Guide to Video Game Consoles

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Kinds of Video Game Consoles include the following:

First generation

• First generation home video game consoles were introduced starting 1972, with the release of Magnavox Odyssey, which was moderately received.
• It was not until Atari's arcade game PONG that the public took a real interest in video games; Magnavox thus canceled the Odyssey and released a console that played only PONG, and called it Odyssey 100.
• AT about the same time, Atari released its own video console together with Sears, jump starting the video game console market.
• Soon PONG and other PONG derived games found their way to every home as a mode of entertainment for the youth.

• The second generation of video consoles started with the release of Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES) in 1976.
• It made use of cartridges and a programmable microprocessor so that a single ROM chip can store microprocessor instructions.
• Soon Atari and RCA developed their own cartridge-based consoles.

• The third generation of video game consoles saw the release of Nintendo's Famicom in Japan, in 1983.
• It supported full-color, high resolution, high-res sprites, and tiled backgrounds.
• Famicom games were longer and had mo9re detailed graphics.
• Famicom was brought to the US in 1985 in the form of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
• The number one hit game with the NES console was Super Mario Brothers, which revived the video game industry at that time.
• Soon a number of companies tried to develop consoles to compete with Nintendo.

• Sega released Master System, a console intended to compete with NES, but did not gain popularity in the USA.
• Sometime around 1988 and 1989, Sega released the next-generation console, the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), two years before Nintendo released its second-generation console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) (released 1990)

• Fifth generation consoles were the Atari Jaguar and the 3DO.
• These consoles were more powerful, could display more colors, and are better at rendering polygons.
• 3DO also used compact discs that contained more information than cartridges and were cheaper.
• These consoles did not gain enough popularity to exceed that of Sega or Nintendo however, because of their high price and limited games.
• Fifth generation consoles started to become popular with the introduction of Sony's PlayStation, Nintendo 64, and Sega Saturn; these consoles were introduced starting 1994 onwards.

• The sixth generation video game consoles adapted PC-like architectures in video gaming consoles.
• There was also a shift towards DVDs as a format for game media-- allowing games to be longer and have better picture quality.
• Most sixth generation consoles also allow online gaming using flash and hard drive for storage of game data.
• Some of the video consoles of this generation include Sega's Dreamcast, Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's GameCube, and Microsoft's Xbox.
• The Xbox was the first to employ a hard drive to save games, blurring the line between consoles and PC gaming.

• The seventh generation video game consoles make use of Blu-Ray discs and HD-DVD discs as gaming and movie playback standard. Some make us of DVD-9 format.
• Some of the more popular seventh generation consoles include Microsoft's Xbox 360 (released Nov 2005), Sony's PlayStation 3 (released Nov 2006), and Nintendo's Wii (Nov 2006).

Processing power:  Look for a video game console that has a fast-rate processing technology as measured in bit-value (the higher the bits, the faster).  A fast-rate processor allows an output with a greater range of colors and more sprites; it also allows graphical technologies such as vector graphics and scaling.   
   
Design:  Look for a video game console that has a hip and compact design that is easy to move around and is good to look at.

Game support: Look for a video console that supports a wide array of game manufacturers and programmers for more gaming choices.   

Picture quality: Look for a video game console that has graphical capabilities and in-game physics that provide a life-like picture for an enhanced gaming experience.

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