Game Console's And There Evolution!

Consoles area mixture of hardware and software that a created to play a specific type of game and since they were first created they have evolved and improved exceptionally.

In the 1970's when the home consoles first came out, they could usually only play one specific game, that game could not be complicated, it couldn't have allot of colours and by today’s standards it had an minuscule amount of memory capacity.

The first ever video game console was a very big and bulky rectangular wooden box that was named quite aptly the Wooden Box, this console only had six simple games available, ping-pong, tennis, handball, chase games and a light gun game.

Because of the brown Box game consoles,the console technology was then licensed by Magnavox in 1972.

That lead to the release of the first "official" home games console, The Magnavox Odyssey, the graphic were by today's standards simple and somewhat primitive and like old movies (I mean 1920's here lol) it was silent.

It was in 1975 when another home console was released and that was created by Atari after the popularity of their arcade game pong, that very same year Magnavox also decided to release not one but two improved versions of their home console.

In 1977 Atari decided to create more consoles to compete with Magnavox and released home console hits like the Atari 2600, video Pinball and Stunt Cycle.

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With the popularity increasing companies such as RCA, Fairchild and Coleco popped up to claim a piece of the pie, though some of the console brought out were rip offs of earlier home console that just looked a little different.

Copyright in the 70's and 80's was almost no existent for games companies and so there where many variations of the same consoles manufactured by different companies.

Out of the three knew companies the only one that had any success with their console was Coleco, who's Telstar console could not only play in colour but also provided different difficulty levels.

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For the next few years more companies came in with very little success, one company was note worthy though, Nintendo.

In 1977 Nintendo brought out their very first home console, it was a colour TV series game and was only for sale in japan.

In competition with Atari's 2600 Coleco developed consoles for car racing, shooting and pinball games, it wasn't just Coleco though, Magnavox upgraded their own consoles but despite that they were still inherently pong-based games and when the company was bought by Phillips they tried  a few more variations of the Odyssey console but no matter what Atari's 2600 stayed as the top seller.

It was the 1980's when home consoles and the technology really took off, vast improvements were made and companies began to experiment with non-pong games like RPG, platform, adventure and fighting.

It was in the 80's when games icons such as Pac-man, Mario-bros, Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda were released.

It was also the era where home games consoles shifted from in-built games to cartridges.

SEGA and Nintendo both dominated the games industry for the next decade, in 1983 SEGA launched its SG-1000 in Asia and this lead to the creation and distribution of its popular successor the SEGA Master System.

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Despite the SEGA Master Systems popularity it was Nintendo's release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that reigned supreme, the console is most likely what made Nintendo easily identified with gaming.

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Coleco, Atari and Mattel all tried competing with SEGA and Nintendo and unfortunately they fell short, Coleco released its last ever console in 1982.

In the last years of the 80's it was a neck and neck competition between SEGA and Nintendo, in 1988 SEGA brought out its best ever console the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis, to contend with that Nintendo brought out its SNES and then SEGA once again brought out another console its Master System II, it was a huge battle.

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Due to the popularity of the console and the frequency that they were being brought out Atari started to slowly but surely slip out of the console market.

The 90's were the biggest change and game console went from using cartridges to using discs, this revolutionized the games industry as disc were able to store more memory allowing for longer, complicated and better graphical content for games.

Although a few consoles came out that used discs it want until the SEGA added the SEGA CD onto the SEGA Mega-drive/Saturn, it was also in the early 90's when Atari brought out its last console.

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It was 1994 when Sony entered the gaming industry with the release of its Playstation, SEGA was still active the the late 90's and came out with SEGA Genesis 2 & 3 and created a whole new console Saturn to rival the CD based games console while Nintendo decided to stick with cartridges for their N64.

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In 1998 due to the not so successful SEGA Saturn, SEGA produced another console that for its time was a pioneer, The SEGA Dreamcast provided an in built modem for online gaming.

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Two years after the Dreamcasts release Sony came out with the Playstation 2, in 2001 Nintendo came out with there DVD-ROM GameCube and it was also that year that Microsoft entered with their popular Xbox.

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From 2005 and onward there are only 3 main competitors in game console and they are Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and each brought out great consoles.

Nintendo brought out:
The Nintendo WII that used motion control to play.
The WII U that uses a tablet like controller which allows you to see the game in you hands and on the screen.

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Microsoft brought out:
Xbox 360, that allowed for good graphics and great online play, Later on Microsoft brought out the add on Microsoft kinect, their version of motion control.
Xbox One which a big internal memory and allows for great internet browsing and incorporate skype allowing people to talk to friends effortlessly.

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Sony Brought out:
Playstation 3 which had cutting edge graphics a big memory and an in-built blu-ray player, they later brought out the Playstation Move as their own motion control.
Playstation 4 which allows for player to personalize it, has a big in-built memory is fast and has excellent quality graphics.

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Image Taken from Google