Competition in Video Game Consoles

[edit] History[edit] First generation

The Magnavox Odyssey was the first video game console, released in 1972.Main article: History of video game consoles (first generation)

Although the first computer games appeared in the 1950s,[2] they were based around vector displays, not analog video. It was not until 1972 that Magnavox released the first home video game console which could be connected to a TV set—the Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph H. Baer. The Odyssey was initially only moderately successful, and it was not until Atari's arcade game Pong popularized video games, that the public began to take more notice of the emerging industry. By the autumn of 1975 Magnavox, bowing to the popularity of Pong, cancelled the Odyssey and released a scaled down version that only played Pong and hockey, the Odyssey 100. A second, "higher end" console, the Odyssey 200, was released with the 100 and added onscreen scoring, up to four players, and a third game—Smash. Almost simultaneously released with Atari's own home Pong console through Sears, these consoles jump-started the consumer market. As with the arcade market, the home market was soon flooded by dedicated consoles that played simple pong and pong-derived games.

[edit] Second generationMain article: History of video game consoles (second generation)

The Atari 2600 became the most popular game console of the second generation.Fairchild released the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES) in 1976. While there had been previous game consoles that used cartridges, either the cartridges had no information and served the same function as flipping switches (the Odyssey) or the console itself was empty and the cartridge contained all of the game components. The VES, however, contained a programmable microprocessor so its cartridges only needed a single ROM chip to store microprocessor instructions.

RCA and Atari soon released their own cartridge-based consoles.

[edit] Video game crash of 1977In 1977,...