A Trip To The History of Game Consoles: Part 2

We are continuing the trip on the history of game consoles. In the first part of this article, I gave informations about the history of old game consoles. Today, we will take a look at the new generation video game consoles.


PlayStation 2

If PlayStation is a turning point for the game console history, PlayStation 2 is the revolution for them. It was released in 2000 and still played even today. It was on the top of game consoles with its hardware, controls and games. PlayStation 2 also lets you play PlayStation 1 games and online games. It became a legendary game console with its games like Grand Theft Auto, God of War, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy series.




Xbox

In 2001, an unexpected opponent came out for PlayStation 2. Microsoft released the Xbox which had a better performance than its opponents, PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Game Cube. Xbox is the one which introduced us one of the most popular game of the game history, Halo. Xbox was a successful product but PlayStation 2 kept it away from being more successful.


Game Cube

Nintendo released Game Cube in 2001 which was Nintendo's first console to use optical discs instead of cartridges. It also allowed you to connect and play Game Boy Advance games. Game Cube tried to attract attention with games like Super Mario, Zelda and Metroid but that wasn't enough to have a success. Because big game developers focused on PlayStation and Xbox.



Game Boy Advance

With the rise of the video game consoles for TV, portable game consoles were about to be forgotten. But Game Boy Advance revived this market in 2002. Game Boy Advance was the most popular portable game console of that time with the features like an LCD screen that could show more than 32.000 colors and a rechargeable lithium ion battery.




Nintendo DS

Nintendo was aware of the importance of portable game consoles, so they released Nintendo DS in 2004, which had a very different design. It included a stylus and two screens and one of them was a touchscreen. Gamers still play Nintendo DS' current version even today.







PlayStation Portable

Nintendo was rising in the area of portable consoles and Sony had to do something about this. PSP was released in 2005 and it had features like wireless connectivity, quality graphics, image storage and video playback. It is still played by gamers. PlayStation Partable had a big success and sold over 70 million units worldwide in 6 years.





Nintendo Wii

Nintendo's success was falling behind Playstation 2 and Xbox, but Nintendo came back with Wii in 2005. It was released in USA first and the most important feature is its motion sensing capability. It allows user to play the game with physical moves and this system is really successful in sports games. Nintendo Wii's hardware is not as good as its opponents but it's one of the most successful game consoles now with its revolutionary motion sensing capability. It made people play video games who have never played games before.

Xbox 360

Microsoft made a move before Sony and released Xbox 360 three days after the release date of Nintendo Wii in 2005. Xbox 360 became one of the most successful game consoles with a smarter design, wireless gamepads and online gaming system. It can be connected to other electronic devices by its USB port. Microsoft had lost the competition against PlayStation 2 but Xbox 360's sales numbers close to PlayStation 3's.




PlayStation 3

Sony's PlayStation 3 is the last member of the game consoles chain. It was released in 2006 and most important feature was it's Cell processor which is the most powerful processor on game consoles with 3,2 GHz. PS3 uses this advantage for the visuality of games. Blu-ray drive is another important feature of the product. Also it lets you play games in 3D. But PlayStation 3 is not as successful as PS2. According to the latest data, Xbox 360 and PS3's sales figures are very close and that means PlayStation is not unrivaled anymore.


As you see, it's been about 6 years since the new generation consoles were released. That means new consoles are near. Nintendo has already introduced us Wii U. But no news from PlayStation and Xbox. Sony's and Microsoft's new products are expected to be released in 2014. But there is a truth that you should know, smartphones are a serious threat for portable game consoles. Also console gaming is not limited in the triangle of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. There is an Android-based game console project named Ouya. If it become real, it will be able to take a place in this triangle.