For practically 50 years we have lived with video games. Since the beginning of the 70s of the last century, the world has been progressively seeing small steps in the world of electronic entertainment that have taken us from those old Pong of home consoles, to the ray tracings that they boast our current PS5 and Xbox Series X. In between, up to eight generations that have filled the leisure and entertainment time of hundreds of millions of people around the world.
An almost newborn phenomenon
Talking about the historiography of video games is audacity because today there are few conventions on how to separate each of the different eras. What does seem to be more consensus is in differentiating generations based on similar hardware that was arriving with each new machine. That, in the last 20 years, has been quite simple thanks to the atomization of the companies that continue to launch consoles, although throughout the 70s, 80s and a good part of the 90s, that distinction becomes hazy due to the overwhelming amount of companies that tried their luck in this sector
So, if you think so, we are going to review all those generations of consoles that have arrived in our homes over the last five decades and that have left us an unmistakable stamp that, over the decades, has been shaping an industrial sector that right now invoices as much worldwide as music or cinema. Something that has only been possible due to that almost sickening need of companies to always go one step further, and offer users increasingly complete and real experiences. So fasten your seat belts, we are going to take a trip around the world through the history of all generations of video game consoles.
First generation (1972-1983)
Those first consoles were the product of research and development that took place in the 1960s and even 1950s, when some advanced in their time managed to create interactive systems in televisions that were the embryo of what we would later know as Pong . Some sticks that the player could move around the screen and hit a point that moved from one side to another to score a point when it exceeded any of the sides of the screen. And the first of all these attempts led Magnavox (Philips in Europe) to take over the concept developed by one of the fathers of video games, Ralph Baer.
In that first machine, the Odyssey, a shell was designed for the console, internal components were added with the supervision of the original creators, the ability to display color was limited, leaving only those characteristic black and white classics, and two controllers were connected with the ability to move those sticks around the screen, up and down or side to side (depending on the game). When everything was finished, its creators set a release date for what we can consider the first home console in history. Which happened, in the US, in September 1972.
That first generation suffered from a serious problem because as it became popular in many parts of the world, what were known at the time as clones emerged, manufacturers who took the idea of those first machines and replicated them in series adding their own casing and trademark, which saturated the market with countless variants, models and video games that suddenly filled many stores of what, in those days, came to be known in Spain as Confiscation establishments.
In (practically) all those models we had a game of tennis, variants for up to four players with soccer fields with goals on both sides and even shooting developments with very rudimentary optical rifles, but which worked perfectly and with amazing precision for The time. They were so limited that in competitive games of one against another player, the only way to keep track of the score achieved by each of the contenders was with a paper and a pen, since digital markers as such did not exist . Consoles, at least at the beginning, had enough to show certain interactive elements on the screen.
Second generation (1978-1992)
Video games take a leap in quality and machines arrive that, saving the distances, mark the beginning of a way of building consoles around components that we all know. It is the time of the inclusion of chips from brands such as Zilog (with its Z80), Intel, Fairchild, Motorola, etc., which have a power of between 1.5 and 3Mhz, that is, the prehistory of computing. In any case, it is at this moment that color begins to arrive on video game screens, without templates to place on the television or even markers to score points. The first sound effects and melodies are also heard, adapted to what happens on the screen, as well as personalized graphics to show us cowboys, Formula 1 cars and even spaceships.
The console that led this generation was, without a doubt, the Atari 2600, which ceased production in 1992 after selling just over 30 million units. Surely this generation would have died much earlier, in the mid-1980s, but its permanence in stores justifies this second generation being so long. Keep in mind that during this period the world will see the birth of the first 8-bit consoles and the rise and fall of microcomputers focused on video games such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC or MSX.
Even so, the Atari 2600 will have important competitors, especially in terms of video games, such as CBS Colecovision, with its extraordinarily advanced cartridges, Intellivision, Vectrex (portable) from MB Juegos or Philips Videopac (Odyssey 2 in USA), heir to that first console of the 70s. It is at this time when the first development companies appear and one of them, the first external one that did not belong to any of the so-called first party , is Activision. The North Americans, arising from the split of a series of programmers from Atari itself, began a journey of success that continues to this day. Or do you not remember a certain Pitfall ?
In these times, the US market is the one that rules, although there is a time when the industry goes bankrupt due to the saturation of games in stores and impossible to meet expectations that led many companies to disappear. That crash at the end of 1983 had as its unexpected protagonist the ET The Extraterrestrial cartridge , which since then has been treated by many as the worst video game in history. Something that today many already question.
Third generation (1983-2003)
Is it possible that a generation of consoles has lasted two decades? Well, there is an explanation for this, and that is that it wasn’t until September 2003 that Nintendo officially stopped manufacturing the NES in Japan. Obviously, its useful life and game development had already ended long before, so we could set the end of that generation around 1995. It must be said that this is the first generation of consoles that are beginning to be known by the number of bits of its processors (eight in this case) and both NES and Master System attend to that way of defining them.
