Conclusion

Conclusion!

So, now that you have read through the three sections that I have covered, It is time for me to start listing what I have found. Enjoy!

• When writing about Nintendo Wiis, your concentration goes out of the window!
• I wouldn't say that PCs are that different to consoles really, and describing yourself as a part of a "master race" is just foolish. Enjoy the game, your hardware isn't that important.
• On a serious note, it really does seem that TV gaming could be a big player in the future, especially with console integration.
• The Game Boy really did set a trend for consoles to come! especially for Nintendo.
• Nintendo don't really make much that is new, they build on their older devices, which is very clever marketing!
• There is way too much rivalry in the console world!
• If anybody hears or knows anything about a Nintendo game called "Origin Story", please do feel free to email me - Matthew.irwin176@gmail.com.
• Snake did actually have a part to play in the development of mobile games! It wasn't just a pointless and irritating game!
• I'm actually shocked to see home many consoles there were before our generation, I always pictured it as just a few, but it seems the history goes back far!
• Casual gamers and serious gamers are two very different audiences. Both audiences probably dislike the culture of each other's, but to be honest, casual games consoles are made for casual gamers, and serious games consoles are made for serious gamers. So in my eyes, I don't see how they can be compared fairly! I never had a problem playing on the Wii with my family, so therefore it is not a 'bad' console.

Anyway, that turned into a bit of a rant towards the end, but you get the picture! That is all from me for now, and I hope you've enjoyed this blog!

See you around,

Matt! :D

Mobile and TV Platforms

Mobile and TV Platforms

So, this is the part where I talk about using mobile devices and televisions as gaming platforms. This will naturally be a shorter post, as mobile and TV gaming has a lot less history to cover! So, here goes! :D

So, mobile platforms. Mobile platforms have to be self-contained (an all in one unit, with a screen of some kind!) and self-powered (battery). It is also important for a mobile game to be, well, mobile!

Strangely enough, the very first mobile games had flashing LED lights, to act as a kind of screen. Back in that time, they were a lot bigger success than the mobile games of these days. I think this is because it was a very new and exciting concept back then, as they were so used to a usual console box.

It was mainly Mattel that released these LED games, and sold them as sports games. They were very simple, and very cheap to create - and of course could only run one game!

LCD games began to take over the market, the screens, filled with a liquid crystal (like in a calculator) were even still, really low-tech. You could see each possible position for the liquid crystal in the screen! Nintendo released a series of games on their early Game and Watch consoles, such as titles like Donkey Kong and Mario. A big advantage of the small LCD screen, is that it allowed companies to make the graphics clearer, because the screen was physically smaller, and easier to make clearer, due to the LCD technology.

Although these games were incredibly basic, they also brought in a lot of new innovative designs and technologies to the video gaming market in the long-term, such as the D-Pad (directional pad). The directional pad is seen even in today's 8th generation of consoles (Xbox One and PS4).

So, what was the next major movement in the handheld world? If you've been paying extreme attention to the rest of article, you should be able to guess it!

The Nintendo Game boy of course! and I've really been waiting to sing its praises once more in this article! The Nintendo Game Boy was really the big game-changer in the mobile world, it brought in the capability to swap out different games. The Game boy also offered supreme build quality, which really did make it a cut above the rest on the market. It also offered very popular Nintendo games, with all of the big titles, such as Tetris, Mario and Pokemon. Another reason that the Game Boy was a big success, is that it allowed (although inconvenient) network play via cable. Very very short cable.

The Game Boy took off with a vicious launch, and in typical Nintendo style, saw many many revisions, some with colour, and some with sound. It seems they really did hit the spot with this one!

So, although the Game Boy was so clearly the lead competitor, it also had its rivalries. Sega later released the Game Gear Handheld console, which featured a much better, colour screen - surely to trump the Game Boy, no?

The Game Gear really lacked in build quality and software quality, and obviously, by the time it was released, a lot of people already had the Game Boy!  

