 million in 1979 to just over 1 billion in 1981 through a combination of conversions of its own arcade games like missile command and asteroids and licensed conversions like defender atari took a commanding lead in the industry with an estimated 65 market share of the worldwide industry by dollar volume by 1981 mattel settled into second place with roughly 1520 of the market while magnavox ran a distant third and fairchild exited the market entirely in 1979 in the early days of the programmable market all of the games for a given system were developed by the firm that released the console that changed in 1979 when four atari programmers seeking greater recognition and financial reward for their contributions struck out on their own to form activision the first thirdparty developer the company went on to develop a string of hits including kaboom 1981 river raid 1982 and pitfall 1982 recognized as one of the foundational games of the scrolling platformer genre in 1981 another group of atari employees joined with exmattel staff to form imagic and experienced success with games like demon attack 1982 and atlantis 1982 in 1982 atari released a more advanced console based on its 8bit computer line the atari 5200 which failed to perform as well as its predecessor that same year coleco returned to the video game market with a new console the colecovision that featured neararcadequality graphics and shipped with a port of the popular arcade game donkey kong coleco sold out its entire run of 550000 units in the 1982 holiday season as overall us video game sales reached 21 billion which represented 31 of the dollar volume of the entire toy industry ultimately however the rapid growth of the home console market could not be sustained and the industry would soon face a serious downturn that would nearly wipe it out during the video game crash of 1983 early home computer games 19761982 while the fruit of retail development in early video games appeared mainly in video arcades and home consoles home computers began appearing in the late 1970s and were rapidly evolving in the 1980s allowing their owners to program simple games hobbyist groups for the new computers soon formed and pc game software followed soon many of these gamesat first clones of mainframe classics such as star trek and then later ports or clones of popular arcade games such as space invaders froggerwere being distributed through a variety of channels such as printing the games source code in books such as david ahls basic computer games magazines creative computing and newsletters which allowed users to type in the code for themselves early game designers like crowther daglow and yob would find the computer code for their gameswhich they had never thought to copyrightpublished in books and magazines with their names removed from the listings early home computers from apple commodore tandy and others had many games that people typed in games were also distributed by the physical mailing and selling of floppy disks cassette tapes and rom cartridges soon a small cottage industry was formed with amateur programmers selling disks in plastic bags put on the shelves of local shops or sent through the mail richard garriott distributed several copies of his 1980 roleplaying video game akalabeth world of doom in plastic bags before the game was published 1980s 1980s in video gaming the video games industry experienced its first major growing pains in the early 1980s as publishing houses appeared with many businesses surviving 20 years such as electronic artsalongside flybynight operations that cheated the games developers while some early 1980s games were simple clones of existing arcade titles the relatively low publishing costs for personal computer games allowed for bold unique games gaming computers following the success of the apple ii and commodore pet in the late 1970s a series of cheaper and incompatible rivals emerged in the early 1980s this second batch included the commodore vic20 and 64 sinclair zx80 zx81 and zx spectrum nec pc8000 pc6001 pc88 and pc98 sharp x1 and x68000 and atari 8bit family bbc micro acorn electron amstrad cpc and msx series these rivals helped to catalyze both the home computer and game markets by raising awareness of computing and gaming through their competing advertising campaigns the sinclair acorn and amstrad offerings were generally only known in europe and africa the nec and sharp offerings were generally only known in asia and the msx had a base in south america europe middle east and asia while the usbased apple commodore and atari offerings were sold in both the us and europe games dominated home computers software libraries a 1984 compendium of reviews of atari 8bit software used 198 pages for games compared to 167 for all others by that year the computer gaming market took over from the console market following the crash of that year computers offered equal gaming ability and since their simple design allowed games to take complete command of the hardware after poweron they were nearly as simple to start playing with as consoles the commodore 64 system the commodore 64 was released to the public in august 1982 it found initial success because it was marketed and priced aggressively it had a basic programming environment and advanced graphic and sound abilities for its time similar to the colecovision console it also used the same game controller ports popularized by the atari 2600 allowing gamers to use their old joysticks with the system it would become the most popular home computer of its day in the usa and many other countries and the bestselling single computer model of all time internationally at around the same time the sinclair zx spectrum was released in the united kingdom and quickly became the most popular home computer in many areas of western europeand later the eastern blocdue to the ease with which clones could be produced in 2008 sid meier listed the ibm pc as one of the three most important innovations in the history of video games enhanced graphics adapter ega display standard allowed its graphics to approach the quality seen in popular home computers like the commodore 64 however the sound abilities of the at were still limited to the pc speaker which was substandard compared to the builtin sound chips used in many home computers also the relatively high cost of the pc compatible systems severely limited their popularity in gaming the apple macintosh also arrived at this time it lacked the color abilities of the earlier apple ii instead preferring a much higher pixel resolution but the operating system support for the graphical user interface gui attracted developers of some games eg lode runner even before color returned in 1987 with the mac ii the arrival of the atari st and commodore amiga in 1985 was the start of a new era of 16bit machines for many users they were too costly until later on in the decade at which point advances in the ibm pcs open platform had caused the ibm pc compatibles to become comparably powerful at a lower cost than their competitors the vga standard developed for the new ibm personal system2 ps2 line in 1987 gave the pc the potential for 256color graphics this was a big jump ahead of most 8bit home computers but still lagged behind platforms with builtin sound and graphics hardware like the amiga this