Timeline of game consoles

Arcade games had been around since the 1950's but the first actual game console was until 1972.

1972: 1st generation 

The Magnavox odyssey

Magnavox Odyssey

The original game console was named the magnavox Odyssey, all thought the game console was the first of its kind it didn't really sell many copes because it wasn't highlighted as a home entertainment system but as a way for magnavox to sell there new television. The odyssey certainly had a few good ideas for example: 

The odyssey didn't have a power button but was meant to simply turn on when the game was in.  Another nice feature is that at the time there wasn't the technology to make any graphics so magnavox sold the console with a number of sheets that would be placed over the television as a replacement for graphics and colour.
This was the first attempt at home console, although it was used to sell televisions the Odyssey started something incredible it caused a trend that has spread right up to the modern home consoles.  

1976:

Telstar (original)

 Telstar

Due to idea of the Odyssey a large number of companies began to try and copy the idea to true and succeed where the Odyssey had been let down due to poor marketing. One of these remodels was in 1976 and was called Telstar, the console didn't have as many versions of pong simply: tennis,hockey and handball. The Telstar was the first console to use an AY-3-8500 microchip, This meant that it could play a number of different versions of pong without having to insert a different cartridge. This chip was used in a number of different pong consoles. 

Comparison of 1st and 2nd generation consoles

With the end of the first generation of game consoles the second began to show itself the main difference between the two is that while first ten only played simple versions of pong, 2nd generation  played different games with the use of cartridges making the simple pong consoles obsolete and because of the new use of cartridges the system now used an impressive processing power (at the time) 4bits. 

1976: Second Generation 

Fairchild channel F 

The second generation started when the Fairchild Channel F was realised, this was the first console to offer 8bit gaming instead of the simple just versions of pong, You were able to buy a number of different games ranging from space invaders to video blackjack. The console only had 64 bytes of ram but was still the first console to offer the player an option to play against the computer another first for the gaming world was that the Fairchild had a "hold" button that was a simple pause button that allowed the player to change difficulty during the game. 

1977:

Atari 2600 

All tho the Fairchild was the first game console to use the outside method of game cartridges, the Atari 2600 is the console that receives the credit for bringing the idea to the mass market. The Atari had twice  the Ram of the Fairchild a whole 128 bytes. The Atari 2600 is known as founder of modern gaming.

1979:

Microvision

The Microvision was another interesting console realised in this Era simply because it was the first handheld console, it lasted four years before being discontinued due to a number of different problems that made the console very fragile, the screen leaked and broke itself with no way to stop that, the buttons but aside all these fragile faults it still managed to make a gross profit of 8 million.

1983

Vectrex 

The Vectrex wasn't the first console in the second generation far from it but it is by the most interesting of that generation. The reason it was so interesting is that the screen was built into the console itself and the consoles would slide out so the idea was that the console could be brought with you wherever you were but it would have be to plugged in to a main source. The Vectrex used vector graphics making it one of the first by had to have a plastic sheet above the screen to add colour. The key selling puts of the Vectrex was that it used a light pen and had a 3D imager four years anything else.

Comparison of 2nd and 3rd generation

The second generation of consoles had taken there hold of the market due to them being the only on the market until the third generation hit the screen because of there higher graphics and processor power they were a lot better than the consoles available causing the second generation to be replaced. Like the difference between the first and second, the third generation had double the processing power as the previous and now obsolete.

1983: Third generation

Nintendo Entertainment System

The Nintendo Entertainment System was the start of generation 3 of game consoles due to it being realised in july 1983 several months before Casio PV-1000. The NES is by far the best made console of this Era and has was known not to break because it didnt have many moving parts. The NES had a number of accessories that were years ahead of there time. For example the power glove which was a first attempt at using human movement to control the character. That wasn't the only thing that was made for the NES many items such as the super scope,power pad and many more were realised in order to give the console the widest range of consoles possible.

1986:

Atari 7800 

After the failure of the 5200 Atari tried to enter the market again with the Atari 7800, The console was meant to be the turning point and try to replace the poor reputation left by the Atari 5200. The Atari 7800 failed on the simple fact that nintendo had already had 3 years to get control of the market so the console was only able to sell short of 4 million consoles while its main rival the Nintendo Entertainment System sold around 62 million.