In any case, this third generation was able to start a little earlier thanks to the launch of two Japanese consoles, which are the companies that take over from the American ones after the 1983 crash. These are the Famicon and the SG-1000 from SEGA. The first was recognized worldwide as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the second as the embryo of what we would later know in our country as the Master System.
Atari, however, tried to continue in the market with the successor to the Atari 2600. Its name was Atari 7800 and, in addition to being compatible with the cartridges of the original console, it launched a good catalog with titles from important companies of the time. , such as Activision, Parker and, of course, the company’s own studios. Even so, he could do nothing against the strength of the Japanese who managed to take over the market and begin an expansion throughout the world that would become more evident in the following decade of the 90s. NES reached 61 million consoles sold, Master System touched 20 and Atari could barely get a million. Far behind were other machines like the Philips Videopac+ or the Amstrad GX4000, which was basically an Amstrad CPC microcomputer with a cartridge slot.
In this generation , video games are more complex, with much larger maps, mechanics are advancing and graphics already offer much more advanced effects that allow wonders such as The Legend of Zelda sagas , Super Mario Bros , Sonic, etc. These consoles were, in a way, the ones that laid the foundations of the industry as we know it today.
Fourth generation (1987-1999)
Also known as 16-bit consoles, it’s time for an explosion around the world with a qualitative leap in the quality of games thanks to first-rate technological additions. Not only do they increase the capacity and speed of the machines’ processors, but also their color palette and the perfection of their audio section. Practically in general, the cartridge is maintained as the format to publish the games and the new batch of consoles debuts in 1987 with one of the most remembered models: the NEC Turbografx 16.
It will be shortly, at the end of the decade, when SEGA decides to launch the successor to the Master System, a Mega Drive that will land in 1988 with the mission of bringing arcade games to our homes. As a result of that intention, superb adaptations of his Altered Beast or Golden Ax would arrive . In 1991 he will have a Sonic under his arm while Nintendo continues to triumph around the planet with NES. Even so, he will soon realize the small disadvantage he has and will put on the market, at the end of 1990, his new console, Super Nintendo, with better hardware than his competition but with that inconvenience of the time it had taken to react.
Also belonging to this generation are the new laptops that hit the market to open up an industry that until that moment had had no other references than those of Nintendo itself, with its Game & Watch. Game Boy, Master System or Atari Lynx are still consoles with 8-bit hardware , but their appearance together with the 16-bit models at the same time pigeonholes them within this new wave of models that fragmented the market and forced many publishers to having to develop versions for all commercialized platforms.
An effort that would lead many to serious problems. It is in these times when giants that were already triumphing like Konami (now in decline), Capcom, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Codemasters, etc., are consolidated, which are still today at the foot of the canyon developing all kinds of games.
The generation concluded with the SNES reaching sales of almost 50 million units, the Mega Drive reaching 40 and Turbografx 16 remaining at just 10 . Other consoles remembered from that time, such as the famous SNK Neo Geo, barely reached 400,000 worldwide. A figure to take into account for a very, very expensive machine and that, yes, it brought the experience of the arcades to our home without losing an iota of its quality.
Fifth generation (1994-2002)
We have reached one of the turning points in the industry. The 32-bit generation of consoles is one of the most important because it introduces three dimensions for the first time . It is from this moment that we begin to talk about 3D environments, graphics engines, polygons, textures and lighting effects. And all this happens in the heat of a good bouquet of models that tried to take over the first place of the best sellers. It’s the PlayStation generation (mostly), but also the Saturn , Nintendo 64, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Nec’s PC-FX and, of course, that SEGA monstrosity called the 32X for its Mega Drive.
The battle started very early on, with the Saturn and PlayStation hitting the market in 1994 . The first did so after the continued successes of the Japanese since the Master System in the mid-80s, and the second, after the resounding failure of that MSX standard that never succeeded as it should have deserved. So things were looking pretty much in Sega’s favor until the games started arriving. Ridge Racer , Tekken and all that first batch of titles managed to prevail over arcade conversions like Sega Rally , Virtua Cop , Virtua Fighter , etc.
Nintendo 64, in 1996, could barely contain the success of Sony and became an interwar console that hardly had an extensive catalog like that of its main rival, a PSX that began a path of success that lasts to this day, with millions of gamers returning to what was their preferred mode of entertainment in the previous decade, when 8-bit microcomputers.