caused an odd trend around 8991 toward developing for a seemingly inferior machine thus while both the st and amiga were host to many technically excellent games their time of prominence was shorter than that of the 8bit machines which saw new ports well into the 1980s and even the 1990s the yamaha ym3812 sound chip dedicated sound cards started to address the issue of poor sound abilities in ibm pc compatibles in the late 1980s ad lib set an early de facto standard for sound cards in 1987 with its card based on the yamaha ym3812 sound chip this would last until the introduction of creative labs sound blaster in 1989 which took the chip and added new features while remaining compatible with ad lib cards and creating a new de facto standard however many games would still support these and rarer things like the roland mt32 and disney sound source into the early 1990s the initial high cost of sound cards meant they would not find widespread use until the 1990s shareware gaming first appeared in the mid1980s but its big successes came in the 1990s early online gaming see also history of massively multiplayer online games dialup bulletin board systems were popular in the 1980s and sometimes used for online game playing the earliest such systems were in the late 1970s and early 1980s and had a crude plaintext interface later systems made use of terminalcontrol codes the socalled ansi art which included the use of ibmpcspecific characters not part of an american national standards institute ansi standard to get a pseudographical interface some bbss offered access to various games which were playable through such an interface ranging from text adventures to gambling games like blackjack generally played for points rather than real money on some multiuser bbss where more than one person could be online at once there were games allowing users to interact with one another superset software created snipes a textmode networked computer game in 1983 to test a new ibm personal computerbased computer network and demonstrate its abilities snipes is officially credited as being the original inspiration for netware it is believed to be the first network game ever written for a commercial personal computer and is recognized alongside 1974 game maze war a networked multiplayer maze game for several research machines and spasim a 3d multiplayer space simulation for time shared mainframes as the precursor to multiplayer games such as 1987s midi maze and doom in 1993 in 1995 idoom later kalinet was created for games that only allowed local network play to connect over the internet other services such as kahn ten mplayer and heatnet soon followed after these services ultimately became obsolete when game producers began including their own online software such as battlenet won and later steam the first user interfaces were plaintextsimilar to bbss but they operated on large mainframe computers permitting larger numbers of users to be online at once by the end of the decade inline services had fully graphical environments using software specific to each personal computer platform popular textbased services included compuserve the source and genie while platformspecific graphical services included playnet and quantum link for the commodore 64 applelink for the apple ii and macintosh and pc link for the ibm pcall of which were run by the company which eventually became america onlineand a competing service prodigy interactive games were a feature of these services though until 1987 they used textbased displays not graphics handheld lcd games in 1979 milton bradley company released the first handheld system using interchangeable cartridges microvision while the handheld received modest success in the first year of production the lack of games screen size and video game crash of 1983 brought about the systems quick demise in 1980 nintendo released its game watch line handheld electronic game which spurred dozens of other game and toy companies to make their own portable games many of which were copies of game watch titles or adaptations of popular arcade games improving lcd technology meant the new handhelds could be more reliable and consume fewer batteries than led or vfd games most only needing watch batteries they could also be made much smaller than most led handhelds even small enough to wear on ones wrist like a watch tiger electronics borrowed this concept of videogaming with cheap affordable handhelds and still produces games in this model to the present day video game crash of 1983 north american video game crash of 1983 at the end of 1983 several factors including a market flooded with poorquality games the commercial failure of several important atari 2600 titles and home computers emerging as a new and more advanced gaming platform caused the industry to experience a severe downturn this was the crash of the video game industry it bankrupted several companies that produced north american consoles and games from late 1983 to early 1984 it ended what is considered to be the second generation of console video gaming as a result of the crash a globally important video gaming industry emerged in japan creating important room for companies like nintendo and sega this brought about the worldwide popularity of the thirdgeneration nintendo entertainment system for which thirdparty game publishing was strictly overseen by nintendo third generation consoles 19831995 8bit third generation of video game consoles the nintendo entertainment system or nes whilst a broken gaming industry in the us took several local businesses to bankruptcy and practically ended retail interest in video gaming products an 8bit third generation of video game consoles started in japan as early as 1983 with the release of both nintendos family computer famicom and segas sg1000 on july 15 the first clearly trumped the second in terms of commercial success in the country causing sega to replace it two years later by a severely improved and modernized version called the sega mark iii in efforts to make the famicom marketable in the us nintendo created a completely redesigned version of it called the nintendo entertainment system nes to be sold in the country as a product unrelated to video gaming for this same reason the company also developed a toy robot accessory called the rob to be sold together with some versions the nes was released on 18 october 1985 in the us reviving the video game market in the country and proving successful to the american audience peaking in popularity between 1987 and the early 1990s the console was later released in other western countries but because of heavy competition from home computers such as the zx spectrum amstrad cpc and commodore 64 and a lack of marketing the nes was prevented from having as much success in europe the sega mark iii released to western consumers as the master system dominated the markets of europe oceania and brazil selling more than the nes in these regions soon the famicomnes and the master system became the great consoles of the third generation while sega focused on unique gameplay experiences and innovative technology with master systems superior technical properties which allowed better graphics and accessories like lcd glasses nintendo focused on creating long and popular game franchises which often repeated the same features