It's been more than thirty years since the advent of the home video game (Video Game), which is considered to be a relatively old industry, and the industry has had some rather storybook histories along the way, stories filled with sobering failures, exciting innovations, and unbelievable follies.
Here are a few of those stories, in the hope that they'll jog your memory of days gone by.
From these stories, perhaps we can also predict who will be the ultimate victor in the next-generation console wars.
First, the era of the red and white machine
It is said that the world's first home console was born in the 1970s, can only show a simple square line, but also monochrome, at that time can not be said that this is an "industry", to change the history of Japan's Nintendo ( Nintendo), in the 1980s, Japan's Nintendo opened up a new era of red and white machines, then, the real meaning of home games FC began to popularize the world, and gradually produced a huge home games industry.
Nintendo FC Sega MD Nintendo SFC
Release date July 15, 1983 October 29, 1988 November 21, 1990
Cumulative sales of 62.91 million units, 30.75 million units, and 49.1 million units
Of these, 19.35 million were in Japan, 8.75 million were in the United States, and 17.17 million were in the United States. Of these, 42.56 million were in the U.S., 22.0 million were in the U.S., and 31.93 million were in the U.S.
CPU Motorola 6502 Motorola M68000 Motorola 65836
CPU Running Frequency 1.79MHz 7.67MHz 3.58MHz
Resolution: 256X240 320X224 512X448
Maximum Color: 0.5mm, 0.5mm, 0.5mm, 0.5mm, 0.5mm, 0.5mm
Maximum number of colors 52 colors 512 colors 32768
Number of colors on the same screen 16 colors 64 colors 256 colors
Maximum number of active blocks 64 80 128
Memory 2KB 64KB 128KB
Graphics 2KB 64KB 128KB
Software Carrier 32KB Cassette ROM Cassette with a capacity of 4MB Cassette with a capacity of 6MB
The beginning of the Japanese game industry
Nintendo's FC, known as the Family puter, is a game console produced by Nintendo of Japan in 1983, and many of the games nowadays have their antecedents from the FC.
The FC made a considerable contribution to the game industry, and it can even be said that the FC console was the starting point of the Japanese game industry.
FC was also popular in mainland China in the 1980s, when many people called it the red and white machine.
There were many classic games on the FC, such as the famous Contra, Dragon, Super Mario, Salomon, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Rockman, and so on. ......
After the FC was released, Sega's console SG-1000 was completely suppressed. was completely suppressed.
Shortly after the FC was launched, however, the hardware design of the first batch of FCs had serious bugs that could cause crashes.
In order to salvage Nintendo's reputation, P.Y. Yamauchi decided to recall the console, and lost 1.5 billion yen as a result.
But the incident helped Nintendo build a strong brand image, and when the FC was relaunched the following year, it sold 1.65 million units in a year.
The FC's debut in the US was even more successful.
The NES was the first to launch in New York in October 1985, with 15 games***.
By the end of 1985, the NES had sold 50,000 units in New York.
The NES then began to launch nationally in the US, selling a million units in a year and starting the recovery of the once-crumbling US home console market.
The 16-bit console era
The 16-bit console era began with the launch of the MD (Mega Driver), a 16-bit console from SEGA in Japan in 1988.
For SEGA, the US market was the real strategic center of gravity.
The console went on sale nationwide on September 15, 1989 for $190 USD.
With the US gaming market largely monopolized by Nintendo at the time, Sega decided to reach out to a new, older demographic and released a large number of games aimed at adult gamers.
Then Nintendo's SFC hit the market, and the competition between Sega and Nintendo heated up.
In 1992, Sega captured 55% of the market in North America, and in 1993, Sega's home console business reached an all-time high of 65% market share.
The last dynasty of 2D gaming
Between 1987 and 1988, the FC's lucrative revenues left Nintendo uninterested in developing a next-gen console.
Then, the Sega MD's rising market share forced Nintendo to start investing in 16-bit consoles.
The most significant feature of the SFC's design was the use of two graphics co-processors.
The SFC was originally scheduled for release in July 1989, but was delayed several times.
But thanks to Nintendo's massive third-party support, the SFC remained the most popular console among Japanese gamers despite its late arrival.
Nintendo had already received orders for 1.5 million units before the SFC went on sale.
