--- title: A History of Video Gaming Consoles | TIME description: The full series on gaming consoles packed into one video for you to watch. canonical: https://time.com/video/c8bQ37tV/ og:title: A History of Video Gaming Consoles og:description: The full series on gaming consoles packed into one video for you to watch. og:url: https://time.com/video/c8bQ37tV/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/c8bQ37tV/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A History of Video Gaming Consoles twitter:description: The full series on gaming consoles packed into one video for you to watch. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/c8bQ37tV/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # A History of Video Gaming Consoles > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: A History of Video Gaming Consoles [Watch (HLS stream): A History of Video Gaming Consoles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/c8bQ37tV.m3u8) (23:45)  _Published 2014-01-08. The full series on gaming consoles packed into one video for you to watch._ --- Jul 28, 2023 4:53 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [The History of Video Game Consoles: Part Three](/video/whCnIbCD/) ### The History of Video Game Consoles: Part Three [The History of Video Game Consoles: Part Two](/video/clSkZK2X/) ### The History of Video Game Consoles: Part Two [The History of Video Game Consoles: Part One](/video/fcRKqJGz/) ### The History of Video Game Consoles: Part One --- ## Transcript >> Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One were officially in the 8th generation of video game consoles. We made it. If you're as old as me you feel old, maybe a little creepy, maybe your back hurts when you get up in the morning, maybe the other parts of your body just hurt for no reason. That's how long video game consoles has been around. >> My very first video game console was the NES Famicom. >> The Game Boy. >> Sega Genesis. >> Mine is probably the ColecoVision. >> It was the Nintendo 64. >> The original NES, man. >> It's important to look back and ask ourselves how did we get here? How did the industry evolved to where it is today. In the 60's a man named Ralph Baer was working at a defense company in Nashua, New Hampshire and he thought to himself why can't I hook something up to this TV to make it more fun. So he got together with 2 of his engineers and they cobbled together the first of 7 Brown Boxes. These are video game consoles, early video game consoles that played simple games. It eventually sold the final Brown Box, the Magnavox, which rebranded as the Magnavox Odyssey. >> For most of the 20th century the idea of actually being able to play video games in your house was a fantasy. You couldn't do it but not until the Magnavox Odyssey where people actually able to play video games in their homes. >> The Odyssey itself had a really rough start. I mean it came out and it was marketed incredibly poorly. >> Odyssey, the electronic game of the future that lets you do your own thing on television. >> It was brand- new technology that people didn't get. >> The Odyssey was odd though is the best word to describe but it was really the Atari 2600 that kicked everything off for me as a home console player. >> When you look back now at the Atari 2600 games they all looked very basic but at the time they were nothing short of amazing. >> The Atari 2600 was the game console that everybody had or I didn't have it and I was really jealous of my neighbor who had one but this one was iconic. This was the system that got people crazy about playing video games at home. >> It was as ubiquitous as a refrigerator or a TV in most households. >> This successful years of the Atari 2600 would get to over 2 billion dollars business in the United States only on video games. It's kind of a number that is important from this time because we will understand what will happen when video games go into what this universally recognized as the big crash of video games in 1983. >> Game over. >> There is a video game crash as a result of just this the lot of terrible games on the 2600 and for a while it seemed like maybe home video games and video game consoles have just been a fad. >> And video games really went out of fashion altogether. >> Then something happened. What happened was Nintendo happened and Nintendo, a company that have been around making trading cards for nearly a century, they decided we're gonna try to make a video game system, but the key thing is they didn't call it a video game system. In the United States they marketed it as a toy. They had R. O. B. the Robot. They had the Zapper which was a little gun that you plugged in to the console. They didn't want people to think that it was a video game machine because that had a stink to it because of the Atari 2600 and the crash. >> With the 3rd generation of home video game systems, it was not a fair fight. The