Outside of PSX, 3Do attempted to gain a foothold with close collaboration with Electronic Arts ; Jaguar was advertised as a 64-bit machine but its technical limitation and cartridge format barely allowed it to even compete, let alone with its CD accessory. Just like PC-FX, which never left Japan, Nec decided to pursue other things, leaving the video game industry behind. At the level of portables, it is the moment of the failure of the Virtual Boy and the proliferation of models that seek to compete against the Game Boy. The Neo Geo Pocket (normal and color) from SNK, the Wonderswan from Bandai and other gadgets like the Game.com from Tiger or the PocketStation from Sony, which is more of a Tamagotchi than anything else, are born.
Sixth generation (1998-2013)
With the sixth wave of consoles, the industry begins to concentrate , bets from brands outside the traditional ones on the market cease to appear and Sony is consolidated as the main rival to beat. Qualifiers such as 64 or 128 bits end up being used to refer to these machines and Sega desperately tries again before throwing in the towel and focusing on software development instead of hardware. In any case, in 1998 we see the launch of the Dreamcast, which is for many the best machine of Sonic’s parents, and which was not given the opportunity to succeed due to the huge success that PlayStation was still enjoying when it came to the stores.
Developers, bewitched by the success of PSX, blindly trusted PS2 when it hit stores in 2000, despite the fact that programming for it was a real ordeal. Even so, it became practically the only successful machine of the time since Nintendo, still extending the life of its Nintendo 64, did not fight back until 2002 with the release of the GameCube: the company’s first home console with disc format (mini) and that did not reach the numbers expected by the Japanese.
This generation is the moment in which the Miyamotos decide to change their definition of what success is: not so much the number of machines sold but the profitability they obtained from all their operations. The distance that Sony obtained was abysmal, beating all the sales figures seen up to that moment and with such a long life that it saw its last game arrive in 2013 with the launch of FIFA 14 .
Before, in 2001, Microsoft made the leap to the console market (after years on PC) with Xbox, a machine that was essentially a compressed PC in a smaller space and that serves as the first shot for what will come later. It is not a resounding success, but it serves to make the entire sector take it into account in the coming years and to take seriously the commitment of those from Redmond in an industry that was already showing its first ways within sectors such as multiplayer gaming through Internet.
In the field of portables, Nintendo continues to lead by launching its new Game Boy Advance , which has a hardware power equivalent to that of the old Super Nintendo and a whole catalog of competitors appears that are still mere anecdotes: N-Gage from Nokia, Neo Geo Pocket, etc. PS2 reached 160 million machines sold, Xbox reached 24, GameCube a little more than 21 and Dreamcast only 10.
Seventh generation (2005-2015)
Without a doubt, we are facing what we can consider as the generation that sets the standards of graphic quality that we still maintain today, with certain more than evident advances, but the jump in performance of this generation left far behind those seen on PS2, Xbox, Dreamcast and Game Cube.
Microsoft, aware of the disadvantage that it brought from its previous original Xbox, ran to have its bet for the future as soon as possible. The result was Xbox 360, a solid machine in its hardware , very competitive, cheaper than PS3 and that had the support of an industry that was already seeing Sony’s success with some resentment. Its market share with PS2, much higher than that achieved with PSX, moved many levers in the industry to support a counterweight to avoid monopolies that are always harmful to innovation.
The result is that PS3 arrived later and at an exorbitant price of around 600 euros, and was seen and desired from the beginning to outsell its competition. By the end of the generation, Microsoft achieved better figures with a very large margin. low, but won. While Xbox 360 came to sell 91 million machines worldwide, Sony’s console was just below with 90. A technical tie that, unfortunately for Microsoft, was broken with the next generation.
Special mention deserves what happened with Nintendo. After failing to achieve goals with GameCube and chaining two generations in a row in which the Japanese brand was not decisive (it was influential), in 2006 the Japanese broke the rules with Wii : a console with controls that were capable of reproducing movements and that changed the rules of the game, breaking the sales tops and becoming the most successful machine of this seventh generation: at the end of its useful life, back in 2012 (approximately), Miyamoto’s reached extraordinary figures by exceeding 101 million units sold.
So influential was the success of the Wii, that Microsoft and Sony ran to replicate this casual genre of games that were controlled with movements and gestures, developing accessories such as Kinect or PS Move, respectively, which never managed to approach the phenomenon created by Nintendo. Moreover, in the case of Microsoft, the insistence on Kinect led to a resounding failure of its next console.
Nintendo DS and PSP were two great portables that, in the case of Nintendo, sold in quantities never seen before. We are in 2004, in one of the sweetest moments of the company that saw how its two bets enjoyed the favor of the most recalcitrant gamers and, also, of millions of users who until then had not considered playing video games. The casual ones arrive , which will bring the Japanese enormous amounts of benefits and income, but also a serious problem when that wave passed by a few years later.