Atari were next to jump on the handheld bandwagon, with their Lynx console. The Lynx had absolutely spot-on hardware, it boasted a "leading edge" screen, with a 4096 colour palette! Sadly, via poor titles released and poor battery life, its sales really took a hit. 

The next handheld to take a shot at the market, was the Neo Geo Turbo. This was the most powerful little console to come to the market at that time, and really could have stormed the market, if it was built with quality and with good marketing.

Mobile gaming started to have the need to become more and more convenient and less bulky. In the year 1998, the addictive Nokia mobile phone game "Snake" was released. This was the birth of the mobile phone gaming era. 

Mobile phone gaming nowadays is much more for the everyday casual gamer, a lot of touch screen smartphones see revisions of AAA titles, such as Call of Duty and FIFA. Smartphones also see huge titles such as Angry Birds. Even in-app purchases make quite a profit in mobile gaming, let alone the one-time price of the games. It seems mobile phone gaming is booming!

The next generation of mobile games, to follow the Game Boy, were the Nintendo DS and PSP. Could the DS live up to the legacy that the Game Boy left? 

The Nintendo DS sold incredibly well, it offered brand new technology at the time, such as a touch screen, and a microphone. It seems Nintendo really dominates the mobile market, if not necessarily the console market!

The DS and the PSP saw recent revisions, such as the 3DS and the PS Vita. Nintendo has released a lot of revisions of the DS, similarly to the Game Boy, simply because they got it right! They really do their market research, and hit the sweet spot each time.

TV... As a Gaming Platform?

This still seems really hard for me to get my head around, that video games are to be played on televisions. In my lifetime I have never experienced a single TV game, I do not own a Smart TV either!

So, TV gaming was born in 1974, by BBC! It came along with the information channel called Ceefax. Ceefax offered a range of different things, such as football results, news headlines, and video games. Yes, video games.

The video games featured on Ceefax were incredibly simple too, utilising just the coloured buttons on the TV remote! Ceefax really was for the family or casual gamer, you would not see anybody playing this competitively.

Recently, TV gaming has grown rather exponentially, with production of Smart TVs. Smart TVs run their own operating system, where you are allowed to download games from the internet and play them (usually for a fee!). a few game developers, such as Gameloft, have really backed this movement, designing (and porting) their games to them. In most cases, you can even plug in a USB controller and start playing them with a controller! It seems that most companies do offer Smart TVs, offering very similar specs, so the sales of them really depend on user brand preference.

Now of course, TVs do not offer console-like graphics and gameplay, but Sony, who have huge experience in both console and TV production. They could very easily pop a PS4 into a TV! (If this happens in the future, I called it!) 

If this is the case, Sony's direct competitor - Microsoft, should be scared, very scared, as they have zero experience in the TV market. 

Apparently 48% of people in the US already watch their TV on a Smart TV, it seems this is the way it is going!

Follow this link for more oddly scary TV gaming facts!

http://www.factbrowser.com/tags/smart_tv/

So that's my section on mobile and TV gaming, I will post later about my findings throughout this blog, and I suppose I will have to pick between whether I think console or PC is better (which I do not want to have to decide!)

Anyhow! Thank you for reading, I will now conclude what I have learned!

Matt :D

Console and PC Platforms

Console and PC Platforms

In this section, I will go into detail about both video game consoles, and PCs as gaming platforms, and I will explore and weigh up each's pros and cons.

Console game platforms

As most of you would know, you can play video games on video game consoles. A console is a very specific combination of hardware and software, produced to run a specific type of video game. 

As I mentioned in my post before, the Magnavox Odyssey was strictly the first home console to have been produced, in the year 1972.

1994 saw the release of Sony's PlayStation. Personally, I can say that the Playstation was the very first console that I played as a child, I vividly remember playing through titles such as Doom and Driver, even flicking through a cheat code book to unlock characters in "Muppet RaceMania" 

The PlayStation was the birth of an era. It sold 102.49 million units worldwide. It really was the first console to simplify home gaming, it was simple to plug in memory cards and controllers, and change discs. It had a huge variety of popular video game titles, such as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. 