On November 21st, the streets of Tokyo were filled with people waiting in line for the SFC at electronics stores, and many parents missed work to get their kids a console, causing a huge crowd to disrupt traffic in Tokyo.
On August 13, 1991, Nintendo launched the redesigned SNES in the U.S.
Unfortunately, the SNES was too late in the game's launch, as the MD had already built up a large enough base in the U.S.
The SNES was easily beaten by MD in its first year of release.
The weakening of Nintendo's power made it easy for PS to take over the US market.
By this time, however, Nintendo's good times were coming to an end.
Second, Sony's PS empire
In 1993, Nintendo and Sony began to cooperate and research and development of the next generation of hosts, however, during the development period, Nintendo and Sony in the game of the storage medium on the occurrence of a serious conflict, SONY proposed that should be used to do the game of the medium of the CD-ROM, because of the CD-ROM storage capacity, low-cost, easy and light, and Nintendo insisted on the use of cassette tapes, that cassette tapes read, and that Nintendo is not the only one to use the CD-ROM. to use cassette tapes, arguing that they were faster to read.
The dual-player argument was a big one, and in the end, Nintendo unilaterally terminated the partnership.
This definitely angered Sony, and in order to keep the molded product from being aborted, Sony decided to go ahead with the project alone, a decision that probably didn't occur to Sony, but would change the course of the entire home console development.
1994 was a historic year for consoles, when SONY released the Sony PS console (PlayStation), a 32-bit, CD-based home TV game system.
There were huge scenes of hundreds of people lining up to buy them in Akihabara and other places, and the first 100,000 units shipped were snapped up by noon, so that even the grandson of Sony president Norio Oga had to return empty-handed.
As the PS brand appeal makes many well-known software vendors have to join, PS console began to gradually show a blossoming situation, until the two platinum game makers Square and Enix announced that they would bring the masterpiece "Final Fantasy VII" and "Dragon Warrior VII" to PS, they caused an avalanche of effect is the same as an early pronouncement of the 32-bit hosts. The war of the ages is over.
Sega SS Sony PS Nintendo N64
Release date November 22, 1994 December 3, 1994 June 23, 1996
Cumulative sales 9.26 million units, over 100 million units, 32.93 million units
CPU Hitachi 32-bit SH2 32-bit RISC 64-bit MIPS R4300i
CPU operating frequency Hitachi 32-bit SH2 32-bit RISC 64-bit MIPS R4300i
CPU operating frequency Hitachi 32-bit SH2 32-bit RISC 64-bit MIPS R4300i
CPU Running Frequency 28.6MHz 33.8688MHz 94 MHZ
Screen Resolution: 640X480 640X480 640X480 640X480
Maximum Number of Colors 16.77 Million Colors 16.77 Million Colors 16.7 Million Colors
Polygon Processing Capability 300,000/sec 360,000/sec 150,000/sec
Memory 32Mbit 28Mbit 4MB RDRAM
Software Carrier 2x CD-Rom CD-Rom 64MB Cassette
Sega's Saturn SS debacle
In 1994, Sega also released its own next-generation console. Sega named the console the "Saturn" (SS, SEGA SATURN) - the sixth planet in the solar system, representing Sega's sixth console.
Almost all of the first 200,000 Saturns were pre-ordered a month before launch, and 150,000 sold out on launch day.
Most of the gamers who bought the Saturn did so for VR Fighters.
By the end of 1994, the Saturn had sold 500,000 units in total*** in Japan, outselling the PS during the same time period.
The competition between the two major 32-bit consoles came to a fever pitch on May 7, 1995, when Sony and Sega announced that they had sold more than 1 million units of both the PS and SS at the same time.
In the US market, however, Sega did not inherit MD's market dominance.
The US version of the Saturn cost $100 more than the PS, and actually performed less well than the PS.
In 1995, Sega and Sony fought a wild price war, with the Saturn narrowly ahead, and then, because the Saturn cost more to build than the PS, Sega couldn't afford to keep up with the huge cost pressures after 1996, and the Saturn collapsed in both the US and Japan.
The short-lived Nintendo N64
The N64 came out a year and a half after the SS and PS, but Nintendo, with its strong roots in Japan, still had widespread support from gamers, and the N64 debuted much stronger than the PS and SS in Japan, with the first 500,000 consoles selling out in just 10 days.