Nintendo Entertainment System mopped the floor with the Sega Master System. >> The Nintendo Entertainment System is the console that changed everything. This is the system, the little gray box that shipped and suddenly connected with everyone whether it'd be Mario, right? This is Mario Brothers. This is the start of everything for Nintendo but for the industry as well, right? All of a sudden video games had what they didn't have before a mascot. Something you could connect with. >> It was not just something that was big as a video game system but it helped launched Nintendo into being just a cultural force. So everything from Nintendo Cereal. >> Nintendo Cereal System is a super part of this nutritious breakfast. >> Or Fred Savage's famous or infamous movie The Wizard. Power Glove, this ridiculous glove that you would wear in theory to control games better. It was more than just a gaming system. It was a cultural phenomenon. >> There can be only one. >> Sega challenges you with the ultimate video game, the Sega Master System. >> When I started my career in this industry I was testing games on the Sega Master System and quite frankly I didn't even know it had existed. The only thing that was in my world was the Nintendo Entertainment System at that time. >> The Sega Master System is notable in that it's what brought Sega into home video games. >> I saw it. I put my little pudgy finger on the glass and I said mom, that's what I want for my birthday. What is that was the second question. It made that happen and I got the Sega Master System and man did I pick the losing horse in this race becoming a Sega kid over a Nintendo kid. But it was one of those things where that was your source of pride. That was your identity as video games were getting the foothold we're going right? >> It'll be certainly a rivalry. You know somebody else had a Sega Master System and you had a Nintendo. It's like, you know, you'd pick sides in a war. You had one. You didn't have the other and it was the beginning of a rivalry between Nintendo and Sega that would go on for generation after generation. It would take a while before there was a clear victor in it. >> So we're talking about the NES or the Sega Master System or just video games of that generation. You're talking about literally for what I think is the foundation for what video games would become, right, because there was suddenly all these kids like me who started to grow up with these and started to understand these characters and these things and what video games would be. And so as we make that jump to the Super NES to the, you know, the Sega Genesis, what you see is the video game company is realizing that their audience is maturing so they need to as well. >> And then the 4th generation, the Empire Strikes Back. Sega comes out with the Sega Genesis saying Genesis does what Ninten don't. >> Genesis does. >> What Ninten don't. >> I mean Sega Genesis was Sega's coming out party. You know Sega Master System was a system I own and nobody knew what that was, but Sega Genesis everyone knew because it was one Sega came out and adopted an identity that said we are this blue hedgehog. >> Sonic 2 handles stubborn stains, embarrassing bald spots, no problem. But wait. You can play it too. >> The Sonic was just he had attitude, you know. History has shown that Mario is a great character but he was just kind of this slobby plumber guy who jumped on turtles and-- >> It was one of those things that Sega said we are the underdog and in a way it summed up fans like me, right? Like we needed a rallying cry. >> Genesis. >> Does. >> Genesis. >> Does. >> There has to be a line saying for what you are when you're a kid and your parents won't buy you old systems. >> Sega people could look to the Genesis and say this is the thing, this is what gets us over Nintendo. >> Super Power. >> The Super Nintendo was Nintendo putting its foot down and saying we basically started this home console business and we aren't going anywhere. >> It's been very unusual in gaming history for any one console maker to have 2 great platforms in a row, but Nintendo pulled that off. The Nintendo Entertainment System was phenomenal, the Super Nintendo I would say it was even better. >> It was when Nintendo said we are going to make these things that you love on the last system franchise. These are things that are gonna be here to stay because we love them. Here's another Metroid. Here's the Final Fantasy. Here are all these different experiences that we're gonna give you and make this the definitive video game platform for the times. >> Super Nintendo kind of quietly proved itself out to be one of the best machines ever made. >> You realized there was no ceiling to what was happening and 16- bit was our first taste of that. >> The 5th generation was a show. Can I say show? I have to look at my notes. That's how much of a show it was. 3DO '93, Atari Jaguar '93, then