In past years, Sony have really dominated the market. The most sold console of all time (including modern consoles too) is the PS2, and the fourth most console is the original PlayStation. 

So, in the year 2006, Sony took another stab at the console market, with their PlayStation 3. The Playstation 3 didn't sell as well as the Xbox 360 at all at first, It had a much higher price tag than the 360, and also had a flawed online system. here are some other bad points of the PS3:

• The games themselves were expensive, as they were Blu-Ray. They could set you back £50-£60 for a new title!
• There were significantly less people playing online.

Along with the bad points of the PS3, it also had its good points.

• The PS3's online service was free. This was a big competitor to Xbox's £40/year online service.
• The PS3 boasted a Blu-Ray drive - allowing the user to watch higher definition movies, and play higher definition games. The Xbox did not have this!
• A big selling point for the PS3 was also its ability to change the hard drive. It was not like the 360, where you had to buy a Microsoft branded hard drive, you could just whip out the 250gb one in it, and upgrade it to any 2.5" hard drive.

Eventually, the sales of the PS3 did begin to rise above those of the 360. Does this mean that people had enough of paying for online? or did Sony iron out its problems? Let's take a look at the 360, and see what happened.

The Xbox 360 was released in 2005 - a year before the PS3. This already is enough of a reason why the Xbox 360 started to sell more than the PS3. Let's look at some of the good points of the Xbox 360.  

The Xbox 360 boasted a large selection of games, including big exclusives - such as Halo and Titanfall.
• The Xbox 360 had amazing online functionality, including features such as their party chat, allowing players to speak to matter which games they are playing.
• The Xbox was a few hundred pounds cheaper than the PlayStation!

So, the Xbox had its good points, so why did it start to sell less than the PlayStation?

• The Xbox 360 had big issues with its build quality. They overheated very often, users would get the "Red Ring Of Death" - A very hard problem to fix. This meant that the lifespan of the 360 system was a lot shorter than a PS3. So, say if a gamer buys an Xbox 360, and it breaks down, are they going to buy another Xbox, or the next best alternative, that probably won't break? It really is a no-brainer!
• The Xbox 360 had no built-in Blu-Ray, meaning high definition films could not be played. The Xbox tried using the (discontinued) medium of high definition DVDs, but the demand for them was not there.
• The online for Xbox 360 was around £40 per year, which is actually quite an expensive subscription. Gamers favored the Xbox online, but for £40 a year, Playstation Network was a good alternative.

Another competitor was also in the market at this time - in 2006, Nintendo released their Wii console. The Wii offered revolutionary technology, and family-friendly gaming. Here are some good and bad points about the Wii console, starting with the good:

• The Wii offered motion technology, with wireless remotes. This was a very new thing in 2006, not being replicated by any other company. With this unique selling point, it left them being a cut above the current market.
• Along with Nintendo, comes their games. no other console has the rights to have Nintendo's own games, such as Mario and Zelda.

And the bad points:

• The Wii offered lower graphics capabilities than its other two competitors, at lower resolutions (no HDMI support).
• As the Wii had lower graphics, it couldn't run any of the 'modern' games of that time (very well) e.g Call of Duty. It also meant that the Wii got near to none of the games that were available to play on other platforms.
• The Wii was very much marketed towards families. This may be a good reason why it sold so much, being the fifth best selling console of all time. The problem with this, is that it was not aimed at usual gamers, it was aimed towards family and casual gamers.

So, that is my analysis of some of the consoles on the market, and their benefits and limitations. 

Let me take you back to the roots of what console means again. A console is a very specific combination in hardware and software. That means, that a lot of the time when a console breaks, it is incredibly hard to repair, meaning that a console has to be built to be strong and reliable. Take a look at this:

What this shows, is that 18.4% of Xbox 360 consoles sold by the year 2011 (to 500,000 people) had broken. Compare this figure to that of the PS3 and the Wii, it really reflects the build quality and reliability of console platforms, especially the 360! Imagine a console that you can upgrade, play the same games on as all the other consoles, in better graphics, that you can fix easily yourself if it goes wrong! Sounding familiar?