in this generation the gamepad or joypad took over for joysticks paddles and keypads as the default game controller the gamepad design of an 8 direction directionalpad or dpad for short with 2 or more action buttons became the standard this generation also marked a shift in the dominance of home video game console hardware and console game production from the united states to japan the third console generation marked the debut of various highprofile roleplaying franchises such as the legend of zelda dragon quest phantasy star and final fantasy the latter of which financially saved japanese developer square 1987 saw the birth of the stealth genre with hideo kojimas metal gear series first game on the msx2 computer in 1989 capcom released sweet home on the nes which served as a precursor to the survival horror genre in 1988 nintendo published their first issue of nintendo power magazine by 1989 the market for cartridgebased console games was more than 2 billion while that for diskbased computer games was less than 300 million in 1990 commodore and amstrad entered the console market with their c64gs and gx4000 game machines respectively these were both based on the 8bit computers of their manufacturers and had only limited success due to a lack of software support and the arrival of 16bit machines amstrads gx4000 sold just over 15000 units with only 25 officially released game cartridges even though it was technically superior to the master system and nintendo entertainment system it was discontinued after 6 months this generation ended with the discontinuation of the nes in 1995 fourth generation consoles 19872003 16bit fourth generation of video game consoles chiptuned sounds an original synthesized chiptune composition imitating early video game music problems playing this file see media help a 16bit generation of video game consoles starts in the late 1980s the turbografx16 named the pc engine in europe and japan debuted in 1987 as the first commercial 16bit game system it had a large following in japan but did poorly in north america and europe because of its limited library of games and because of excessive distribution restrictions imposed by hudson soft segas mega drivegenesis sold well worldwide early on after its debut in 1988 nintendo responded with its own next generation system named the super nintendo entertainment system snes in 1990 a model of the turbografx16 this time was one of intense competition and not entirely truthful marketing the turbografx16 was billed as the first 16bit system but its central processor was an 8bit huc6280 with only its huc6270 graphics processor being a true 16bit chip also the much earlier mattel intellivision contained a 16bit processor sega used the term blast processing throughout its marketing to describe the simple fact that their consoles cpu ran at a higher clock speed than that of the snes 767 mhz vs 358mhz in japan the pc engine was a very successful competitor against the famicom and a cd drive peripheral allowed it to fend off the mega drive in 1988 though it never really caught on to the same degree outside japan the pc engine eventually lost out to the super famicom but due to its popular cd addons retained enough of a user base to support new games well into the late 1990s cdrom drives were introduced in this generation as addons for the pc engine in 1988 and the mega drive in 1991 nintendo experimented with optical media formats for the snes in a joint venture with sony who would go on to develop this concept into the playstation and rise to prominence as a major competitor to nintendo and sega basic 3d graphics entered the mainstream with flatshaded polygons enabled by added processors in game cartridges like virtua racing and star fox while the mega drive managed to produce such graphics without special processors on the 8mhz 68000 chip by using highly simplified polygon models a slow frame rate 4 fps and reduced resolution sonic the hedgehog released in 1991 for the mega drivegenesis gave the console mainstream popularity and rivaled nintendos mario franchise starting the socalled console war its namesake character became the mascot of sega and one of the most recognizable video game characters in history snks neogeo was the most costly console by a wide margin when released in 1990 and would remain so for years its 2d graphics were of a quality years ahead of other consoles the reason for this was that it contained the same hardware that was found in snks arcade games this was the first time since the home pong machines that a truetothearcade experience could be had at home but the system was commercially inviable this era also saw a revival of handheld consoles which were absent in the prior generation nintendos game boy a portable released in 1989 with monochromatic 2d graphics and 35hours battery life became widely popular in the world and sold much more than its three competitors the atari lynx the sega game gear and necs turbo express released in japan in north america until 1991 despite these three consoles having much more sophisticated 16bit graphics similar to home consoles of the time graphic resource consumed too much battery life which contributed to their unpopularity the other consoles also had scarce game libraries compared to over one thousand games released for the game boy including bestselling titles pokmon red and blue and which inspired an entire line of portable machines that continued through the following two generations 1990s 1990s in video gaming this article needs additional citations for verification please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources unsourced material may be challenged and removed january 2014 learn how and when to remove this template message the 1990s were a decade of marked innovation in video gaming it was a decade of transition from raster graphics to 3d graphics and gave rise to several genres of video games including firstperson shooter realtime strategy and mmo handheld gaming began to become more popular throughout the decade thanks in part to the release of the game boy in 1989 arcade games experienced a resurgence in the earlytomid1990s followed by a decline in the late 1990s as home consoles became more common as arcade games declined however the home video game industry matured into a more mainstream form of entertainment in the 1990s but their video games also became more and more controversial because of their violent nature especially in games of mortal kombat night trap and doom leading to the formation of the interactive digital software association and their rating games by signing them their esrb ratings since 1994 major developments of the 1990s include the popularizing of 3d computer graphics using polygons initially in arcades followed by home consoles and computers and the start of a larger consolidation of publishers higher budget games increased size of production teams and collaborations with both the music and motion picture industries examples of this include mark hamills involvement with wing commander iii the introduction of qsound with arcade system boards such as capcoms cp system ii and the high production budgets of titles such as squaresofts final fantasy vii and segas shenmue resurgence and decline of arcades in north america arcade games which had seen a slow decline with the