finally the PlayStation. There's too many players here. There's too many players in the 5th generation. Something's gotta give. >> It really was a fascinating time with so many people from companies like 3DO and Sega all moved to Nintendo or to Sony and both of them became major powerhouses for the next several years. >> I think history shows the Nintendo 64 was one of the stranger systems ever created. >> N64. Get N or get out. >> On the one hand it lost. The PlayStation was far more successful than the N64. On the other hand it ran arguably the 2 best video games ever made. Super Mario 64 launch game for the N64. >> Here we go. >> And then a few years after that the Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and then you can't forget GoldenEye. >> And suddenly, you know, the Nintendo 64 is a staple of college dorm rooms and drinking and it's one of these things that you were sitting there with passing the controller around playing nonstop. >> Hit it. >> But something dramatic happened in the next generation, the 32- bit generation. Sony showed up. >> The Walkman people have the nerve to come out with this PlayStation. As a Sega kid, talking to my Nintendo enemies suddenly we're looking at this PlayStation like what. >> For several years of my career were at Sega. When we heard a big company like Sony was gonna get into the game industry it was laughable. >> Fly please, fly. You're not ready. >> And then when the PlayStation first came out we were all pretty blown away and quite frankly pretty scared. >> But what it was was Sony making a calculated effort that, you know, later you'd see Microsoft come around give you the exact same thing. Them saying we are coming in here, we see what this market is and we're staking our claim in it. >> Sony kind of opened kind of accidental way. They were supposed to have just partnered with Nintendo, make a CD attachment for the Super Nintendo. Relations fell apart. Most people historically they blame Nintendo for kind of bungling that but the bottom line is-- >> The media is much cheaper to be used. You wanna think it's produced the cartridges with the motherboarding side, well I think it's just the previous CD. >> And thus it was expensive to develop for, get those things to test them out to make where you're making your return. You know I mean that's the whole problem. >> You and me, booya, grandma. Booya. >> The thing that Sony really did that was different, is the attitude that they brought to marketing that 1st generation of the PlayStation. >> Hey, plumber boy, moustache man. Your worst nightmare has arrived. >> Pack up your stuff. >> But it was this idea that you should be moving on from whatever kiddie games you played before. >> There was times when you know I'm in high school now and I'm like I don't know how much longer I'm gonna be in this hobby, Riley. This is cool and this is fun and distractions and you know but I want something more and I didn't know what that was. I didn't know what to say and then one day, you know, me and a friend went out. We rented some games for this PlayStation I just gotten and one of whom was Metal Gear Solid. And I put in Metal Gear Solid and for the 2nd time in my life video games changed my life. >> Colonel, what's a Russian gunship doing here? >> And one of them is on his knees, his name is Otacon. He's crying over Sniper Wolf and she's starting at this guy dying. >> Set me free. >> And I'm tearing up with my other high school friend right next to me and you get attached to these characters. That's when you get an experience you can't get anywhere else and the seed, the first taste I had with that was Metal Gear and it was like just that moment of like this is it, man. Like this is-- >> The future. >> We have the Sega Dreamcast. That was the last of Sega's consoles unfortunately. >> Sega which had been in a dogfight with Nintendo for generation over generation, they began to fade away. >> The Dreamcast was so far ahead of its time nobody knew what to make of it. >> And then you had companies like EA that basically just said we're a juggernaut and we are pulling support from your console. >> And, you know, eventually the write- down on the Sega Saturn forced Sega out of the hardware business and they became a software publisher which is essentially what they're now. >> I owe you nothing. >> PlayStation 2, you can see that even as today is the most sold video game console in the world. >> And Sony flips the switch, man. They changed the game with the PlayStation 2. >> And it was also there was a bit of a Trojan horse effect and that it was right around the time when DVD's were becoming the most popular medium for home video. >> It's a movie on a disc the size of a CD. >> The same way that back in the old days Nintendo kind of had every game you needed to play with maybe warrants to exceptions. PS2 was that system for the 6th generation. >> Your torment is just beginning. >> Then