The History of Video Games

The History

Computer scientists began building rudimentary games and simulations on mainframe computers in the 1950s and 1960s, with MIT's Spacewar! in 1962 being one of the first such games to be played with a video display. The first consumer-ready video game hardware arrived in the early 1970s, with the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game system, and the first arcade video games from Atari, Computer Space and Pong, the latter of which was later transformed into a home console version. Pong's success in arcades and at home prompted numerous firms to create clones of the game, resulting in a market contraction in 1978 owing to oversaturation and a lack of innovation. By the mid-1970s, low-cost programmable microprocessors had replaced the early hardware's discrete transistor–transistor logic circuits, and the first ROM cartridge-based home consoles, such as the Atari Video Computer System, had arrived (VCS). The home console business grew rapidly in parallel with the golden period of arcade video games, which included titles like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. In 1983, the home video game market in the United States experienced a major crash as a result of too many low-quality games flooding the market, consumers losing faith in the major companies involved, and the sector facing competition from low-cost personal computers and new types of games being developed for them. The disaster paved the way for Japan's video game sector to rise to the top of the market, despite the fact that the crash had only had modest consequences. Nintendo's Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1985 in the United States and other Western regions, helping to revive the struggling video game industry. Improvements and standardization in personal computers, as well as the console war competition, drove video games in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As they battled for market share in the United States, Nintendo and Sega went head to head. Nintendo's Game Boy was one of the first major handheld video game consoles to arrive in the 1990s. The arrival of optical storage via CD-ROMs and the capacity to execute real-time polygonal 3D graphic rendering due to additional developments in computer microprocessors marked two important technological shifts in the early 1990s. Both were easily implemented into personal computers, resulting in the creation of a market for graphics cards, while Sony utilized both in its developing PlayStation console line, ultimately driving Sega out of the console hardware market and decreasing Nintendo's influence. By the late 1990s, the Internet had become commonly embraced by the general public, and video games began to incorporate online components. Microsoft joined the console hardware market with its Xbox line in the early 2000s, fearful that Sony's PlayStation, which served as both a game system and an entertainment device, would replace personal computers. While Sony and Microsoft continued to create top-end console technology, Nintendo chose to focus on innovative gameplay and produced the Wii with motion-sensing controllers, which helped to attract new players. From the 2000s to the 2010s, the industry saw a shift in demographics as mobile gaming on smartphones and tablets overtook portable consoles, casual gaming grew in popularity, and the number of gamers from China and other areas not traditionally associated with the industry increased. To take advantage of these trends, traditional revenue models were replaced with ongoing revenue stream models such as free-to-play, freemium, and subscription-based games. Over the 2000s and 2010s, as triple-A video game production got more expensive and became more of a hazard, chances for more experimental and innovative independent game development developed, supported by the popularity of mobile and casual gaming, as well as the accessibility of digital distribution. With support for high-definition video at high framerates, as well as virtual and augmented reality-based games, hardware and software technologies continued to push innovation in video games.

Magnavox Odyssey

The first commercial home video gaming console was the Magnavox Odyssey. The hardware was designed by a small team at Sanders Associates led by Ralph H. Baer, while Magnavox finished development and released it in September 1972 in the United States and the following year elsewhere. The Odyssey is made up of two rectangular controllers connected by wires and a white, black, and brown box that connects to a television. It can display three square dots and one line of varied heights in monochromatic black and white on the screen, with the dots behaving differently depending on the game being played. Players install plastic overlays on the screen to display extra visual components for each game, and one or two players control their dots using the controller's knobs and buttons in accordance with the game's rules. The console is unable to create tracks or audio score. To go with the games, the Odyssey console came with dice, paper money, and other board game collectables, while a peripheral controller was available separately. Baer came up with the idea for a video game console in August 1966. Over the next three years, he and Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch designed seven prototype consoles in succession. Before Magnavox agreed to create it in January 1971, the seventh, dubbed the Brown Box, was exhibited to various manufacturers. Magnavox sold 69,000 units in the first calendar year after selling the system through their dealerships, and 350,000 by the time it was retired in 1975. The Odyssey series of dedicated consoles, as well as the 1978 Magnavox Odyssey 2, were born from the console. One of the 28 games created for the system, a ping pong game, served as inspiration for Atari's popular 1972 Pong arcade game, which helped drive Odyssey sales. Patents for the system and games by Baer and the other creators, including what a judge called "the pioneering patent of the video game art," became the basis of a 20-year legal battle that earned Sanders and Magnavox over $100 million. The release of the Odyssey marks the start of the first generation of video game consoles, and it was a crucial point in the development of the commercial video game industry.