Comparison of 3rd and 4th generations

With consoles like the Nintendo entertainment system, companies were trying to constantly race towards a never ending finish line. This caused new more technically advanced consoles to be created to try and take a hold of the market so the 4th generation was born and quickly replaced 3rd with better sound and  16bit graphics.

1988 Fourth generation

Sega Genesis/Mega-drive

The Sega Genesis often referred to has the Sega Mega Drive came out between the years 1980 and 1990. This was the second console to be made for this era. The main selling point of this console is that it was the first official 16bit Era console because of its Motorola 68000 CISC microprocessor. This meant that the console would have better picture quality than any other console on the market while lacking in sound quality with its rivals. One of the most ridiculous problems is that the console only had three buttons and a D-pad so that the console wasn't really able to play fighting games.

1990

Super Nintendo 

The Super Nintendo Entertain System was released originally in 1990 and was built to take over the long successful line of the NES and compete with the success of the Sega Genesis, It competed with the Genesis using its 65C816 processor giving it the same quality pictures but a lot better sound quality. Even though the genesis had a two year start the SNES sold over 20 million more units. The console controllers itself was the first of its kind because it is the first controller to have a left and right bumpers making it more suitable for fighting games because it gave a wider range of moves. Even with the more suitable fighting games the SNES was more known for its classic RPG games. The most interesting thing about the Super Nintendo Entertainment System is that the original version began to change colour to a sort of yellow because of a chemical that was in the plastic that would oxides.

Comparison of 4th and 5th generation

The gaming industry had reached an unbelievable size due to how popular consoles had become so still trying to make money off this growing still growing market newer consoles were created the 5th generation which were better in every way to their pre-assessors.  

1994 - 5th Generation

Playstation 

The playstation was sony's first attempt in to the home console market and was released in 1994. This console was very popular because of its comfortable controllers. This console gave a new idea for the industry which was the idea of memory cards instead of hard drives, this made it easier for players to share data and take it wherever they went along with the use of analog controllers. The console itself uses a MIPS R3000A microprocessor.

1995

Virtual boy 

The virtual boy was released July 1995 during the long delay of the Nintendo 64 and it was meant to be  a virtual reality console featuring 3D games. The basic ideas of the console was that it was just goggles on a simple stand with a battery pack built into it. There were hundreds of problems with this console that main of which is that playing for long times could cause headaches. Another huge fault is that the "portable" console didn't really have any textures in its games so they looked boring and hard to understand making games frustrating. The console was discontinued only a year later with only 9 games ever made but several tried to give to the gimmick of virtual reality.

1996 

Nintendo 64 

The nintendo 64 was released in june 1996, It was built to continue the successful line of Nintendo console and compete with the playstation. It was known for the large number that have lasted because they are very durable consoles. The console uses a 93.75 MHz NEC VR4300. this particular console sold around 32.9 million. For its time the console was incredibly powerful and played 3D graphics with texture and proper rendering.

1998

Gameboy colour

The gameboy colour is a portable console that game out in 1998 and ran on AA batteries. In my personal and many others opinion this is the best portable console that has been made. For its time the portable console had a decent size but the screen is a bit to small and is impossible to play in daylight. The most impressive thing about this console is that since its release in 1998 it has sold 118.69 million units. This console had a Zilog Z80 so it was quite powerful for its time and used cartridges. the most popular games sold on for this console were Pokemon silver and Pokemon gold selling over 14 million units between them.

Comparison of 5th and 6th generation 

Still trying to control the market no company continued to let up and kept trying to increase there profits by creating new consoles to out shine the older less efficient models due to this the 5th generation was started these consoles were the first to have any kind of online service even if it wasn't advertised properly or had reached the mass market but it helped prove the concept of online play.

1998 Sixth Generation

Sega Dreamcast 

The sega dreamcast was the first console released for the sixth generation consoles and was the first console to feature online capabilities but it was quite buggy because it was the first time it had been done. The main reason this console was discontinued in 2002 was that although the idea was great but due to poor marketing it didn't receive the credit it dissevered. The console much like the NES had a large number of different attachments like guns,fishing rod and dreamcast eye. 

2000

Playstation 2

Playstation 2

The playstation was Sonys second attempt at making a successful console and building on the brand name created by the second console. This console was incrediblely successful and managed to sell 153.19 million units worldwide. The console itself used memory cards instead of the conventional hard drive had two controller ports. It was by far the best selling console of all time due to it being a great processor named the "Emotion Engine". Out of all the consoles of its Era it is the only one that hasn't been discontinued and still has several games made each year.

