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.'"

Comments

Cotton Candy, get yer Cotton Candy!

[AKAImBatman]

Usually, a discussion of "warfare" would include some actual, oh I dunno, warfare? Instead, all we get is a bunch of pictures of the winners and the hanger-ons of gaming history. (Starting with the requisite reference to the Magnavox Odyssey.) The whole article feels like it was put together to create yet another story about the new game consoles coming out. To flesh it out, they took a few pictures and ripped a little data from Wikipedia.

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:

• Channel F (FIRST cartridge based system)
  
• Intellivision
  
• Odyssey^2
  
• Colecovision
  
• Atari 5200
  
• Atari 7800
  
• TurboGrafx 16
  
• Atari Jaguar
  
• 3DO
  

All of those were supremely important to the history of video game "warfare". Yet not a one in sight. How odd.

Re:Cotton Candy, get yer Cotton Candy!

[AKAImBatman]

the Nintendo goggle thing

The VirtualBoy.

I left out a bunch of consoles that simply weren't relevant in the market. Otherwise I would have droned on and on about the Bally Astrocade, the Emerson Arcadia, the Neo-Geo, the SG-1000 (Mark I, II, & III), the APF Imagination Machine, the Wonderswan, the Apple Pippin, the...

Um... I'm droning on, aren't I?

Re:Cotton Candy, get yer Cotton Candy!

[WilliamSChips]

the SG-1000

Well, duh, everybody knows that SG teams with numbers greater than 1 only appear to further the plot! :P

Re:Cotton Candy, get yer Cotton Candy!

[ZakuSage]

Perhaps the better article to check would be Console Wars?

Re:Cotton Candy, get yer Cotton Candy!

[AKAImBatman]

You cannot discuss the Video Game Crash without mentioning the "Super Systems" like the Colecovision and the 5200. Systems like the Intellivision and the O^2 also played a huge role. Mentioning it in passing is hardly addressing the console crash, much less the "warfare" that caused it.

Re:Cotton Candy, get yer Cotton Candy!

[werewolf1031]

Anyone who compares the Lynx to the 2600 is sadly uninformed. One of the many ways in which the Lynx was far superior was that it was the first hand-held console to sport hardware-supported 3D graphics, albeit somewhat crudely (filled polygons, no textures), as well as a massive amount of hardware-supported sprite manipulation including scaling, distortion, etc. which were combined with the hardware-rendered polygons for great effect. In fact, it was the first "home" video game system to support hardware-based 3D graphics, period -- even predating the original Playstation by five years, which debuted in '94 in Japan ('95 in US, Europe) . It was also the first hand-held system to have color LCD (sorry, Gameboy). It even had a math coprocessor, something unheardof for a consumer gaming console in '89, let alone in a hand-held unit.

I could go on, thus revealing the nostalgic fanboy that I am -- eh, too late -- but suffice it to say that the Lynx was as far above the 2600 as the XBox is above the Super NES. Yeah, that's right, I said it! Let the flame wars begin! :)

To riff on PA

[Control Group]

[Nostalgic "I remember when" comment]

[Criticism of modern gaming and gamers]

[Self-deprecating witticism]

[Trite conclusion]

Re:To riff on PA

[AKAImBatman]

PROFIT!

Re:To riff on PA

[talis9]

But Riff's not on http://www.penny-arcade.com/, he's on Sluggy Freelance http://www.sluggy.com/!

*shakes head*

[FrontalLobe]

"Microsoft's Xbox marked the software company's debut in producing hardware of any kind"

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 /.? *ducks and hides*

Re:*shakes head*

[Lemmy Caution]

Microsoft began making designing, producing, and selling mice in 1983 (playing catch-up to Apple, I believe, and designing Word to take advantage of the mouse.) Many years before Sony was even in the video game business, and two years before Nintendo shipped the first Famicom/NES (they has already been making arcade games for 8 years.)

I recall Microsoft having designed some specialized cards for early PCs, too, but I don't recall their name.

Re:*shakes head*

[Scoth]

Don't forget the Microsoft RAMCard. Quite popular in their day. I love the "Great Software: Yours, Ours, or Theirs" tagline in the ad. How things have changed.

Re:*shakes head*

[werewolf1031]

While some of the more "mundane" hardware may have been rebranded, the Microsoft Sidewinder was most definitely not rebranded hardware, and it came out about six years before the XBox. The Sidewinder flight stick was manufactured exclusively for Microsoft. Sure, it didn't hold up too well in comparison to Logitech's legendary Wingman series of flight sticks from the 90's, nevermind the high-end gear from Thrustmaster, but it hardly counts as "rebranded"... unless you also count the various components manufactured by companies other than Microsoft for the XBox and XBox 360 as "rebranded", which is rather absurd since they're not made for anyone else.

So yes, the article is mistaken in that respect.

"8-bit digital brain for enhanced power"

[Rico_Suave]

"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

A Real History Lesson

[Doomstalk]

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.

Re:Would Mario's Mansion have improved sales inste

[DDLKermit007]

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.

Re:How ridiculous ... Intellivision game in the At

[Anonymous Coward]

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.