On September 30, 1996, the N64 launched in North America to similar success.
There was still a lot of confidence in Nintendo, who had monopolized the console market for a decade, and the N64 seemed to be more popular than the PS and SS.
Then the use of cassette tapes as the media was a huge disappointment to all third parties.
The N64's cassettes cost a whopping $25 to manufacture, while CD-ROMs were only 10 cents, so N64 games generally sold for $20 to $25 more than PS.
The N64 had the smallest variety of mainstream games in history, and lacked software support for months after its release, whereas the PS and SS had unprecedented game lineups.
The N64's strong debut was quickly and firmly squashed by the likes of Resident Evil.
From start to finish, the N64 was essentially a Nintendo-only show.
Sega's doomed DC
Sega's SS suffered greatly against the PS due to a flawed console design.
In developing the next-generation console, Hayao Nakayama, Sega's president at the time, decided to hire senior engineers from IBM to set up a separate development group in the U.S., while the Japanese side of the team led by Hideki Sato Ye in the simultaneous design of the mainframe, and in July 1997, the Sega executives decided to adopt the Japanese group's program and named it Dreamcast, a composite word of dream (Dream) and broadcast (Broadcast). (Broadcast).
It means spreading the dream to the players.
Sega had orders for 500,000 units of the console before it was released, but Sega's manufacturing partner, NEC, ran into serious production problems.
The first shipment of the DC in Japan was only 150,000 units, as the graphics chips could not be produced fast enough to keep up.
On September 9, 1999, the DC was launched in the US and sold 220,000 units that day.
By February 1999, DC sales in Japan totaled 900,000 units, failing to reach the one million units originally projected.
Despite the fact that the DC was far superior to the PS, the lack of software support began to take a toll on the DC in the face of PS hits such as Final Fantasy VII.
Into 2000, with the launch of the PS2, the DC was in full rout in Japan and the US.
In March 2001, Sega announced the discontinuation of the DC, and completely withdrew from the host market.
Lessons for Winners and Losers
In this console war, Sony's PS became the final winner. There are many reasons why Sony's PS beat its arch-rival, Sega's Saturn, some of them say that the price of the Saturn was higher than that of the PS, while the actual performance was not as good as that of the PS.
Although the Saturn and the PS were not uncommonly backed up by masterpieces, the PS's masterpiece was relatively The fate of the PS is ultimately determined by the big games that have gone down in history, such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Alloy Gear, Final Fantasy, and so on.
And Nintendo's failure lay in its outdated conception of the N64 as a game card-based console until 1996.
Nintendo paid the price for this foolish decision, and by the time Nintendo came to its senses and launched the NGC (NINTENDO GAME CUBE) console on CD-ROM in 2001, Sony's PS/PS2 had long since emerged as the new king of consoles.
Third, Sony's PS2 empire
At the beginning of 2000, online reservations for the PS2 officially began, but surprisingly, the site received more than 100,000 orders in the first minute.
The servers were overwhelmed and paralyzed on the spot.
The frenzy of reservations continued until the end of February, and ****380,000 PS2s were ordered.
On March 4, 2000, the launch of the PS2 caused a new rush to buy it.
There was even a 5,000-strong queue at Akihabara Electric Street in Tokyo, with several people at the head of the queue having pitched their tents four days earlier in a frenzy that was breathtaking.
In the end, SCEI created another industry myth: the PS2 sold a total of 980,000 units in three days, making it the fastest-selling TV game console of all time.
The PS2 shipped 1.15 million units in its debut in Japan, surpassing the original PS console that year.
But demand eventually outstripped supply, and price speculation began to spread on auction sites like eBay, where many PS2s were auctioned off for several times their official retail price, and even then, there were still plenty of gamers who paid the asking price.
When the PS2 debuted in 2000, there weren't a lot of games, but there weren't a lot of really big hits, and when you add in the fact that there was a lot of out-of-stock stock at the debut, sales of the software were pretty low.
However, by the turn of the year, as the supply of consoles gradually stabilized and big titles were released one after another, PS2 sales began to rocket until it finally sat on the throne as the dominant player on the existing console platform.
Famous game series born on the console include Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters, True Triad, and Kingdom Hearts.