PC Platforms

PCs (Personal Computers) are relatively different to consoles. They are not specifically designed to run games, as they are open source. Being open source, you can install pretty much any program (OS dependent), such as word processing. 

It is not just the software on PCs that is open source, the hardware is open to modify by anyone. So, if you need a bit more graphics memory, you can just clip in a new graphics card. You need more ram, slot it in!

This is the Intel 4004 - the very first microprocessor. This was invented in the year 1971, and needed the relevant components alongside to create the first very basic computer.

After this, computers began to be sold as kits. Computer kits attracted the computer enthusiasts and hobbyists, making it quite hard to have a computer. After the kits had come about, companies began to sell pre-assembled units, meaning that anyone could essentially buy a computer! Still, all of this gave birth to a whole community of PC hobbyists, which is still very strong even these days, on forums such as Tom's Hardware.

1977 saw the release of the "1977 trinity". The 1977 trinity was composed of the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the TRS-80. These three computers were the first to run the BASIC computer game code. The BASIC code allowed people to program very simple games.

The games made in BASIC language could be transferred to floppy discs and sold. A lot of the games made in BASIC language were incredibly simple, and were usually text-based games, or had very simple graphics.

The Apple II, the commodore 64 and the Amiga all were computers that could begin to run even better BASIC games, some similar to that of the arcade and console games of the time.

Computers were incredibly expensive in this era, and were really considered as luxuries. My dad remembers that schools were really trying to push students to learn computing when he was a child, and that he had to go and buy a commodore 64 (which was very expensive then!) There was a difficult balance between computers back then, as cheap ones were just 'toys', and expensive ones were serious utilities.

The IBM released their own personal computer in the year 1981, which was open to be adapted by anyone. Third party suppliers started to release expansion cards and peripheral devices to be used with it, so it really was the first open-source computer.
Sadly, the IBM PC was not very practical in gaming terms, as it had a relatively bad colour graphics board, and bad speakers.

The Mac started to lose out on gamers, as it only offered a black and white screen - not good for games! Its strange how nowadays, macs have stunning displays - they even have a 5K screen model iMac! and even still, they are not used for gaming. They really started as they meant to go on! Macs have always also had a much larger price tag for the spec that you get.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, graphics and sound became much better in PCs. 1982 also saw the release of the first commercial CD-Rom, but they were used for PCs a few years later. CD Roms allowed mass-storage, of even as much as 650 times that of a floppy disc. With the advance of storage, came the advance of graphics in video games. Graphics could reach levels of photorealism, and high quality sound.  CDs also dampened the piracy at the time which took over in the era of the floppy disc, as they were not re-writable, so illegal copies could not be produced!

CD-Roms also allowed high quality movie clips to be integrated to video games, even small movies! this is a feature used in games such as The 7th Guest. They were something very new to the market, as they offered very realistic gameplay. The bad thing about this, is that it was expensive to create. As it was very similar to that of movies, it needed the budget similar to hollywood movies of the time (voice acting, acting etc), and it frankly became an unnecessary feature. 

By the 1990s, a lot of games had attempted 3d levels, such as Doom. Doom really had a good environment, and it used 2D character assets (which worked effectively) as enemies etc, to cut down on some processing power.


After GPU's were made, really high-quality 3D games could be easily achieved. The GPU (or 3D accelerator) was a second chip, but it is fully dedicated to processing just the graphics. It would work alongside the CPU, allowing it to free up and spread the load between the two. This meant that a lot of strain was taken off of the CPU, even in some cases allowing an elongated lifespan for CPU chips.

Quake was a huge game at the time, offering a full 3D shooting experience. Even still, even the latest Call of Duty titles run off of the same original Quake engine!

Network play and LAN parties were also incredibly popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this was allowing people to play multiplayer games on a local network together. This really did seem like it was the way it was going for video games, after all, games are even more fun with more than one person right?

If you could go back and tell someone in the 1990s of a world where you can play video games with anybody from around the world at the same time, they would have been blown away. The concept of the internet is so overwhelming when you stop and think about it. Video games supporting online play started off as text-based games, similar to that of the BASIC language games. Evolved titles emerged such as Runescape and Everquest (MMORPG's/Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games), and they began to smash the market.


