The 00's to Now

While the 00’s kick off with new releases and new players in the console market it also marks Sega’s withdrawal from the game. After the release of the Dreamcast in 1998 by 2001 they had discontinued it (not before I got my hands on one). As Sony released the Playstation 2 and Nintendo released the humble and wonderful Gamecube and new challenger quickly stepped forward to fill Sega’s void in the form of Microsoft with the Xbox. These companies would stand as the console market giants of the coming decade and which would spawn the infamous rivalry between Sony and Microsoft, a rivalry would probably account for around 20% of the name calling that goes on across the internet.  

The Playstation 2 would go onto to be the best selling console of all time and even in the face of the new gen still holds that record high. Xbox would gain it's success from the release of the first Halo game and unfortunately for Nintendo the Gamecube had the misfortune to be branded a 'kids console' so fell into third place behind it's rivals mostly thanks to the hardware's colourscheme and the rather cartoon like graphics the system tended to utilised which was now losing it's place as the world moved out of low-poly resolutions and towards high definition.  

With what Dreamcast started Xbox finished as consoles in 2002 begin to enter the PC gaming world of multiplayer with the commercial launch of Xbox Live. Which this and the ever improving graphical quality of the console interest in PC began to decline but as it proved during all the industry crashes the PC is not easy to deter as Blizzard proved in 2004 with the release of World of Warcraft and that most successful MMO in the industry. PC gaming also received a big boost in China in 2000 with a ban on foreign consoles coming into action for the fear of harmful effects violent video games had on youths. This allowed PC to hold nearly two thirds of the gaming market in China. A ban that has very recently been lifted (Campbell, 2014). 

This brings us to the seventh generation and in 2005/2006 the console wars deployed the new troops. Each sporting high definition, wireless controllers, internal harddrives and online multiplayer and services, Sony and Microsoft continued to fight it out and Nintendo seemed to share the curse of the Gamecube and was branded a 'kids and family' console but this time, they made it work. Backwards compatible with the soon to be axed Gamecube the Nintendo Wii actually out sold the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

Internal memory and compatibility to the internet by this point has moved us long on from the days of blocky cartridges with the ability to download digital copies straight onto your system and providing a useful outlet for indie games to reach the audience. Internal memory also removed the hassle of locating which one of your many memory cards the save file you're looking for it on

No memory card?
Your hardware has improved

.

So we're finally back in 2014 and standing at the start of the next console generation with the Xbox One, PS4 and the Wii U where these corporate giants face the first real bit of upheaval they have in over a decade. The Xbox One was at the heart of a huge controversy regarding it's original 'Always on' policy that the console must be connected to the internet to function and is also limited with a DRM restriction in an attempt to combat piracy but also effects the use of used games on the system. Bad fan reactions lost many customers over to Sony despite the retraction on the always on policy.
Along side all the in fighting between the consoles they face new competition from smart phone and tablet gaming. With versions of the games attracting audiences not normally interested in games via social networking and free to play apps these independent and app based games are drawing in a large market casual market while the cost of console games continue to rise and PC offers players cheap access to games via programs such as Origin and Steam.


While the hardware continues to improve the past few years the games side has seen very little innovation. Call of Duty has made few changes to it's design with every new release, sticking close to their tried and proved design. New titles have been very same and generic.  Developers are hoping to take their games to the next level by utilising the power of next gen such as Bioware with the release of Dragon Age Inquisition offering a map 5-times the size of their first Dragon Age map and a possible 40 unique endings (Ligman, 2014). Hopefully with new and ever improving technology the game market with start to pick up again.




https://web.archive.org/web/20071103122615/http://www.games-fusion.net/press/content/blizzard_entertainment_announc.php

Campbell, Scott (2014) China lifts 14 year ban on foreign games consoles [Online] The Telegraph. Availble at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/video-game-news/10555370/China-lifts-14-year-ban-on-foreign-games-consoles.html

Ligman, Kris (2014)  Xbox the official magazine. Issue 111. P..51

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_and_video_games#2000s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_in_video_gaming 

1980's to 1990's and The Golden age of Arcade

In between cold war riots, Margret Thatcher riots and pretty interesting fashion statements time was found for the Golden age of arcade, an era few people would struggle to not name a game from and with Space invaders being credited with ending a crash in the market in 1977 largely caused by PONG clones flooding the market. Riding on this success and Asteroids there was a new innovation of games on the market with the appearance of pop icons Pac-man, Donkey Kong and Mario along with platform games, fighting games and shooters. The arcade had begun generating billions in revenue annually with the number of arcades doubling between 1980 and 1982 (Wolf, 2008)

Pac-Man was also credited with expanding the target audience, bringing a large influx of female players into gaming. Frogger also proved effective at interesting girls in games. (Herz. 1997)

Ever the turbulent industry it was once again rocked by a market crash in 1983, again with poor quality clones playing a major role. This crash dealt a particularly hard blow to the North American industry bankrupting many companies and causing major loses for Atari, who were not aided by their massive commercial failure of the ET game which was only worth burying the unsold cartridges in a big hole in New Mexico.