Sega DC Sony PS2 Nintendo NGC Microsoft Xbox
Release date November 27, 1998 March 4, 2000 September 14, 2001 November 15, 2001
Cumulative sales 10.45 million units 111+ million units 18.5 million units 22+ million units
CPU. 128-bit SH4 128-bit EE IBM PowerPC 750CXe Intel Specialty Pentium III
CPU Running Frequency 206MHz 295MHz 485MHz 733MHz
GPU PowerVR2 GS at 147.456MHz ATI Flipper Main Frequency 162MHz nVidia NV2A
Maximum Color Emission 16.77 Million Colors (16-bit Color) 16.77 Million Colors (16-bit Color) 16.77 Million Colors (16-bit Color) 16.77 Million Colors (16-bit Color) 429.496 Million Colors (32-bit Color)
Multi-Colors Processing Capability 3Million/Second 75 Million/Second 12 Million/Second 116.5 Million/Second
RAM 16MB 32MB RDRAM 24MB 64MB
VGA Memory 8MB 4MB 16MB VGA and Memory*** Usage
Software Carrier GD-Rom 4x DVD-Rom Special 8cm DVD DVD-Rom
Nintendo NGC's counterattack
On March 3, 1999, the day after Sony revealed the PS2, Nintendo held a press conference with Panasonic*** to announce the development of the next-generation console, and announced that its performance specs would be above those of the PS2.
Then the NGC's debut lineup of games was so weak that the NGC shipped 450,000 units in its first shipment*** and only sold 300,000 within the first week, a stark contrast to the general lack of stock on other consoles.
The NGC's haste not only failed to suppress the PS2, but also put Nintendo in a dilemma.
The NGC's U.S. debut was again unfortunate enough to run into the formidable rivalry of the Xbox, resulting in its first North American sales of 469,000 units, nearly 100,000 fewer than the Xbox.
The weak game lineup is a dilemma that NGC never jumped out of from launch day.
After the release of Halo 2, NGC was left far behind by Xbox in Europe and the US.
The Challenge of the Microsoft XBOX
On November 15, 2001, Microsoft released the Xbox game console.
Although the PS2 had already sold over 20 million units worldwide by the time the Xbox was launched in the US, the incoming Xbox was still intimidating.
Microsoft hosted huge Xbox midnight premieres in New York and San Francisco, and Bill Gates was on hand in New York's Times Square to hand out the first Xbox to eager gamers at one minute past zero, and to experience the Xbox with them.
However, at the time, the low price of $299 compared to the power of the Xbox hardware was nothing short of a vicious sell-off.
At that price point, Microsoft was losing $125 on every Xbox sold.
And it's true that, while the Xbox is now firmly in second place with 20 million units sold worldwide, Microsoft's evaporative $1 billion/year splurge on hardware over the years is a bit of a shocker.
"The first generation was like a game, and if you played it well, then at the end he'd say, 'You can play it again.
'That's it!'" Bill Gates said.
Billions of dollars in losses just to "play it again"! The patience of the world's richest man chills everyone.
The success of Sony's empire
By this point, Sony's console empire had taken shape, and Sony had transformed itself from a gaming amateur into the biggest winner in the world of TV games.
Although Microsoft's surprise comeback in 2001 and Nintendo's pent-up counterattack brought some variability to the direction of the market, history and the facts have proven the PS2 to be the most successful gaming console of all time.
Fourth, the next generation of consoles
Time has passed, the three major manufacturers of the new generation of hosts has been fully listed, SONY, Microsoft and Nintendo have come up with their own kanji skills to promote their respective new products, this console war in the end is the deer in the headlights?
With the launch of Microsoft's XBOX360, Sony's PS3, and Nintendo's Wii, the next-generation console wars are getting hotter by the day.
There hasn't been a "war" like this in a decade, not since Sony's PS series has been leading the console market.
Now that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are in a three-way battle, each with their own strengths and weaknesses in next-gen consoles, it's hard to predict what the final outcome will be, and the bigger competition should be between Sony and Microsoft.
Nintendo was smart to go the other way.
