The History of Video Gaming Systems

What would be a major technological advancement began with the Atari game console, which was released in the late 1970's. This new technology quickly became a favorite pastime, up until the mid 1980's, when the gaming community hit a standstill. People began to think that this gaming phenomenon had become just a fad, and just as the Yo-yo lost popularity, so did gaming. That is, until the year of 1989, when a company by the name of Nintendo decided to release its first attempt at a gaming console, the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. This console made gaming universally appealing to everyone, from gaming geeks to mainstream America.

After releasing its ever popular NES, Nintendo was then in the lead of the gaming industry. Nintendo is credited now for taking the gaming industry from its depression of the 1980's, to the 1990's multi-million dollar industry. At this point in the early 1990's, Nintendo was quickly becoming the gaming market's monopoly, with its only rival being the Sega Saturn.

This was about to change. After Nintendo's declination of an offer from Sony to make a CD-based console, Sony decided to take a stab at the market on their own, thus the Sony Playstation was born. The Playstation was five times more powerful than the Super NES, and also had the full ability to handle 3-D graphics, whereas the Super NES could barely use 3-D graphics.

The Playstation quickly stole the lead of the market from the Super NES, now leaving Nintendo and Sega straggling behind in the dust. With its cheap price, wide selection of great games, and more age-specific games, the Playstation attracted all audiences, whereas the Super NES targeted the younger audience, with its main focus being on simple games, and only a few mature audience games.

Nintendo soon made an attempt at regaining their former position in the gaming market with the Nintendo 64. It was slightly more powerful the Playstation, but was still operated with cartridges, where you couldn't hold as much information as a CD and cost more to manufacture than CDs. But alas, Nintendo was too late. By this point, Sony had established a solid foundation for its console, offering a much wider selection of games, and comparable graphics.

Sega, who at this point was barely remembered, also made a final attempt in the gaming industry with the release of their Dreamcast console. This console was much more powerful than both the Nintendo 64 and the Sony Playstation. However, the Dreamcast was released at a bad time when there was a rumor that Sony was developing another console called the Playstation 2, and the consumers were not interested in the unusual titles that Sega offered. And, with the release of the Playstation 2 only a few months after the release of the Dreamcast, many people decided to wait for the PS2 instead.

With the launch of the PS2, Sony promised that this system would be much more powerful than the Dreamcast. However, the PS2 wasn't much more noticeably powerful than the Dreamcast, and the makers of the games decided to stay with Sony, as it had a much larger fan base, and this left Sega falling behind. Not long after the PS2 was released, Sega decided to drop out of the gaming console market, and instead change their focus to creating games for all of the gaming consoles.
Seeing the gaming industry as an open opportunity for exploration, Microsoft decided to step up to the plate and create a system more powerful than the PS2, called the Xbox. But the PS2 showed its strength when it still led the market with its much larger game library and fan base. Nintendo also made a new console called the Gamecube, but for different reasons than Microsoft and Sony. The purpose of the Gamecube was to offer a system that offered fun and attractive games for all audiences.

This brings us to today's gaming console market. Both Microsoft and Sony are in development for new consoles to compete in the console war. Microsoft was the first to release their console, called the Xbox 360. In upcoming 2006, Sony plans to release the Playstation 3. Both systems have very similar system specifications, and this could be the determining factor in the console war. For Microsoft, the question is, was the 360 released too soon, only to possibly end up falling short of the upcoming PS3, or is Sony waiting too long to release their system that has power similar to that of the Xbox 360? But who knows, maybe Nintendo's present silence in the industry will only lead to the total demise of both the Xbox 360 and the PS3. But of course, only time will tell…