This is a screenshot of the first runescape (2001), and what MMORPGs looked like back in this time. Runescape is the perfect example of a MMORPG, and it is one that has evolved a lot since its launch, seeing three whole revisions of the game. This is the game that I remember playing most as a child, and I also remember rushing home after school to just play it. Here are screenshots of both Runescape 2 (2005,left) and Runescape 3 (2013,right):


PC gaming is even more of a prestige-filled community than it has ever been, and can easily be seen as a snobby community at times. Having people open to pick their specifications alone creates boasting and arguments between people and groups of people. PC gamers can also reach graphical and processing levels higher than that of even the latest consoles of the time. Even I have built myself and friends PCs for the same price of a new 'next-gen' console, that will knock the stuffing out of them. Features such as reaching a steady 60 frames per second in a game, and ultra super-duper graphics really do make quite the boasting point for PC gamers. Alone, my graphics card can reach more than double the processing power of an Xbox 360!

Okay, so just to say, I am proudly both a PC gamer and a console gamer (I own a gaming PC and an Xbox One) and I love them both dearly, so my points of view are fair and relative to my own fair opinion!

So, that is my post on the comparisons between console and PC platforms!

Please stay tuned for more, about mobile and TVs as gaming platforms!

Hurrah!

Matt B)

Intro Part 1

Unit 20 - Part 1: Development History of Platforms

Hello! I am writing this online article to explain and explore the types of interactive game platforms. Along the way, I will highlight and evaluate each of their limitations and perks. Through this article, the topics I will cover are:

• The development history of game platforms.
• The differences, features and limitations between arcade and console game platforms.
• The differences, features and limitations of PC, mobile and TV game platforms.

So. Shall I begin?

History of Game Platforms

The Development History of Game Platforms

So far in the article, I have used the word 'platform' incredibly often, So I will now explain what this term means. The word 'platform' can be interpreted in many different contexts, but in this article, it is used as a term to describe a specific combination of software and hardware that is vital to allow the running of as video game. So, for example, an original arcade machine will require the exact concoction of physical hardware, along with the very specific software to run on the hardware, for it to be a game platform.

There are three generic variants of games platforms; Consoles, mobile and PC. Each have their own benefits and restrictions, such as mobile platforms are able to be carried around to different places, but lack in power, and how PC systems boast better specifications than consoles.

Ok, now that that is out of the way, I'm going to talk about the history of video games - where they were invented and created, for the first time.

The 1950s - The birth of gaming.

The year 1951 marks a veeeeery important year for gaming. It doesn't necessarily mark the creation of the first video game as such, but it marks the creation of the first video game companies; Nintendo and SEGA.

Nintendo started out as a small playing cards (hanafuda) company, founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi (see above picture). In the year 1951, he changed the name of his company, formerly known as "Marufuku" to "Nintendo". Nintendo grew exponentially as a card game manufacturer, striking deals with companies such as Disney, it then became a toy manufacturer, and then started to specialise in electronic video games.

As I previously mentioned, 1951 was also the year that SEGA was recognized. SEGA started out as a Hawaiian company, called Service Games.Officially, they were conceived in the year 1940, but when the company moved to Tokyo in 1951, they started to release coin-activated machines to American military bases throughout Japan.

People argue whether William 'Willy' Higinbotham made the first video game. in 1958, He created a very simple tennis simulator, to be viewed on an oscilloscope. This 'game' became a huge hit with the laboratory's annual expo. 

So, that is a rough outline of why I think the 1950s were important for video gaming, what do you think? would this mark the birth of gaming? It comes down to opinion really...

The 1960s - The birth of the very first interactive game.

In the year 1961, three developers (Steve Russell, Martin Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen) conceived the idea of a two-player interactive video game, to be called Spacewar. This game was eventually released in February 1962. The first version took approximately 200 hours of work!

1970s - Big video gaming boom!