2001

Xbox

In 2001 Microsoft made there first contribution to the gaming market with the Xbox, Despite having a stronger processor and on paper looking better than the other consoles in the Era it was still unable to compete with the success of the playstation 2 only selling 24 million consoles. The console had a hard drive built into the basic works of the console. It was discontinued in 2006.

Comparison of 6th and 7th generation

Due to the success of the consoles in that era, 3 companies came out on top and continued onto controlling the latest 7th generation: Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. These consoles would have incredible amounts of processing power compared with the older models along with better sound and higher quality graphics. Everyone of these consoles features an online service that is often updated and works in most cases.

2005 - Seventh generation 

Xbox 360 

In 2005 Microsoft made there second attempt at the gaming market with the release of the Xbox360. The console features a 3.2 GHz Powerpc Tri-core xenon, a detachable hard drive with currently up to 256GB of memory. This was the first console to be able to support four players at once with out the aid of a multi controller port. The graphics are 500MHz delivered by ATI Xenos processor. The console has been going for around 7 years with several different versions being made along with a new slim version. The main problem with Xbox 360's is that 60% of them break within the the first 3/4 years due to a manufacturing error involving the heat sink which causes the motherboard ti disfigure and knock a few microchips loose causing the "red ring of death". 

2006 

Playstation 3 

During the year of 2006 sony decided to make there third successful console with the release of the playstation 3. This console started an argument between gamers that has lasted years after the realise of it and its main rival the Xbox 360. The console over all beats the xbox 360 in every way due to its better process and because of its durabilty. The main thing that attracts people to the PS3 is that the consoles online capability is a lot better than that of the xbox 360 and is free. The only real problem with the playstation 3 is that the systems are constantly being update and can often leave the console useless for several hours.

Timeline of Portable Consoles

1976 

Mattel electronic Auto Race

The first handheld console was the mattel auto race in 1976 and was a very simple racing game with 3 cars repeatedly racing against each other. The basic idea of the console like any driving game. The game features 2 switches 1 was to start the race and another to control the gears so that you could make the car a lot faster. The console also had a simple steer which was another switch that would make the car into either the left or right lanes allowing it to dodge on coming traffic.

1979 

Microvision Block Buster

The Microvision block buster was created by Microvision in 1979 has their attempt at entering the portable market while it had a large number of problems. The worst thing about this handheld console is a thing called screen rot this is where the console basically began to destroyed the screen due to it heating and causing the liquid inside to expand and leak through the screen. Another huge flaw is that the console broke when the console was over used due to the created added a plastic cover over all the bottom. The console itself only played a single game like the others of its time due to the fact there were no suitable ways off adding multiple games to it.

1989 

Nintendo Gameboy 

Nintendo made the Gameboy in 1989 as a way to increase there successful market of game consoles because they already had a large grip over the market with the NES and SNES but nothing to match in the portable console market. So the Gameboy was created and is by far the most successful console of its genre. This is because of its long battery life, decent sound quality and good screen resolution. The high end performance came from its CPU (a Custom 8-bit Sharp LR35902), this adds beautiful 160x144 pixels. The next year the Gameboy advanced was realised and continued to increase the Gameboy because of it having more colour, improved sound and all around better quality.

1991

Sega Game Gear

The Sega Game Gear was Sega's first attempt into entering the handheld console market. the console was based on the 8bit generation making it perfect to play older arcade games such as sonic which was its most popular game. The console would take 6 batteries and usual last between 4 and 5 hours so it wasn't that good with battery life. The console had several accessories made in order to try and increase its popularity such things like a additional battery pack, a TV tuner (which doesn't work on later models) and a Super Wide Gear (which gave the console a larger screen because its original was rather small this did have a considerable affect on battery life. The main processor is a Zilog Z80 8bit system, this gave the game gear 32 different colours and a maximum sprites 64.

1998

Gameboy Colour

Nintendo wanting to continue of there portable handheld consoles they released the Gameboy colour in 1998. This console was twice as fast and twice the memory as its original the standard Gameboy. The most impressive thing about this console was tat it was backwards compatible with the younger models games making the first handheld console to do that. This gave Nintendo a huge lead of its competitors because there handheld device already had a large library of games. The most impressive thing about the Gameboy colour was that it could display a maximum 54 colours on the screen at anyone time. This console had the same screen resolution as both the original gameboy and the Sega Game Gear.