increase in popularity of home gaming experienced a resurgence in the earlytomid1990s with the 1991 release of capcoms street fighter ii its success led to a wave of other popular fighting games such as mortal kombat and the king of fighters sports games such as nba jam also briefly became popular in arcades during this period transition to 3d 3d computer graphics using polygons were soon popularized by yu suzukis sega am2 games virtua racing 1992 and virtua fighter 1993 both running on the sega model 1 arcade system board however with the advent of 32 and 64bit consoles in the mid1990s home video game consoles such as the sega saturn playstation and nintendo 64 also became able to produce texturemapped 3d graphics increasing numbers of players would wait for popular arcade games to be ported to consoles rather than pumping coins into arcade kiosks this trend increased with the introduction of more realistic peripherals for computer and console game systems such as force feedback aircraft joysticks and racing wheelpedal kits which allowed home systems to approach some of the realism and immersion formerly limited to the arcades likewise namco released the namco system 23 to rival the model 3 by 1998 however segas new console the dreamcast could produce 3d graphics onpar with the sega naomi arcade machine after producing the more powerful hikaru board in 1999 and naomi 2 in 2000 sega eventually stopped manufacturing custom arcade system boards with their subsequent arcade boards being based on either consoles or commercial pc components as patronage of arcades declined many were forced to close down classic coinoperated games have largely become the province of dedicated hobbyists and as a tertiary attraction for some businesses such as movie theaters batting cages miniature golf courses and arcades attached to game stores such as fye the gap left by the old corner arcades was partly filled by large amusement centers dedicated to providing clean safe environments and costly game control systems unavailable to home users these newer arcade titles offered games based on driving sports like skiing or cycling and rhythm games like dance dance revolution and pathbased shooting gallery games like time crisis which have taken a large part of the market dave busters and gameworks are two large chains in the united states with this type of environment aimed at adults and older kids they feature full service restaurants with full liquor bars and have a wide variety of video game and hands on electronic gaming options chuck e cheeses is a similar type of business for younger children handhelds come of age in 1989 nintendo released the game boy the first handheld game console since the illfated microvision ten years before the design team headed by gunpei yokoi had also been responsible for the game watch systems included with the system was tetris which became one of the best sold video games of all time and was ported to a large variety of systems several rival handhelds made their debut in the early 90s including the sega game gear and atari lynx the first handheld with color lcd display although these systems were more technologically advanced they were hampered by higher battery consumption and less thirdparty developer support while some of the other systems remained in production until the mid1990s the game boy and its successive incarnations the game boy pocket game boy color and game boy advance would be virtually unchallenged for dominance in the handheld market until the playstation portable was released in 2004 to compete with nintendos successor to the game boy line the nintendo ds pc gaming the increasing computing power and decreasing cost of processors such as the intel 80386 intel 80486 and motorola 68030 caused the rise of 3d graphics and multimedia abilities through sound cards and cdroms early 3d games began with flat shading graphics elite starglider 2 or alpha waves and then simple forms of texture mapping 1989 and the early 1990s saw the release and spread of the multiuser dungeon mud codebases dikumud and lpmud leading to a tremendous increase in the proliferation and popularity of muds before the end of the decade the evolution of the genre continued through graphical muds into the first massively multiplayer online roleplaying games mmorpgs which freed users from the limited number of simultaneous players in other games and brought persistent worlds to the mass market in the early 1990s shareware distribution was a popular method of publishing games for smaller developers including thenfledgling companies such as apogee now 3d realms epic megagames now epic games and id software this gave consumers the chance to try a trial portion of the game usually restricted to a games complete first section or episode before purchasing the full game racks of games on single 514 and later 35 floppy disks were common in computer stores often only costing a few dollars each since the shareware versions were essentially free the cost only needed to cover the disk and minimal packaging as the increasing size of games in the mid1990s made them impractical to fit on floppies and retail publishers and developers began to earnestly mimic the practice shareware games were replaced by shorter game demos often only one or two levels distributed free on cds with gaming magazines and over the internet realtime strategy became a popular genre of computer games in the early 90s with dune ii setting the standard game mechanics of many games since meanwhile alone in the dark influenced the survivalhorror genre with its actionadventure elements it established the formula that would later flourish on cdrombased consoles with games such as resident evil which coined the name survival horror and popularized the genre and silent hill graphic adventure games continued to evolve during this period with the creation of the pointandclick genre some of the genres most prolific titles were being produced by sierra entertainment and lucasarts during the 90s and myst and its sequels inspired a new style of puzzlebased adventure games it was in the 1990s that maxis began publishing its successful line of sim games starting with simcity and continuing with a variety of titles such as simearth simcity 2000 and eventually the sims which was first released in early 2000 in 1996 3dfx interactive released the voodoo chipset leading to the first affordable 3d accelerator cards for personal computers these devoted 3d rendering daughterboards performed a portion of the computations and memoryhandling required for moredetailed threedimensional graphics mainly texture filtering allowing for moredetailed graphics than would be possible if the cpu were required to handle both game logic and all the graphical tasks firstperson shooters fps were among the first to take advantage of this new technology while other games would also make use of it the fps would become the main driving force behind the development of new 3d hardware and the yardstick by which its performance would be measured usually quantified as the number of frames per second rendered for a given scene in a given game several other less mainstream genres were created in this decade looking glass studios thief the dark project and its sequel were the first to coin the term first person sneaker and the turnbased