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A Brief History of Game Console Warfare
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a gallery on the history of console wars. Starting with the 1972 Magnavox Odyssey, all the way to the 2006 Wii. The details on the Magnavox Odyssey:
'This is where it all began. Game guru Ralph Baer's invention for Magnavox brought video gaming out of the arcades and into the living room. As the first home video game console, the Odyssey had no audio output and could only display black and white images. But the system came with translucent TV screen overlays to simulate full-color graphics in games like tennis and hockey. The Odyssey's sales were less than impressive: Magnavox had sold about 350,000 units by 1975.'"
I mean, how can you write an article *supposedly* about video game warfare, but so completely miss the Video Game Crash of '83/84?!? You're far better off checking out Wikipedia's article on the same thing.
That being said, someone behind the scenes seemed to know what they were doing. the Tron Deadly Discs cartridge was a hilarious backslap at both Atari and this article.
A list of systems oddly missing:
All of those were supremely important to the history of video game "warfare". Yet not a one in sight. How odd.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
[Nostalgic "I remember when" comment]
[Criticism of modern gaming and gamers]
[Self-deprecating witticism]
[Trite conclusion]
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
does that count? Mind you, getting the tape drive to load the program did take a while, and reading the one-line LED output was interesting, but it was a game console ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Microsoft's Xbox marked the software company's debut in producing hardware of any kind"
/.? *ducks and hides*
That was 2001 they were talking about... I remember having microsoft controllers for my PC prior to xbox. I distinctly remember having them in my apartment which was before November '01... Wait... did I just admit to having microsoft hardware on
-FL
In the late 80s I had pleasure to work for Mattel in the electronic branch, based near Kansas City. We were at the leading edge, creating games such as M.U.L.E., Turbo, the Zelda clone Guinea Sisters, and of course Pac-Man.
Steve Wozniak used to work for Intellivision briefly at the beginning of the company and he created the games Enduro, Street Fighter and Double Dribble.
I now find that there are lot of people buying those retro consoles on eBay.
Which is nice.
"The NES had ... an 8-bit digital brain for enhanced power..."
Er, so did the Atari 2600 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6507
That stuff is such moronic bullshit that the guy probably wasn't even born before 1984.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I don't know what it was called, but it was a rectangular orange box, with two controllers with just a wheel knob on each. There were four pong variants, which basically just changed whether it was single/two player, and if there were walls along the top of the screen or not. There were a few switches on the console that would change the game, the size of the paddles and the speed of the ball. Does anyone here remember this, and perhaps know what it was called?
I recommend that anyone who finds this article interesting should read Steven L. Kent's excellent The Ultimate History of Video Games (formerly known as The First Quarter). It's a detailed and nuanced history of the video game industry, starting with the pinball industry's birth in the late 1800s, all the way to the death of the Dreamcast. It's incredibly engrossing, and will leave you with a much clearer picture of how far the industry has come.
I fail to see where Nintendo made a mistake with the Gamecube. They made tons of money off of it from day one, while the competitors never made a profit off of their offerings.
Not only does this article not mention systems such as Intellivision, but they even show an Intellivision cartridge in the Atari 2600's slot!!
What a poor article. Really.
Are you sure that wasn't an M-Network cartridge? Those used an Intellivision cartridge shell with an "adaptor" so it could seat into an Atari cartridge slot.
Though it did seem odd not to have a standard Atari cartridge in the slot. I don't know if the image came from some stock archive or done in-house, but you'd think there would be far more Atari cartridges around to make the photo with.
Your point is taken about Gamecube's success, though I'd imagine Sony also made quite a bundle off the PS2...
I had a Microsoft Jr. Booster memory sidecar and bus mouse (packaged with Flight Simulator v1 or 2) for my IBM PCjr back in the 80s. Back when hardware was hardware and mice had metal balls!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
No, it's an Atari 2600 catridge alright.
r eLabelID=569
http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?Softwa
If profit was the *only* criteria, perhaps (not to mention that most of it is due to their handheld line, not the gamecube). But going from an NES-sized marketshare to a GC-sized one has got to be a huge blow, if only for morale's-sake.
No...I hate to break it to you, but Sony has not made one cent overall off of the PS2. Certain parts of the PS2 were profitable, but once you add up all of Sonys losses and profits with the PS2 it still comes out in the negative.
Somehow that doesn't pass the smell test. Are you counting profits from software licensing fees? I'd be interested to see a link that discusses this issue.
If Sony actually lost money on the PS2, why would they bother making a PS3? I mean, PS2 sold more than any console in HISTORY, and it's not done yet. If Sony couldn't at least eke out a profit on it, what possible motivation would there be to release yet ANOTHER console, in what will surely be an even more competitive 2006-2012 gaming environment? Sony is in no position to throw money down a drain.
The only explanation that makes sense to me is that, all told, and hidden revenues counted, Sony turned a very nice profit on their console gaming division and wants to try to do it again starting this November.
not to be the fly in the ointment but that "intellivision game in the 2600" is actually a 2600 game Mattel marketed games under the label "M Network" and they used basically the Intellivision cartridge shell and added a adaptor piece to convert the cartridge to a 2600 of course along with a new circuit board with a 2600 version of the game. Other than that i agree the article is dry and straight from wikipedia.
Yes, I'm counting all of the extraneous areas the PS2 could make money from. Give my previous comment an actual read. Sony and Microsoft both are in a situation where both of them have spent way, too, damn, much on their plunges into the console market to just pull out after one go at not making a profit. The consoles are being used as a tool purely to try and lockout anyone else from getting a mediacenter system into the jo-consumer's living room. Microsoft is in it for the 360 and maybe one more even if they don't make a profit and Sony will almost for certain be out if the PS3 pulls a PS2. Which is very likely given the sticker-shock price on top of what they are losing to begin with. PS3 might not have even happened if Sony didn't have such a raging hard-on given their fetish with pushing the lame-duck format Blue Ray they have so much stock invested in. All the while Nintendo is just doing what they do best; laughing their asses off putting more and more cash into their reserves. I work in the industry. I do have an inkling about what the hell I am talking about.