The 1970s can simply be described as the golden age of gaming. Lets start with the year 1972. The year 1972 was a big year for video game inventions. The two main announcements and releases in this year were the Magnavox Odyssey, and Atari's Pong. These were really the biggest first games to be released (in production). With the Magnavox Odyssey being the world's first commercial home console, and Pong being one of the most well-known arcade games of all time, 1972 served to be very important indeed.

In the rest of the 1970s, more and more big titles were churned out from three main companies - Taito, Williams, and Midway. These three compaines entered the game business in 1973. In the year 1978, one of the three big companies - Taito, released possibly one of the most recognized game titles of all time - Space Invaders! In Space Invaders, the aim is to defeat waves of aliens with a laser cannon to earn as many points as possible, making it one of the earliest shooter games. In 1979, Midway also published the title Galaxian.

The year 1977 marked an important year for two games companies:

• Atari released the first home computer system - The atari 2600. This microprocessor-based console also used ROM cartridges.

• Mattel began to produce handheld systems, which was a breakthrough in itself. These included titles such as the Mattel Auto Race.

1980s - The Arcade Era

The 1980s mark the birth of possibly the biggest arcade title to have ever existed. Can you guess it?

I have found an interesting website about Pac-Man, with some quick and interesting facts abount it, follow this link:

http://www.grammarmancomic.com/factspacman.html

Pac-Man truly is the biggest and most important game to have existed, by the year 1982, 400,000 arcade units had been sold, taking in 7 billion coins. This is roughly equal to one coin inserted per human on earth!
The year 1981 marks a date for another mammoth arcade game to be released - Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong is one of the earliest platform games to be made, and it is one of the most popular arcade games to exist.

Here are a few titles from the 1980s that have been huge successes:

• 1981 - Frogger
• 1982 - Q*bert, Pitfall!, Dig Dug
• 1983 - Mario Bros.
• 1985 - Super Mario Bros.
• 1986 - The Legend Of Zelda, Metroid
• 1987 - Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter
• 1988 - Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Mega Man 2
• 1999 - Tetris (Game Boy), SimCity, Prince of Persia

In 1986, Nintendo released the Famicom (family computer) in Japan. Its best-selling game was Super Mario Bros. 2. It used propitiatory floppy discs named 'Disk Cards'. The Famicom sold 4.44 million units.

The year 1983 marks a big year for two companies; Nintendo and Sega. Nintendo released the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), and Sega released their Master System. With them both being released in the same year, it gave birth to the first major company rivalry.

In 1984, Russian scientist Alexey Paijitnov released Tetris.

In 1988, Sega released another console - the Sega Mega Drive (or Sega Genesis). 

1989 carried a huge launch of the best handheld system to date, the Game Boy. The Game Boy offered incredible build quality, along with the capability to change video game cartridges. Game Boys were often bundled with the game Tetris, which I mentioned earlier. 
Since 1989, the Game Boy has seen many revisions, including the Game Boy (Play it Loud!), the Game Boy Pocket, the Game Boy Light, and finally the Game Boy Colour. through all of these versions, the Game Boy sold 118.69 million units.

The 1990s

In the 1990s, home gaming began to skyrocket in popularity - arcade games began to be ported to home consoles and mobile consoles, rendering arcade games as unnecessary "social gathering" games.

The year 1990 saw the release of the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System). The SNES saw advanced graphics and sound capabilities, compared to their original NES. The main thing to remember about this, is that it still used ROM Cartridges! - Big mistake, as you will see later...  

1991 boosted Sega's sale immensely, with their release of a whole new mascot - Sonic the Hedgehog. If this wasn't enough for Sega to boost their sales, they also released a competition-blasting add-on for their Mega Drive - The Sega CD. The Sega CD truly blew all of their competition out of the water, as it allowed the player to use CD as a storage medium for games, this also meant that Sega saved a huge amount of money by producing the discs, and not expensive cartridges as before. It seemed that CDs were really the future of gaming.