At the end of this crash and alongside the rise of PC gaming came the NES reviving the home console market after its release in North America in 1985, the industry began to once again recover bringing the now still popular franchises of Zelda, Metroid which brought players back behind their TV screens. Ultimately this began the end of the arcade genre and the rise of new genres such as American RPGs Metal gear solid and Dragon Quest and Japanese RPGs Final fantasy and Dragon warrior.

By the 90’s PC gaming continued to rise with multiplayer usually via modem to modem and by 1995 Activision was beginning to build PC units especially suited for gaming and working on creating games in 3D environments such as MechWarrior 2 (ckmogo). On the console front Nintendo and Sega with the Mega Drive being the big rivalry at the time but it was also the emergence of the handheld console with the Nintendo Gameboy remake the Gameboy Pocket.

Getting to the late 90’s I’m finally old enough to vaguely recall it without the need for too much research and reading as a starting point. In 1994 Sony hit the console market with the Playstation, 1996 saw the arrival of

the Nintendo 64. While the Nintendo 64 was a machine for cartridges the Playstation games came on CD-ROMS, allowing games to add bigger files with more cinematic elements and higher quality sound, as a result by 1998 Metal Gear Solid was one of the earliest games to contain full voice acting.

While the 80’s had been harsh to the consoles towards the end of the 90’s they’d come back fighting, bringing with them masses of titles, Sonic the hedgehog, Doom, Tomb Raider, Pokemon, Resident Evil, Half-life etc. etc, a very long list of games that started the franchises that are still going strong today and nearly 20 years on are still taking our money.

Wolf, M. (2008). The video game explosion: a history from PONG to PlayStation and beyond. ABC-CLIO. p. 105.

Herz. J. C (1997) Joystick Nation. Abacus.

(ckmogo) This Is "The Gamer's PC" 1995 (2009) [online video] Available from:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPOuR1CTJss

http://www.classicgaming.com/features/articles/computergaminghistory/

The History of Computer Games 50's-70's

It took 130 years to get from the theoretical design of a device to automatically calculate mathematical problems to the first example of modern consoles.

Charles Babbage’s Difference engine was one of the first examples of a computer as well as one of the very first and most certainly not the last, examples of a machine being better than most humans at maths. Unfortunately due to engineering limits at the time the Difference engine wasn't successfully built until 1991 when Babbage’s designs were proven to be valid.

With the problems the Difference engine had that leaves the title of ‘example of one of the first programmable computers’ to go to a device like Colossus, used by British code breakers in World War II. Colossus was developed to decode the German ciphers to their submarine Captains. It was developed by Tommy Flowers and mathematicians Dorothy Du Boisson and Elsie Booker though both women received little or no mention in computing history, much like a lot of the women involved in computer development through the years.

Hitting the late 40's the groundwork, technology and ideas behind games start to appear which a lot of it surprisingly was developed from military technology. Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Settle Ray Mann made the first interactive electronic game in 1947 called the "Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device" (Cohen,  nd) and was the first missile simulation game.

With the computing prequel over with let's fast forward to the 50's.

In rolled the 1950's and with it 'Tennis for two' in 1958. Tennis for two was played on a screen and with a hand held controller much like Mouse in the maze in 1959 expect this one used a light pen to guide the mouse.

Swinging to the 60's we really start getting somewhere with the
appearance of Spacewar! created by Steve Russell, Martin Craetz and Wayne Wiitanen (Bellis, nd). The most interesting thing about Spacewar is that unlike Tennis for two, it brought forward the concept of a game being an original idea not a recreation of something that already exists outside the computer.



Finally hitting the 70's we meet Maze Wars, with a disk the size of a pizza and a design meant to be connected and played with others via the ethernet it is effectively to blame for Call of Duty. Maze wars was the first concept of a first person shooter and was the beginning of the idea of player avatars. Despite it's 1972 release Maze Wars was a clear starting point for more modern games considering through the years the idea has remained the same while the pictures get prettier.

Left to right: Maze Wars, Wolfenstein, Metro 2033

Cohen. nd http://classicgames.about.com/od/classicvideogames101/p/CathodeDevice.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube_amusement_device
Bellis, nd http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcomputer_videogames.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_War