Sony PS3 Nintendo Wii Microsoft XBOX360
Release date 11/11/2006 6/11/2006 11/22/2005
Cumulative sales (as of April 07) 1.84 million units 5.84 million units 10 million units
CPU Cell processor, 2.18 per second. T floating point IBM Broadway 90nm IBM PowerPC
CPU Frequency 3.2Ghz 729MHz 3.2 GHz
GPU 550MHz RSX(NVIDIA) ATI Hollywood Customized ATI Graphics Processor
Video Resolution up to 1080i; HDMI output terminal (60GB version), supports HDMI 1.3 standard Resolution up to 853 x 480; Output terminal AV Multi Resolution up to 1080i; Output terminals: standard AV cable, HDAV cable
Memory 512MB (256MB XDR main memory; 256MB GDDR3 video memory) System memory 650MHz; 512MB flash memory 512 MB GDDR3 memory, 700 MHz DDR frequency
Networking Features Networking Platform: PlayStation Network Platform Networking Platform: Wii Connect24 Networking Platform: XBOX Live is currently the most mature gaming network platform; Service: Live Anywhere
Controller PS3 controller using Bluetooth technology, equipped with motion sensor technology, 6-axis sensing system, no vibration function.
Wireless joystick effective distance 30 feet Wiimote, support four controllers, support Bluetooth, signal effective range up to 10 meters.
With vibration function, built-in 3-axis motion sensor.
No motion sensor; with vibration function; supports up to 4 wireless grips; effective range of wireless grips to 10 meters, 40 hours of battery time.
Media and other features USB2.0 × 6;
Backward compatible with PS, PS2;
Blue-ray optical drive, 5.1-channel sound card
MemoryStickDuo Memory Card or SD Memory Card or CF Card; 10/100/1000Mbps wideband Ethernet interface; external 2.5-inch hard drive;
Connectivity to PSP via wireless LAN or USB 2.0 USB 2.0 × 2;
Memory expansion slots: 2 SD slots;
Downward compatibility with GameCube, NES, SNES, and N64 games;
Optical drive compatibility with the 8cm GameCube CD-ROM, 12cm Wii CD-ROM; 2 USB2.0 × 3 memory card slots for Wii console GameCube;
2 memory card slots;
Removable and upgradable hard drive;
Support for replacement of personalized console panels;
Removable and upgradable 20GB hard drive;
12-speed dual-layer DVD This "Pandora's Box" was full of temptation.
The curtain on the next-gen war was raised by the Xbox 360.
XBOX360 has a lot of users in Europe and the US, so it's the right place at the right time in Europe and the US.
In the year since its early release, it has captured a large portion of the European and American gaming markets, but due to cultural differences, XBOX360 has always struggled to break into the Japanese market.
Sony's PS3 is not good
Until November 11, 2006, Sony launched a new generation of PS3 consoles, due to the CELL processor used by the PS3, the cost of the Blu-ray DVD is very high, so even if the price of the PS3 is more than the Xbox 360 and the Wii combined, the outside world is unanimously agreed that SONY is still losing money on the sale of, if the PS3 is expected to be sold in the United States and Europe, it would be a good idea to sell it. If in accordance with SONY expected, PS3 to be on sale in six months to reach the number of 6 million units worldwide to estimate, PS3 in the sale of the first year may let SONY lose money 2 billion dollars.
Nintendo's Wii went the other way
Nintendo's Wii console, released on November 6, 2006, joined the battle of the next-generation consoles, but the performance of the consoles and the difference between the XBOX360 and the PS3 is just too great, so don't expect the gameplay on the Wii to be up to par with the first two.
However, the Wii costs the least of the three, consumes very little power, and its greatest strength is its unique motion-sensing controller, which recognizes when a player makes a move, creating a whole new way of playing games.
The Wii GamePad is a completely different shape from its predecessors, with a motion-sensing controller that connects directly to the console using wireless Bluetooth.
The new controller emphasizes the "simulated experience" of sensing the player's arm movements through sensors placed in the display.
This suggested action for the Wii has led to many non-traditional gamers (women and the middle-aged and elderly) taking up the game, and some have suggested that the Wii can be used for fitness.
Who will have the last laugh?
Who's going to win the next-gen console wars going on right now? In fact, a look at the previous generations of console wars will tell us what the deciding factor is; the console will be won or lost largely on the back of third-party software vendors, not on the functionality of the console.
So the more game developers that support it, and the more big game titles that come out, will determine who will be the winner in the end.
This article is a revision of "Thirty to Thirty: A Look Back at 29 Years of TV Game Consoles Through the Ages," with the addition of next-gen game consoles.
Originally written by Video Game Club.