A History of Games - 2000's favourites

 A history of computer games, part three: 2000s 

The beginning of the new millennium saw the release of Sony’s second Console. The PlayStation 2 was released a whole year before its main competitors, Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s Game Cube.  The PlayStation 2 to this day is still the most successful home console in the world selling over 155 million units. Sony only stopped production four months ago on January 4th 2013!!

I'm not surprised it's the bestselling console to date as I cant think of anyone I've met in my short life time who didn't own one, but I was shocked that Sony was still manufacturing the console and games 7 years after the PS3 was released.

In 2001, Nintendo switched its cartridge-based Nintendo 64 to a DVD-ROM GameCube. It introduced a ‘variety of connectivity options to Nintendo consoles and it was the first console (outside Japan) that supported online play’. However this online service only supported four games, so I’m guessing it wasn't a big hit. 

That same year, we saw Microsoft enter into the video game console industry with its well-received Xbox, which featured an online gaming service as well, the Xbox Live. It reached over 24 million sales by 2006 not quite as many as the PS2 but still pretty good! The Xbox was Microsoft’s first venture into the gaming console world and I think they did a pretty good job. The integrated Xbox live launched in 2002 and it allowed players to play games online. Although you did have to prescribe to it and it was a broadband only connection which not everyone had at the time.

Two years after this Microsoft came out with the Xbox 360, the one I know and love. The Xbox 360 would become the direct competition with Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii. Microsoft didn't just upgrade the processor, and graphics card they upgraded Xbox live, so players could now, ‘compete online’ with each other, download games, trailers, T.V shows and movies. This changed dramatically the way I played games, some of them wouldn't have been half as good without being able to shout at my team mates.

A year later in 2006 Sony bought out the PlayStation 3 as the successor of the PS2. ‘It was the first console to use Blu-ray Discs as its primary storage medium’. Like the Xbox the PS3 allowed its players to connect via the PlayStation network which basically has similar features to Xbox live. I didn't like the PS3 because in my opinion the online service isn’t as dedicated to playing, the service and quality of online gaming isn’t as good as the 360’s.

Also in 2006 Nintendo released the Wii. Being in competition Nintendo had to come up with something a bit different and Nintendo stated that ‘its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others’. And the consumers seem to like it! In the beginning of 2012 Wii beat the sales figures of it’s too other competitors and in December 2009 the console broke the sales record for most sales taken in a single month.  The Wii seems to have come on leaps and bounds compared to its predecessors, the remote detects movement in 3D. Nintendo changed their previous online gaming and created WiiConnect24 which lets players get and send messages over the internet from the console although playing online still wasn't a big hit because of the complicated process of adding friends and not being able to chat with players in game.

The gaming community now have a need for a constant improvement of graphics and hardware and in terms of graphics the industry’s done really well. But the hardware is still lacking. You can’t really have one without the other and I think the next generation of consoles will be improved, but I don’t think it will be to the extent that gamers want it to be.