An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
Just thought i'd post this...
The Golden Age of Arcade Games The Golden Age of Arcade Games was a peak era of arcade game popularity and innovation. Some opinions place this period's beginning in late 1979 or 1980 when the first color arcade games appeared and arcades began to become prevalent, and its ending in the mid-1980s. However, more generous definitions place its start at the 1978 release of Space Invaders and its end in the mid-1990s with the release of home gaming systems which were more powerful than typical arcade hardware.
First Generation Consoles
Television engineer Ralph Baer conceived the idea of an interactive television while building a television set from scratch for Loral in 1951 in Bronx, New York. He explored these ideas further in 1966 when he was the Chief Engineer and manager of the Equipment Design Division at Sanders Associates. Baer created a simple two-player video game that could be displayed on a standard television set called Chase, where two dots chased each other around the screen. After a demonstration to the company's director of R&D Herbert Campman, some funding was allotted and the project was made "official". In 1967 Bill Harrison was brought on board, and a light gun was constructed from a toy rifle that was aimed at a target moved by another player.
Magnavox Odyssey (1972-1973)
Atari PONG (1975)
Coleco Telstar (1976-1979)
APF TV Fun (1976)
Second generation In the earliest consoles, the computer code for one or more games was hardcoded into microchips using discrete logic, and no additional games could ever be added. By the mid-1970s video games were found on cartridges. Programs were burned onto ROM chips that were mounted inside plastic cartridge casings that could be plugged into slots on the console. When the cartridges were plugged in, the general-purpose microprocessors in the consoles read the cartridge memory and ran whatever program was stored there. Rather than being confined to a small selection of games included in the box, consumers could now amass libraries of game cartridges.
Fairchild Channel F (1976-1977)
RCA Studio II (1976)
1292 Advanced Programmable Video System (1976)
Color TV Game(Nintendo, 1977)
Atari 2600 (1977-1989)
Bally Astrocade (1977-1985)
Magnavox Odyssey² (1978-1984)
APF Imagination Machine (1979)
Mattel Intellivision (1980-1984)
Epoch Cassette Vision (1981)
Atari 5200 (1982-1984)
Milton Bradley Vectrex (1982-1984)
Emerson Arcadia 2001 (1982-1983)
Colecovision (1982-1984)
Sega SG-1000 (1983)
Third generation In the history of video games, the 8-bit era was the 3rd generation of video game consoles, but the first after the video game crash of 1983 and considered by some to be the first "modern" era of console gaming. Although the previous generation of consoles had also used 8-bit processors, it was in this time that home game systems were first labelled by their "bits". This came into fashion as 16-bit systems like the Mega Drive/Genesis were marketed to differentiate between the generations of consoles.
Nintendo Entertainment System/Nintendo Famicom
1985-1995: U.S. 1987-1996: Europe 1983-2003: Japan 1990-present: Nigeria
Sega Master System
1986-1992: US 1987-1989: Japan 1987-1996: Europe 1989-present: Brazil
Atari 7800
1986-1991: U.S.
Amstrad GX4000
1990-1991: Europe
Commodore C64 Games System
1990-1991: Europe
Handhelds
Nintendo Game Boy
1989-1995: Japan, U.S. 1990-1995: Europe
Atari Lynx
1989-1995: U.S.
1990-1992: Europe
Sega Game Gear
1990-1997: Japan 1991-1997: Europe, U.S. 1992-1997: Australia
Fourth generation In the history of video games, the 16-bit era was the 4th generation of video game consoles. It was dominated by the rivalry between the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Mega Drive (also called the Sega Genesis), making it one of the most intense periods of competition in North American video game history. The TurboGrafx 16 was also part of this era; it had little success breaking into the fray in the North American market, but was quite successful in Japan.
NEC PC Engine / TurboGrafx 16
1987-1996: Japan 1989-1994: U.S.
Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
1988-1996: Japan 1989-1998: U.S.
1990-1998: Europe
SNK Neo-Geo
1989-2004: Japan 1990-2003: U.S.
1991-1996: Europe
Super Famicom / Super Nintendo Entertainment System
1990-2003: Japan 1991-1999: U.S. 1992-1998: Europe
Handhelds
Virtual Boy
1995-1996: Japan, U.S.
Game Boy Pocket
1996-1998: Japan, U.S., Europe
Fifth generation In the history of computer and video games, the 32-bit / 64-bit era was the fifth generation of video game consoles. It featured both 32-bit and 64-bit consoles, and the market was dominated by three consoles, the Sony PlayStation (1994), Sega Saturn (1995) and the Nintendo 64 (1996), with the PlayStation eventually ending up the most successful. Demographics in console sales varied overall, but these consoles defined the System wars of this era (see section below). The 3DO and Atari Jaguar were also part of this era, but their marketing was poor and they failed to make an impact. This era also saw two updated versions of Nintendo's Game Boy: Game Boy Color and Game Boy Light (Japan only).
