History of Video Games- Part 3

Will there ever be a controller as comfortable as that of the GameCube again?

The 6th generation consisted of the Sega Dreamcast, the Nintendo GameCube, the Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s Xbox. The Dreamcast was the first to be released, in 1998, and did not last long despite pioneering support of online play. The competition from the newly announced PS2 killed it’s sales, and in less than 4 years it was discontinued. With this Sega left the console market entirely, which is probably why the console is the most likely to be forgotten amongst the other sixth-gen consoles.
The PlayStation 2 was by far the most successful, in part due to its backwards compatibility with the original PlayStation ensuring their audience stayed. It could also play DVD’s, unlike any of the other consoles in this generation.
The Xbox, although not the first to feature it, had the strongest support of online play with Xbox live. This became the main selling point of the console.
The GameCube was considered the more family-friendly option from the reputation it had built up with the Nintendo 64. This was not the largest target audience, but it still managed to sell quite well by delivering to fans of existing franchises. In it’s advertising it emphasized its connectivity with the GameBoy Advance, with which Nintendo continued to rule the handheld console market. It wasn’t the only one on the market- there were newcomers such as the Nokia N-Gage, but this had several design flaws such as having to remove the battery to change games. It was essentially a mobile phone with more focus on games, and while the N-Gage itself didn’t do that well, the concept of mobile-phones having more than just simple games was starting to develop.

The 7th generation continued the war between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo with the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii respectively. Starting in 2005, this was practically the era of motion controls- the Wii making them its key selling point and advertising to more casual gamers. With this approach Nintendo didn’t feel the need to update much from the GameCube’s hardware, and so the graphics weren’t anywhere near as advanced as Sony and Microsoft’s new consoles. Nevertheless the audience change worked and the Wii became the best selling of the three. Another key advancement was HD graphics- both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 offered HD resolutions, and the PS3 even had a built-in Blu-Ray player. Blu-Ray owes most of its success to being part of the PS3. Both of the more ‘hardcore gamer’ orientated consoles eventually got their own motion-control peripherals to appeal to a wider audience. All three consoles supported some degree of online play.
Nintendo released the DS and various versions of it, and Sony released the PlayStation Portable. Nintendo’s console again appealed to the wider audience, introducing touch-screen gaming. Meanwhile mobile phone technology was changing, and touch screens were becoming popular on them too. The iPhone, released in 2007 was the main spreader of the technology, and its App Store allowed games to be bought for it.

As of writing, the Wii U has just been released in America, and it just about to be released in the rest of the world. It is the first 8th generation console, and makes use of touch screen, motion controls and HD graphics. It also has more social networking functions. Microsoft and Sony have yet to release details on their next offerings, although they are both expected to release something new within the next few years. There’s also Ouya, developed by newcomer Boxer8. Thanks to the development of mobile gaming, it will run on the Android mobile OS- a system allowing for the download of apps, like the aforementioned iPhone.

All these new advances in technology obviously mean more time and effort needs to be put into each game. While early games could’ve been programmed by a single person fairly quickly, games today can easily require a team of more than 100 people in its development team and take years to produce. The exception to this is with most apps for mobile phones, and also indie games produced by small teams. Indie games have been able to get much more notice in recent years thanks to the rise of social media. However it has also helped made competition between developers more fierce as communities can gain collective opinions on what titles are better than others. Games that get universally overshadowed or criticized will not do well, no matter how much work went into them.