strategy progressed further with the heroes of might and magic series popularizing the thus far niche and complex genre id softwares 1996 game quake pioneered play over the internet in firstperson shooters internet multiplayer ability became a de facto requirement in most fps games since other genres also began to offer online play in the late 90s including realtime strategy games as age of empires the warcraft and starcraft series and turnbased games such as heroes of might and magic developments in web browser plugins like java and adobe flash allowed for simple browserbased games fifth generation consoles 19932005 32 and 64bit fifth generation of video game consoles the sony playstation the sega saturn in 1993 atari reentered the home console market with the introduction of the atari jaguar also in 1993 the 3do company released the 3do interactive multiplayer which though highly advertised and promoted failed to catch up to the sales of the jaguar due to its high pricetag both consoles had very low sales and few quality games eventually leading to their demise in 1994 three new consoles were released in japan the sega saturn the sony playstation and the pcfx the saturn and the playstation later seeing release in north america in 1995 the playstation quickly outsold all of its competitors mainly on the strength of its available titles with the exception of the aging super nintendo entertainment system which still had the support of many major game companies the virtual boy from nintendo was released in 1995 as one of the first consumer consoles providing 3d depth perception but did not achieve high sales largely due to the monochrome display and the lack of thirdparty support in 1996 the virtual boy was taken off the market after many delays during which sonys playstation gained industry acceptance nintendo released its 64bit console the nintendo 64 in 1996 the consoles flagship title super mario 64 became a defining title for 3d platformer games parappa the rapper popularized music video games in japan with its 1996 debut on the playstation subsequent music and dance games like beatmania and dance dance revolution became ubiquitous attractions in japanese arcades while parappa ddr and other games found a cult following when brought to north america music games would not gain a wide audience in the market until the next decade with titles like guitar hero also in 1996 capcom released resident evil the first well known survival horror game it was a huge success selling over 2 million copies and is considered one of the best games on the playstation other milestone games of the era include rares nintendo 64 title goldeneye 007 1997 which was critically acclaimed for bringing innovation as being the first major firstperson shooter that was exclusive to a console and for pioneering certain features that became staples of the genre such as scopes headshots and objectivebased missions the legend of zelda ocarina of time 1998 for the nintendo 64 is one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time and is still the highest ranked game across all platforms on video game aggregator metacritic the title also featured many innovations such as ztargeting which has persisted through subsequent zelda titles on newer consoles and is commonly used in many other franchises today nintendos choice to continue using rom cartridges instead of moving to cdroms for the nintendo 64 unique among the consoles of this period proved to have negative consequences for the console and for nintendos market share while cartridges had faster access times were more durable and resistant to unlicensed copying cds could hold far more data 650mb over ten times the capacity of the largest n64 rom at 64mb and cost far less to produce causing many game companies to turn to nintendos cdbased competitors notably square which had released all prior games in its final fantasy series for nintendo consoles now turned exclusively to the playstation final fantasy vii 1997 was a massive success establishing the popularity of roleplaying video games in the west and making the playstation the primary console for the genre taking the crown from nintendo who had enjoyed it with the snes and squares then nintendoexclusive final fantasy secret of mana and chrono trigger titles copies of ffvii still command likenew prices of between us3050 on the used market square would not return to nintendos main console platforms until 2003 with the gamecube and the crossplatform title final fantasy crystal chronicles the only squarepublished title for that console and has not to date released a main series final fantasy title for a nintendo platform since ffvi for the snes capcom also largely departed from nintendo during the n64 days the next 4 installments of its popular mega man 2d platform shooter were released on playstation and saturn capcom was somewhat quicker and more eager to return than square however providing two anthologies of mega man titles for the gamecube including mega man 8 and mega man x46 that nintendo players had missed by the end of this period sony had become the leader in the video game market the saturn was moderately successful in japan but a commercial failure in north america and europe leaving sega outside of the main competition the n64 achieved huge success in north america and europe though it never surpassed playstations sales or was as popular in japan and began to show a decline in thirdparty support for nintendos home consoles this generation ended with the discontinuation of the playstation known in its reengineered form as the psone in march 2005 transition to 3d and cds the fifth generation is most noted for the rise of fully 3d games while there were games prior that had used three dimensional environments such as virtua racing and star fox it was in this era that many game designers began to move traditionally 2d and pseudo3d genres into full 3d super mario 64 and the legend of zelda ocarina of time on the n64 crash bandicoot and spyro the dragon on the playstation and nights into dreams on the saturn are prime examples of this trend their 3d environments were widely marketed and they steered the industrys focus away from sidescrolling and railstyle titles and opened doors to more complex games and genres games like goldeneye 007 ocarina of time or virtua fighter were nothing like shootemups rpgs or fighting games before them 3d became the main focus in this period as was a slow decline of cartridges in favor of cds which allowed far greater storage capacity than what formerly possible the n64 was the last major home console to use the cartridge format although it persists to this day in handheld games on nintendo and sony devices using memory cards similar to secure digital sd cards mobile phone gaming mobile game mobile phones began becoming video gaming platforms when nokia installed snake onto its line of mobile phones in 1997 nokia 6110 as the game gained popularity every major phone brand offered time killer games that could be played in very short moments such as waiting for a bus mobile phone games early on were limited by the modest size of the phone screens that were all monochrome the very limited amount of memory and processing power on phones and the drain on the battery 2000s this section needs additional citations for verification