Bit ratings for consoles largely fell by the wayside during this era, with the notable exception of the Nintendo 64. The number of "bits" cited in console names referred to the CPU word size and had been used by hardware marketers as a "show of power"; however there was little to be gained from increasing the word size much beyond 32 or 64 bits - performance depended on more varied factors, such as processor clock speed, bandwidth, and memory size.
The 32-bit / 64-bit era also saw the rise of console emulation. One of the very first fan translation projects, Final Fantasy V, was released to the emulation community during this era. Its translation is largely held as one of the catalysts that inspired FFV's subsequent popularity in the US. Due to that increased popularity, NES and SNES ROMs have become widespread on the internet, and are much easier to find during the sixth generation era than they were during the 32-bit / 64-bit era.
Commodore Amiga CD32
1993-1994: U.S., Europe
Laseractive
1993-1996
FM Towns Marty
1993-199?: Japan
3DO Interactive Multiplayer
1993-1995
Atari Jaguar and Atari Jaguar CD (add-on)
1993-1996: Japan, U.S., Europe
Sega 32x (add-on)
1994-1995: Japan, U.S. 1995-1996: Europe
Sega Saturn
1994-1999: Japan 1994-1998 U.S., Europe
Sony PlayStation
1994-2006: Japan 1995-2006: U.S., Europe
PC FX
1994-1997: Japan
Bandai Pippin
1995-1997: Japan 1996-1997: U.S.
Nintendo 64
1996-2002: Japan, U.S, Australia. 1997-2001: Europe
Handhelds
Neo Geo Pocket
1996-1998 Japan
Game.com
1997-2000 U.S.
Wonderswan
1997-2000 Japan
Game Boy Light
1998-2000: Japan
Game Boy Color
1998-2003
Neo Geo Pocket Color
1998-2001 Japan: 1999-2000 U.S., Europe
Sixth generation PlayStation 2 dominated sales, with over 100 million units shipped to retailers [1]. Xbox was a distant second, with 22 million units [2], according to the latest available official figures, and Nintendo was third with 20.61 million GameCubes sold [3]. The Sega Dreamcast is thought to have sold roughly 10 million consoles despite its shorter lifetime.
[edit]
Number of bits
Bit ratings for consoles largely fell by the wayside after the 32-bit era. The number of “bits” cited in console names referred to the CPU word size, but there was little to be gained from increasing the word size much beyond 32-bits; performance depended on other factors, such as processor speed, graphics processor speed, bandwidth, and memory size.
The Sega Dreamcast, the first of the “128-bit” consoles, has a dual-issue 32-bit CPU core, 64-bit GPU, and 64-bit data bus although the geometry sub-processor GPU can perform internal math on 128-bit words. One of the PlayStation 2's many processors is known as the “128-bit Emotion Engine” but has a dual-issue 64-bit core; the graphics synthesizer has a 2560-bit DRAM bus. The Nintendo GameCube is more powerful than the PS2, with only a single 64-bit CPU core. The Microsoft Xbox, the most powerful of the sixth-generation era consoles, uses a 32-bit CPU and 256-bit GPU, a configuration that is becoming standard in many desktop computers. The importance of the number of bits in the modern console gaming market has thus decreased due to the use of components that process data in varying word sizes. It is also important to note that most game companies sell on “n-bit talk” (where n refers to a number) to over-emphasize the hardware capabilities of their system. The Sega Dreamcast and the PlayStation 2 were the last systems to use the term “128-bit” in their marketing to describe their capability.
Sega Dreamcast
1998-2002
Sony PlayStation 2
2000-present
Nintendo GameCube
2001-present
Microsoft Xbox
2001-present
Handhelds
Neo Geo Pocket Color
1998-2003
Bandai WonderSwan Color
2000-present
Nintendo Game Boy Advance
2001-2005
GP32
2001–2005
Nokia N-Gage
2001–present
Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP
2003-present
Seventh generation The seventh generation of video game consoles began with the Xbox 360, which was released November 22, 2005. Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 are due out in 2006. The PS3 is scheduled to be released in Japan on November 11, 2006 and worldwide on November 17, 2006. No specific release date has been announced for Wii, with Nintendo committing only to a release in the fourth quarter of 2006 in North America and Japan, but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had previously claimed that the console would be released before Thanksgiving (November 23) in North America.
Xbox 360 (Microsoft)
2005–Present
Wii (Nintendo)
Fourth Quarter 2006
PlayStation 3 (Sony)
November 2006
Nintendo DS
2004-Present
Sony PSP
2005–Present
Nintendo DS Lite
2006–Present
Tiger Telematics Gizmondo
2005–2006
GamePark Holdings GP2X
2005–Present
GamePark XGP
Announced in 2006. Not yet released.
Digg Topic
Tag topic on On del.icio.us
Technorati Search
Post to Slashdot