2001

Gameboy Advanced

Still continuing there successful line of portable handheld consoles. Nintendo went to release the Gameboy advance it had a large screen that its predecessors and had a lot more processing power caused by its 16.8 MHz 32-bit ARM7TDMI with embedded memory. Another nice feature is that the console had shoulder buttons on either side giving more selection when using fighting games. Two years after the release of the advance a smaller version called the Gameboy advance SP was released this had the same processing power as the original but was smaller and had a rechargeable battery back. Both these consoles were backwards compatible because I gave them a huge library the second they were released. 

2003

N-Gage

Seeing the enormous money to be made from the rapidly growing industry of handheld consoles, Nokia decided to try too enter the market with the N-Gage. The idea of this console was that it would be a mobile phone, a MP3 player as well as being able to play different games. This wasn't a very popular console selling only 3 million units despite having online capabilities and a nice little 104MHz ARM 920T CPU.

2004

Nintendo DS

Nintendo continued there successful line of handheld consoles after the Gameboy Advance with the Nintendo DS. This console featured two screens, the bottom of which was a touch screen. To power both these screens it has a 67.028 MHz ARM946E-S and 33.512 MHz ARM7TDMI. The Nintendo DS sold even more consoles that the previous consoles.153.87 million consoles (all models). The DS was a huge jump for the market because a console with a touch screen hadn't been seen during its time, while as of 14/05/2013 there are now several different consoles/tablets that play touchs screen games.

Personal Computer

Computers had been used to play games since 1952 when the simple version of tic tac toe was created on the EDSAC, this idea didn't really take off because computers where being used in businesses and universities for people to do large math sums quickly. It wasn't until 1962 when 3 students at a university made "Spacewars" on a PDP-1 mainframe (normally used statistical calculations) but these games use large computers to run there simple games. It wasn't until the early 1970's when a company called International Business Machine (IBM) began development on  a small computer that would be able to go into someones home and preform the same basic tasks that larger machines could easily do, this idea was in development until around 1981.

Home PCs were considered better than the current generation of game consoles because they had better sound and graphic capabilities along with being upgradeable unlike home consoles which you were unable to upgrade. This gave home computers a big lead over consoles because quality was better so that they appealed to the younger market while still being able to preform the tasks that the older members of the family would want to do. Another key feature that i beleive made the computer better than home consoles is that they had a mouse and keyboard which made them better for playing first person shooters and strategy games. 

During the 1980's prices of computers fell because the technology used in them became easier to make so it all became alot cheaper. During this time there were three main comapines producing computers Commadore,IBM and sinclair

Nintendo and Sega's roles in the Arcade industry

Nintendo and Sega didn't have much of a role in the start of the Arcade Industry but once they saw the potention of the market, They both became key points in its development.

Nintendo:

Nintendo only entered this market in 1978 with an unoriginal game called Computer Othello but wasnt until 1979 when they first caught the publics eye with a simple game called Sheriff. This game was the first of its kind because it featured to dualsticks one for moving and one for aiming. While at the time the idea of 8 way joystick was discarded it is now used in almost all shooting games such as the Call of Duty series, Left for Dead 1 & 2 and The Gears of War trilogy allong with hundreds of other games. During this year Nintendo made another entry into the market a game called Radar Scope and was the first game to ever have three dimension third person perspective which again is now used in hundreds of games.
The next game that Nintendo made was called Space fever, the game itself was unoriginal and was simplely a coloured version of the popular game realise a year before Space Invaders. From 1980 to the present date, Nintendo built a number of game consoles but not many new technologies were introduced by them in this period.

Sega:

Sega caught the public's eye three years earlier than Nintendo were able too because of a game they named Moto-cross, the main reason that this received so much attention wasnt because it was one of the first motorbike racing games but because it was the first of its kind too have haptic feedback (the controller would virbrate if the player went off the track). The same year they realised Road Race one of the first forward scrolling racing games. The next time attention was drawn to Sega was when the game Secret Base was realised this was because it was a first games to have two player cooperative.
In the Arcade industry one of Sega's biggest success was a game called Eliminator, this was because it was the first Arcade machine to use coloured vectors. Allong with that it is the only Four player vector game ever made. The very next year Sega was in the spot light again because they had built one of them most elaborate vector games ever made. The game was based of the popular cult tv show Star trek and featured 5 different controls, six different kinds of enemies and over 40 levels.