please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources unsourced material may be challenged and removed november 2007 learn how and when to remove this template message 2000s in video gaming the 2000s decade showed innovation on both consoles and pcs and an increasingly competitive market for portable game systems the phenomena of usercreated modifications or mods for games one trend that began during the wolfenstein 3d and doomera continued into the start of the 21st century the most famous example is that of counterstrike released in 1999 it is still one of the most popular online firstperson shooter even though it was created as a mod for halflife by two independent programmers eventually game designers realized the potential of mods and custom content in general to enhance the value of their games and so began to encourage its creation some examples of this include unreal tournament which allowed players to import 3dsmax scenes to use as character models and maxis the sims for which players could create custom objects in china video game consoles were banned in june 2000 this has led to an explosion in the popularity of computer games especially mmos consoles and the games for them are easily acquired however as there is a robust grey market importing and distributing them across the country another side effect of this law has been increased copyright infringement of video games sixth generation consoles 19982013 sixth generation of video game consoles in the sixth generation of video game consoles sega exited the hardware market nintendo fell behind sony solidified its lead in the industry and microsoft developed their first gaming console the generation opened with the launch of the sega dreamcast in 1998 as the first console with a builtin modem for internet support and online play it was initially successful but sales and popularity would start to fall this has been attributed to segas damaged reputation from the relative failures of the 32x and saturn copyright infringement and the huge anticipation for the upcoming playstation 2 the dreamcasts library contains many titles considered creative and innovative including the shenmue series which are regarded as a major step forward for 3d openworld gameplay production for the console would discontinue in most markets by 2002 and it would be segas final console before it reorganized its business as a third party game provider only partnering primarily with its old rival nintendo the second console of the generation released in 2000 was sonys playstation 2 ps2 which featured dvdbased game discs with 47gb capacity increased processor and graphics ability over its predecessor including progressivescan component video connections builtin 4player connection available ethernet adapter which became builtin with the winter 2004 release of the slimline ps2 chassis and the ability to play dvd movies and audio cds eliminating the need for a separate dvd player and making the ps2 a complete home entertainment console the console was highly successful during the generation nintendo followed a year later with the gamecube codenamed dolphin while in development the companys first optical discbased console while it had the componentvideo ability of its contemporaries the gamecube suffered in several ways compared to sonys ps2 first the ps2s high anticipation and oneyear head start gained it player and developer attention before the gcns release as a result the gamecube had less thirdparty backing and very few thirdparty exclusives mostly from nintendofaithful studios such as rare and the nowdefunct midway games crossplatform giants like capcom electronic arts and activision released most of their gamecube titles on other consoles as well while square enix released highdemand ps2 exclusives the gcns game disc capacity was a third that of the ps2s fullsize dvd disks forcing a few games to be released on multiple discs and most titles to compromise on texture quality and other features of gamecube games when other platforms had no such limitations on their versions it had no backward compatibility with the nowobsolete cartridges of the n64 it was a dedicated game console with the optical drive being too small to hold a fullsize cd or dvd lastly the gamecube was hindered by a reputation for being a kids console due to its initial launch color scheme and lack of maturecontent games which the current market appeared to want though t and mrated titles did exist on the gamecube almost all gcn games were erated and mostly cartoonstyle in their art design the xbox microsofts entry into the video game console industry before the end of 2001 microsoft corporation best known for its windows operating system and its professional productivity software entered the console market with the xbox based on intels pentium iii cpu the console used a great deal of pc technology to leverage its internal development making games for pc easily portable to the xbox to gain market share and maintain its toehold in the market microsoft reportedly sold the xbox at a significant loss and concentrated on drawing profit from game developing and publishing shortly after its release in november 2001 bungie studios halo combat evolved instantly became the driving point of the xboxs success and the halo series would go on to become one of the most successful console shooter franchises of all time by the end of the generation the xbox had drawn even with the nintendo gamecube in sales globally but since nearly all of its sales were in north america it pushed nintendo into third place in the american market in 2001 grand theft auto iii was released popularizing open world games by using a nonlinear style of gameplay it was very successful both critically and commercially and is considered a huge milestone in gaming it was also yet another set piece in the debate over video game violence and adult content with advocacy groups decrying the series glorification of prostitution the mafia and violence including that against first responders such as police and ems nintendo still dominated the handheld gaming market during this period the game boy advance released in 2001 maintained nintendos market position with a highresolution fullcolor lcd screen and 16bit processor allowing ports of snes games and simpler companions to n64 and gamecube games finnish cellphone maker nokia entered the handheld scene with the ngage but it failed to win a significant following in january 2013 sony announced that the playstation 2 had been discontinued worldwide ending the sixth generation return of alternative controllers one significant feature of this generation was various manufacturers renewed fondness for addon peripheral controllers while alternative controllers werent new nintendo supported several for the nes and pc games have long supported driving wheels and aircraft joysticks console games built around them became some of the biggest hits of the decade konami sold a softplastic mat version of its foot controls for its dance dance revolution franchise in 1998 sega came out with samba de amigos maraca controllers nintendos bongo controller worked with a few games in its donkey kong franchise publisher redoctane introduced guitar hero and its distinctive guitarshaped controllers for the playstation 2 meanwhile sony developed the eyetoy peripheral