So, Sega was first to release the disc-based console, but sure enough, other companies began to jump on the CD bandwagon, with Atari releasing the Atari Jaguar (with disc add-on) in 1993, and Sony releasing the PlayStation in 1994, as a disc-only based console. in 1994, Sega also released the Saturn, which was also only disc-based, but the PlayStation was much more popular. The PlayStation was discontinued in 2006, but sold 102.49 million units worldwide, making it one of the most successful home consoles of all time! 1994 also saw the introduction of the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board), meaning that video games were age-rated.

1996 saw the release of Nintendo's N64 console, which still used cartridges. It didn't sell as well as the PlayStation, only hitting 32.93 million sales, but even still, with these figures, it meant that Nintendo had a decent share of the market.

1996 also saw the release of Bandai's Tamagotchi. The Tamagotchi was a small electronic handheld 'pet' game, that was exceedingly popular among children. Many people that grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s would certainly remember these being popular in schools - as they were very affordable and apparently very fun!

In 1998, Sega released the Dreamcast - boasting again, even better specs - Higher graphics and processing power. Surely Sony can't top it again?

2000s - Bigger specs, bigger industry.

The year 2000 brought the biggest-selling console of all time to thew market. The Sony PlayStation 2. The PS2 has sold over 155 million units - I've even been through three myself! The PS2 had a huge range of games to choose from - almost 4,000! The PS2 used higher-storage DVD discs. So, if the PlayStation 2 dominated the competition so much, what was it against? Let's have a look.

In the year 2001, Nintendo released their GameCube. The GameCube was the first Nintendo console to use optical discs, but did not use standard size discs, but used mini discs, propitiatory to the console.

The original Xbox console was also released in 2001 by console first-timers Microsoft. The Xbox sold more units than the GameCube, but a lot less than the PS2.

So, three consoles in two years, all of similar specs and designs. This created a major company rivalry, between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. This all starts to sound very similar to anyone with any modern gaming knowledge.

2004 saw the release of two big handheld consoles - Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS.

The Big 3 - To date.

So, I mentioned beforehand that Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony were three very big rivals. 2005 saw the release of a truly 'next-gen' console - Microsoft's Xbox 360. In the year 2006, Nintendo's Wii console was released, and Sony's PlayStation 3 was released. Again, three huge rivals were battling it out again for the top position.

Each of the consoles had its benefits and drawbacks:

• The Wii boasted motion controllers, higher tech than both the PS3 and Xbox 360 game-pads.
• But, the Wii had considerably worse graphics, and not even HDMI outputs, it also have very limited multiplayer functionality (enough that its taken me 9 years to figure out it could even connect to the internet!)
• The Xbox and PS3 had very much the same graphics capabilities.
• PS3 offered Blu-Ray disc functionality, whereas the Xbox was still using DVDs.
• The multiplayer was very refined on the Xbox 360, making it a much better experience than the PS3's, but the drawback is that it had a rough £40 per year subscription fee, opposed to the PS3's free online service.

In 2011, higher tech revisions of both the PSP and DS were released - The PS Vita and the 3DS. The 3DS offered three-dimensional technology, which was a huge breakthrough in the industry.

So, that is the previous gen of consoles covered, now for the 'next gen' consoles of recent years!

Here, we go back to the age-old debate of "what's better? Xbox or PlayStation". The years 2012 and 2013 brought around another big generation. 

The Nintendo Wii U was released a year before Microsoft and Sony's next gen consoles. Again, Nintendo offered Innovation to the industry, with their game-pads with screens on, but again, sadly lacked in the graphics department.

Both the PS4 and Xbox One was released in 2013, being the biggest two competitors - they both have very similar graphics specifications, but the Xbox One was around £150 more than the PS4 (due to Xbox Kinect Accessory). The Xbox One has typically sold less than the PS4 due to this. So, currently these consoles are described as the 8th generation of consoles. I wonder what the 9th will look like? 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2013/06/09/xbox-one-and-playstation-4-could-be-the-end-of-video-game-consoles/

Here is an interesting link to an article about what games may be like in the future, past 8th generation.

Please stay tuned for more about Console and PC as platforms!

Matt :D