PSP, however, was the first Sony handheld that it launched in December 2004 and it did so with a similar impact to that of PlayStation 10 years earlier: quality games, never seen on a machine that we could take down the street and, the most importantly, with the support of the main developers: new GTAs , Metal Gear and practically all the successful franchises of home consoles arrived. Their problem was pira-cy, which killed off the novelty market as many companies saw their games stop selling and become available for download from the internet the same day they were released. a pity
Eighth generation (2011-2020)
Nintendo decided to move ahead of its competition and in November 2012 released the Wii U. A machine that many users did not understand because they did not know if it was a Wii update, or a real next-gen . In reality, the Japanese machine was left in no man’s land and from practically the beginning it was clear that there were not many third parties supporting it with their franchises. The low power of the console barely allowed ports to be made from the new machines that were about to arrive and that stifled its future.
In the field of Microsoft and Sony, for practically the first time in history, the two main contenders in the battle for market leadership arrived at the stores at the same time . With a single week of difference, between November 15 and 22, 2013. And the truth is that from the first day Sony took advantage because its proposal was solid and cheaper. Microsoft, however, got muddy with Kinect, insisted on keeping it in the box of all its packs and, on top of that, it came with a price 100 euros higher than PS4. Obviously, faced with such an argument, there was little Redmond could do before their bet lost in practically all the territories in which Xbox 360 had given the surprise in the seventh generation. Nor did the technical evidence helpThey pointed to Xbox One as a significantly inferior machine in terms of graphic power to move some games with the same quality and resolution compared to the Japanese console.
In the field of laptops, this generation saw the arrival of two authentic consoles . On the one hand, PS Vita at the end of 2011, influenced by the smartphone revolution, arrived with hardware halfway between the power of a PS2 and a PS3, with great games like its particular Uncharted The Golden Abyss and two tactile surfaces, one on the screen and one on the back. In addition, remote gaming became a reality with the arrival of PS4 and had versions with mobile data connectivity for mobile online gaming.
For its part, Nintendo with 3DS opted in 2011 for a 3D console , like the Virtual Boy of the 90s but without the need for glasses to enjoy it. Its catalog of games is very extensive and today items can be purchased in the digital store (until March 2023). Halfway through the generation, it received a small hardware update, with the New Nintendo 3DS, the arrival of one more analog stick and cartridges that squeezed those possibilities. By the end of its life, Nintendo retired the 3D effect and left the cutout machine with the Nintendo 2DS name.
Although with 3DS (and all its variants) it gave the Japanese a joy by reaching over 75 million units sold. PS Vita, however, was left without reaching 20 million due to Sony’s own erratic policy towards its machine: it barely supported it with truly differential games except in the early days on the market.
Eighth generation… and a half (2016-2020)
We have had doubts about how to deal with this milestone in the history of video games, as it was the launch for the first time of an intermediate generation , a revision of the hardware of the machines on the market that multiplied their graphic capacity and that helped virtual reality of PSVR were a little better.
It was in November 2016 when Sony decided to put in stores a much more powerful model capable of reaching 4K resolutions (in this case inflated) that had been banned in the original PS4. The result is a remarkably fast machine, which improves the gaming experience compared to the standard versions. This movement also had its response on the shore of Microsoft that a year later reacted with a new model of Xbox One.
The result was Project Scorpio, later known as Xbox One X, a piece of hardware that arrived on November 7, 2017 and that, with a more compact size than the original Xbox One model from 2013, broke all the graphics performance records seen up to that time. moment. The pity of this move by Microsoft is that it came when the fate of the generation was already cast and it could not reverse the huge difference in sales between the two platforms. This time. we did have true native 4K.
At the end of this eighth generation, PS4 had managed to sell (as of October 2021) more than 116 million consoles while Xbox One barely exceeded 50. Nintendo with Wii U confirmed its failure by not even reaching 14 million machines sold in the years it was available in stores. Which were few.
9th generation (2017-202X)
And we come to the present, a time in which we continue to have Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft fighting to be the best sellers, with a phenomenon that has destroyed the sales charts around the world over the last five years. We are referring to the Switch which, as of March 2017, is the best-selling machine with more than 103 million units. A real barbarity that has already left behind practically all the machines that have reached the market.
This generation is the one of limited units, the stock permanently broken from the same launch day of the new machines (November 2020) and with the unknown of knowing how long the main releases for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S will continue to be intergenerational. , also for PS4 and Xbox One. So we have little more to say, since history is being written at this very moment.
These new consoles bring ray tracing, a qualitative leap in the conception and development of video games that promises practically photorealistic environments. Therefore, the circle that began with the seventh generation and its qualitative leap in the graphic quality of video games is closed. A revolution that we do not know where it will take us and about which we will not be able to say anything until the tenth generation is a complete reality. Or will we also have a ninth and a half back in the year 2024 or 2025? We will see…