a camera that could detect player movement for the playstation 2 this would further be developed into wholebody tracking technologies such as sonys playstation move and microsofts kinect online gaming rises to prominence as affordable broadband internet connectivity spread many publishers turned to online gaming as a way of innovating massively multiplayer online roleplaying games mmorpgs featured significant titles for the pc market like runescape world of warcraft everquest and ultima online historically consolebased mmorpgs have been few in number due to the lack of bundled internet connectivity options for the platforms this made it hard to establish a large enough subscription community to justify the development costs the first significant console mmorpgs were phantasy star online on the sega dreamcast which had a built in modem and aftermarket ethernet adapter followed by final fantasy xi for the sony playstation 2 an aftermarket ethernet adapter was shipped to support this game every major platform released since the dreamcast has either been bundled with the ability to support an internet connection or has had the option available as an aftermarket addon microsofts xbox also had its own online gaming service called xbox live xbox live was a huge success and proved to be a driving force for the xbox with games like halo 2 that were highly popular mobile games mobile game in the early 2000s decade mobile games had gained mainstream popularity in japanese mobile phone culture years before the united states or europe by 2003 a wide variety of mobile games were available on japanese phones ranging from puzzle games and virtual pet titles that use camera phone and fingerprint scanner technologies to 3d games with playstationquality graphics older arcadestyle games became very popular on mobile phones which were an ideal platform for arcadestyle games designed for shorter play sessions namco began making attempts to introduce mobile gaming culture to europe in 2003 mobile gaming interest was raised when nokia launched its ngage phone and handheld gaming platform in 2003 while about two million handsets were sold the product line wasnt seen as a success and was withdrawn from nokias lineup meanwhile many game developers had noticed that more advanced phones had color screens and enough memory and processing power to do reasonable gaming mobile phone gaming revenues passed 1 billion dollars in 2003 and passed 5 billion dollars in 2007 accounting for a quarter of all videogaming software revenues more advanced phones came to the market such as the nseries smartphone by nokia in 2005 and the iphone by apple in 2007 which strongly added to the appeal of mobile phone gaming in 2008 nokia didnt revise the ngage brand but published a software library of games to its topend phones at apples app store in 2008 more than half of all applications sold were iphone games due to the debut of app stores created by apple and google plus the lowcost retail price of downloadable phone apps games available on smartphones increasingly rival the video game console market among the most successful mobile games of this period is angry birds which released in 2009 reached 2 million downloads within one year since 2007 the fast growing mobile market in african countries such as nigeria and kenya has also resulted in a growth in mobile game development local developers have taken advantage of the recent increase in mobile internet connection in countries where broadband is rarely available and console games are costly though locally developed applications have difficulty competing against millions of western applications available on the google play store seventh generation consoles 2005present seventh generation of video game consoles the wii not only became a global success for nintendo but also made a massive gaming trend of playing with motion control the generation opened early for handheld consoles as nintendo introduced their nintendo ds and sony premiered the playstation portable psp within a month of each other in 2004 while the psp boasted superior graphics and power following a trend established since the mid1980s nintendo gambled on a lowerpower design but featuring a novel control interface the dss two screens proved extremely popular with consumers especially young children and middleaged gamers who were drawn to the device by nintendos nintendogs and brain age series respectively the psp attracted a significant portion of veteran gamers in north america and was very popular in japan though a large portion of its visual novels and animebased games have never been localized in the west this combined allowed nintendo to continue its dominance in handheld gaming nokia withdrew their ngage platform in 2005 but reintroduced the brand as a gameoriented service for highend smartphones on april 3 2008 in console gaming microsoft stepped forward first in november 2005 with the xbox 360 and sony followed in 2006 with the playstation 3 released in europe in march 2007 setting the technology standard for the generation both featured highdefinition graphics over hdmi connections large hard diskbased secondary storage for save games and downloaded content integrated networking and a companion online gameplay and sales platform with xbox live and the playstation network respectively both were formidable systems that were the first to challenge personal computers in power at launch while offering a relatively modest price compared to them while both cost more than most past consoles the xbox 360 enjoyed a substantial price edge selling for either 300 or 400 depending on model while the ps3 launched with models priced at 500 and 600 coming with bluray disc and wifi the playstation 3 was the most costly game console on the market since panasonics version of the 3do which retailed for little under 700 the playstation 3s high price led to the console being defeated by the xbox 360 also resulting in xbox 360 gaining market leadership until 2008 thus breaking the streak of dominance that the playstation brand once had which was started in 1994 with the success of the original playstation however the slim model and the playstation move controllers caused a massive recovery for playstation 3 and the console would soon outsell xbox 360 by 2013 in this generation nintendo not only secured its dominance in the handheld video game market but also successfully regained total dominance on both the home video game market and the entire video game industry with the release of its home console the wii while the wii had lower technical specifications than both the xbox 360 and playstation 3 in june 2009 sony announced that it would release its psp go for us24999 on october 1 in europe and north america and japan on november 1 the psp go was a newer slimmer version of the psp which had the control pad slide from the base where its screen covers most of the front side increases in development budgets with highdefinition video an undeniable hit with veteran gamers seeking immersive experiences expectations for visuals in games along with the increasing complexity of productions resulted in a spike in the development budgets of gaming companies while some game studios saw their xbox 360 projects pay off the unexpected weakness of ps3 sales resulted in heavy losses for a few developers