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The first arcade machine was manufactured in 1971, and was produced by Nolan Bushell and Ted Dabney, and was the first ever commercially produced video game machine, called Computer Space -
The company Atari released the first successful arcade machine, Pong. -
Mostly defined by it's transistor logic processing and 1-bit graphics, it can sometimes feel unbelievable that this is how console gaming started.
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The first home game console was created by Magnavox, called the Magnavox Odyssey in September of 1972. -
The second generation of consoles introduced microprocessors into the market and graphics went from 1-bit (Two colors) to 3-bit (Eight colors).
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The first handheld, the M, was designed by Smith Engineering and distributed by Milton-Bradley, and was also the first to use interchangeable game cartridges. -
The third generation of consoles was birthed, introducing the "D-Pad" and allowed for multidirectional scrolling with graphics scaling up to 5-Bit (32 colors).
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This date marked the initial release of the Famicom, later renamed to the NES during it's overseas release. The groundbreaking console was initially released in Japan by Nintendo, and came with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt as the two games on release. -
This generation of consoles built on their innovations, improving processing, with 16-bit consoles and 8-bit handheld consoles.
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This generation of consoles is often referred to as the 32 bit era, the 64 bit era, or the 3D era, with leading consoles being the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64, and the all new Playstation.
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The first console to be made in a long line of consoles, the Playstation, now called the Playstation 1, was released by Sony, who went on to create many other iterations of the Playstation in the future. -
The first "console" to have 3D graphics built in was made by Nintendo, and was titled the "Virtual Boy," also being one of the first "VR" headsets made. -
This marks the release of the Sega Dreamcast, the first console to have "true" internet capabilities. -
This generation of consoles can be characterized with the dismissal of bit ratings, instead being rated similar to PCs, and made direct comparisons much more difficult, with comparisons being shifted to game libraries instead.
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Both Sega and Nintendo fought for dominance in the early decades of console gaming, fighting for their market share, and was defeated in 2001, which many contribute to Nintendo's abundance of 1st party titles, for example, Super Mario Bros. -
Microsoft enters the world of console gaming with their creation of the Xbox brand, on par with the latest consoles at the time. -
The seventh generation of consoles is marked by the release of the Xbox 360, followed by the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii, and ended around 2016, with seventh generation consoles, handhelds, and games finally ceased production.
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The prototype for a "new" type of gaming was created in 2011 by Palmer Luckey, which would later be named the Oculus. -
The eighth generation of consoles began with the release of the Wii U by Nintendo, later followed by the Xbox One family, the Playstation 4, and the Nintendo Switch, and was largely considered to have ended in 2019, although the Nintendo Switch is still Nintendo's leading console, and is still releasing games.
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Nintendo released an innovative console, the Nintendo Switch, with the ability to "switch" from a console to a handheld. -
The ninth generation of consoles began in November of 2020 with the releases of the Xbox Series X and the Playstation 5, with no new releases from Nintendo.