Overall i beleive that Sega and Nintendo were cruscial to the Arcade Industry for the simple that without them the industry wouldnt have be able to expand at the right it did so it and the home console Inudstry wouldnt be in the place it was today.

Decline of the Arcade Industry

Over the past 30 years, the Arcade industry had grown dramatic and was now thanks to realises like donkey kong (1981) and pacman (1980). The industry around this time was worth 8 billion this was mostly due to that fact that game consoles weren't able to provide the level of graphics,sound quality or the atmosphere that came with going with few friends and playing against them.

This slowly began to change with the start of the fifth era of game consoles, often refered to as the 32 bit era but basicly the arcade machines were no longer able to give a better level of quality so people were beginning to see that it was cheaper to buy a console with lots of games instead of putting coins in a single machine for a short go on a single game.That was the fall of the Arcade machine simplely because they weren't able to compete with the cheaper option of the nintendo 64,sony playstation and the sega saturn.





The only reason that the Arcade industry didnt go completely bust was because of the features that had been added to make it feel more real such as cockpit controls, big car shaped boxes, and specialized controls for the games.

The history of Arcade Machines

Computer gaming started in the 1958 when the game Tennis for Two was build using equipment remaining from the second world war . The game itself was very simple and featured a side view of a table tennis table with a ball and paddles. After that in 1962 to the second computer game was made Spacewars, this game featured to players flying around a small star attempting to shoot each other while being dragged towards the small star placed in the centre of the screen.

After the success of Tennis for Two and Spacewars other people began to try and build there own arcade machine in order to be part of this fast to craze. One of the main people that did this was Nolan Bushnell who later co-founded Atari. Nolan Bushnell was one of the first people to realise that you could make a large amount of money so he built a very simple game called Pong the game featured the overview of a table-tennis court with a ball and two paddles. The game was so successful that there were reports of machines breaking due to the large amounts of coins being inserted into the machines on a daily bases. This was the main reason that atari had such a large control over the market, there wasn't much of an advantage it was merely they were first to establish their name in the market. Along with pong being realised in 1972 the Magnavox Odyssey was realised as the first home game console it featured several simple games all featuring different versions of Pongs.
At this point arcade machines such as Pong are dominating the market because graphics, sound and designs of the games, while home game consoling was still lacking being unable to compete with the higher level of quality offered by Arcade machines.

After the success of Pong, many more companies during 1975 began to try and enter the arcade market one of which was a game called Gun Fight and it was the first arcade machine to use a micro-processor because it gave the game better graphics and a much smooth animation. The game featured human to human combat and had a simple scoring system.


The years between 1978 and 1986 are refereed to as the golden ages of arcade machines is because arcade machines still had better processing power than the home consoles of that era so they had a very market using these machines instead of buying the consoles at home.
The machine said to have started the golden age is Space Invaders, This game is famous around the world for a number of reasons one of which is that it was the first game to have an increasing difficultly. The increasing difficultly wasn't actually part of the program because at the time the process wasn't quite powerful to move all the enemies around the screen so as the player begins to destroy the targets, The process begins to be able to handle moving the remain enemies around the screen so they begin to increase speed.
During this period due to the mass of money being made the technology involved increased dramaticly with stronger microprocessors allowing them to increase the gap of quality between Arcade and Home Console.

Over the years of 1978 to 1986 the Arcade Industry increased dramaticly due to two of the three many companies in the race to control the market, Sega and Nintendo both of these companies trying to out do the other and get full control of the industry, This meant they both were trying to improve their the technology so things like micro-processors became a lot more powerful and new interesting graphics were made to try and control the market.


After 1986 arcade machines began to lose there grip over the market because home consoles were finally able to keep up with the level of quality provided. This also meant that people were able to see that it was able to buy a home console because you would only have to pay once rather than have to constantly put money in to play just a single game while with a home console you were able to play a large number of different games once you had the game console. While the Arcade machine market is a former shadow of what is was in the "golden age" there are still a new game machines being made every year but they no longer have the perks of better graphics and sound quality but instead had to cope with the fact that it was easier to buy a home console because u could have a large number of games and you wouldn't have to keep adding coins into the machines.