and many publishers broke formerly arranged ps3 exclusivity arrangements or cancelled ps3 game projects entirely due to rising budgets rise of casual pc games see also casual game social network game and mobile game starting with pcs a new trend in casual games with limited complexity and designed for shortened or impromptu play sessions began to draw attention from the industry many were puzzle games such as popcaps bejeweled and playfirsts diner dash while others were games with a more relaxed pace and openended play the biggest hit was the sims by maxis which went on to become the best selling computer game of all time surpassing myst other casual games include happy farm and zynga games like mafia wars farmville and caf world among many others which are tied into social networking sites such as myspace facebook and mixi these games are typically free to play with the option to buy in game items and stats with money andor reward offers in 2008 social network games began gaining mainstream popularity following the release of happy farm in china other popular social network games include yoville mob wars mafia wars and frontierville cloud computing comes to games in 2009 a few cloud computing services were announced targeted at video games these services allow the graphics rendering of the video games to be done away from the end user and a video stream of the game to be passed to the user onlive allows the user to communicate with their servers where the video game rendering is taking place 2010s 2010s in video gaming the new decade has seen rising interest in the possibility of next generation consoles being developed in keeping with the traditional industry model of a fiveyear console life cycle however in the industry there is believed to be a lack of desire for another race to produce such a console reasons for this include the challenge and massive expense of creating consoles that are graphically superior to the current generation with sony and microsoft still looking to recoup development costs on their current consoles and the failure of content creation tools to keep up with the increased demands placed upon the people creating the games on june 14 2010 during e3 microsoft revealed their new xbox 360 console referred to as the xbox 360 s or slim microsoft made the unit smaller and quieter while also installing a 250gb hard drive and builtin 80211n wifi it started shipping to us stores the same day not reaching europe until july 13 the onlive cloudbased gaming system would be one of the first cloud gaming systems known in video game history eighth generation consoles 2012present nintendo 3ds eighth generation of video game consoles the nintendo 3ds is a handheld video game console revealed at nintendos e3 2010 press conference released in japan in february 2011 it was released worldwide less than a month later it uses autostereoscopic 3d to produce a 3d effect onscreen playstation vita wii u discontinued on january 27 2011 the playstation vita codenamed next generation portable or ngp during development the wii u is a video game console from nintendo billed as the successor to the wii it was mentioned in statement released by nintendo on april 25 2011 that the company was planning to reveal it during e3 2011 and that playable console units would be present as well codenamed project caf it was officially introduced on june 7 2011 with its final name wii u the console released in north america on november 18 and in europe australia and new zealand on november 30 2012 officially starting the eighth generation of video game consoles features of the new console include hd graphics support on wii u only and a controller the wii u gamepad which features a 62inch touch screen builtin that can be used as a second screen providing added info and interactivity such as asymmetric gameplay the wii u gamepad allows some games to be played without needing a tv set through offtv play most peripheral hardware from its predecessor the wii such as the wii remote and wii nunchuk classic controller and wii balance board are confirmed to work with the new console and the console is backward compatible with all wii and virtual console titles the wii u discontinues backwardcompatibility support for gamecube discs and controllers which also means that wii games that support the gamecubes controller will instead require use of an alternate control scheme such as the classic controller when playing them on the wii u the wii u also has its own more conventional controller the wii u pro controller which resembles an xbox 360 controller in form and function and is compatible with most wii u and virtual console titles but not original wii games the console is available in two sets the basic set includes the wii u console with 8 gb of internal memory the wii u gamepad an ac adapter an hdmi cable and the wii sensor bar the deluxe set includes all of the items in the basic set but it has 32 gb of internal memory instead of only 8 gb and is bundled with a gamepad charging cradle stands for the gamepad and the console as well as nintendo land the sensor bar is not included in the basic set in europe australia and new zealand playstation 4 the playstation 4 or ps4 is a video game console from sony computer entertainment billed as the successor to the playstation 3 the playstation 4 was officially announced at a press conference on february 20 2013 the fourth home console in sonys playstation series it was launched on november 15 2013 in north america and on november 29 2013 in europe and was launched on february 22 2014 in japan moving away from the cell architecture the playstation 4 is the first in the sony series to feature compatibility with the x86 architecture specifically x8664 which is a widely used platform common in many modern pcs the idea is to make video game development easier on the nextgeneration console attracting a broader range of developers large and small these changes highlight sonys effort to improve upon the lessons learned during the development production and release of the ps3 other notable hardware features of the playstation 4 include 8 gb of gddr5 ram memory and a faster bluray drive xbox one the xbox one is a video game console from microsoft billed as the successor to the xbox 360 the xbox one was officially announced at a press conference on may 21 2013 microsoft had intended to implement strict controls over game resale and drm controls but later reversed its decision due to public backlash it is the third home console in microsofts xbox series the release was delayed until sometime in 2014 in eight european countries belgium denmark finland netherlands norway russia sweden and switzerland due to various localization issues nintendo switch the wii u was met with slow consumer adoption with low sales primarily credited to a weak lineup of launch titles the nintendo switchs software supports online gaming through standard internet connectivity as well as local wireless ad hoc connectivity with other switch consoles nintendo switch games and software are available on both physical flashbased rom cartridges and digital distribution via nintendo eshop the system does not use region locking the nintendo switch competes on the console gaming market with contemporaries being sonys 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