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The Beginning of Video Games
A British professor, A.S. Douglas made OXO. He made this for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Cambridge. This game is most commonly known to us as tic-tac-toe. -
More Games are Made..
William Higinbotham created Tennis for Two, the second video game ever made. He made this on a large analog computer. He then connected an oscilloscope screen for the annual visitor's day at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. -
And More...
Steve Russell invented the game "Spacewar!", a space combat video game for the PDP-1, a cutting edge computer back then, mostly found at universities. Steve Russel made this at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. -
The Beginning of Home Consoles.
Developers at Sanders Associates, Inc, invented a prototype multiplayer video game system. This prototype was able to be played on a television. It was known as the Brown Box. -
The Father of Video Games
Baer, sometimes called the Father of Video Games, licensed his device to Magnavox. He had sold the system to buyers, calling it the Odyssey. This was the first video game home console. It would later on die down commercially and be irrelevant. -
The Rise of Atari
Atari had created their first arcade game, Pong, which was inspired by one of Odyssey's 28 games, in 1972. They had released the home version of it 3 years after, which was as successful. Magnaox had eventually sue Atari for copyright infringement, resulting in Odyssey becoming a licensee, netting more than $100 million over the next 20 years. Atari, created their home console, the Atari 2600, which featured joysticks, multi-colored games, and more. This launched the second gen. of consoles. -
The Video Game Crash
North American video game industries had experienced a major "crash" because of a lot of factors that went into it, like oversaturated game console market, competition with computer gaming, and overhyped, low quality games, like E.T. The crash led to bankruptcy of several home computers and video game console companies, which lasted for a couple of years. -
The First Console War
Sega released a Genesis console in 1989, but couldn't compete with the NES at the time. In 1991, Sega had released Sonic the Hedgehog on the genesis, now competing with the NES. In response Nintendo released their 16-bit Super NES console, launching the first console war. Sega and Nintendo fought it out, making a variety of games, like violent games, which included Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. The Genesis had leapfrogged ahead of the SNES because of it's lower price and library of games. -
The Beginning of 3D Gaming
As computer technology advanced, the 5th generation of video games had introduced the 3D era of gaming. Sega, Sony, and Nintendo had fought it out in this new generation of video games. Through Sega and Nintendo, they released their 3D titles, with Virtua Fighter on Sega's Saturn, and Super Mario 64 on Nintendo's N64, but couldn't compete with Sony's Playstation and their strong third-party support. They dominated the video game market, and continued to in the next generation. -
The Modern Age of Gaming
We arrive at the present, where consoles prevail the market. In 2005 & 2006, another console war had started, mainly between Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PS3, & Nintendo's Wii. The Wii had came out on top, despite being technologically inferior to the other 2. The motion-sensitive remotes made gaming a lot more active, and appeal to a larger audience. As time went on we arrive at the present console war, between Xbox1 and PS4 and later Xbox1 X and PS5. The Wii U had became a commercial failure.