you talk about okay. PlayStation 2 is where God of War shows up. Then Metal Gear continues to evolve, right? Again all the games that I just mentioned are exclusive to the PlayStation 2. Sony is swinging like Mike Tyson against your grandmother. >> You have a problem? Turn off your station. >> And again they're the young kids on the block and then I mean deja vu comes knocking and here Microsoft suddenly announces they're gonna make this Xbox. >> The Xbox was not a great console. It was a good first step. >> Microsoft comes out. They knew they're gonna take a loss on the Xbox. They take a horrendous one for not making money on it, but Microsoft is so in the black here that they can just say okay, we'll do this. >> Microsoft is the Windows Company. It's weird enough when Sony the people who made your television are gonna make you a game console but at least they made a thing. >> And they give you this gigantic black box and this gigantic controller and you're like what the hell is this. This thing is a bomb. Nobody-- what's Halo? That was it for them. That's all they needed. What was Halo? >> This is gonna be your lucky day. >> There's the Halo obviously. There's Fable. You're talking about Knights of the Old Republic like they're saying we're gonna get you good games and we're gonna put on I mean yellow text only on Xbox. >> Hello? >> Then Nintendo comes out and they said oh you guys loved the N64 so much. Let's give you the Nintendo GameCube. >> If I remember correctly people laughed at the GameCube. It's a purple lunch box with a handle on it, and I appreciated that because I thought, you know, game consoles previously were meant to be tucked away, hidden, not seen. But the Nintendo found itself in an odd position in the beginning of the 6th generation because a lot of gamers, they wanted Nintendo to fight back. It's not like Nintendo had taken its lumps from Sony, from Sega. >> Face it, Protector. You weren't worth waiting for. >> And again they had lost before they began on this. Remember we only have this small group of franchises that we really loved. I'm sure other people will become programmed for it. They did not know and decided to come they gain from. >> A lot of that focus had gone on to the PlayStation 2. That really is where the industry and shifted over to, but this was the beginning of a change but it wasn't so much just about how good are your graphics or how good are your games, but what else can your console do. >> The 7th generation rolls along and Microsoft pulls a sneak attack on everyone and releases the Xbox 360 a year earlier than the PlayStation 3. >> I'm here to start you on a journey into the future of entertainment. That future starts right here right now. >> So a year goes by with Xbox 360 being the only next gen HD console on the market and people start going to it. >> I chose rapture. >> There's 4 things that the Xbox 360 probably should be recognized for in history. One is Xbox Live. >> Gain the lead, double kill. >> The idea of popularizing an online service for console gamers to all play against each other with each other or to download copies of Minecraft and to share worlds together and Xbox Live has been a huge force in gaming Kinect. Didn't really lead to any great games but the idea of jumping around in front of your television, it made the game even more of a mass appeal activity achievements. >> They've also added a new concept called Achievements. Now these are sort of a record of everything you've accomplished across your entire library of games. >> People love that idea. People would play the worse games ever just so that they can grade their achievements score. Even download Netflix and you can stream movies to your console. >> Without realizing it, Sony is giving them and Sony was giving them the rope thinking they'd hang themselves I think. >> PS3 they sort of came in arrogant and they came in saying, you know, you're gonna get a second job to be able to afford this system. >> Meanwhile Sony thought that they could come out rest on their laurels you know with the PlayStation brand and get everybody back. They can't. They don't have anything with it. They doubled down, right? Oh, well. Well, PlayStation 2 sold well because of DVD. So now they're new one will be Blu- ray. >> With so much space in a single Blu- ray disc, the only thing you'll need more of is time. >> But again Sony is betting on technology people don't even have the technology for yet. How many people when the PlayStation 3 come out have an HD TV at the time? >> And so the PS3 was not a very good machine for a couple of years. >> Yes. I had everything under control until they blew up the boat. >> Then Sony got smart. They recognized the error of their ways. They found humility. They redesigned the machine. They slimmed it down and the PS3 in the long run after a slow start turned out to be quite an enjoyable machine to play games on. You have a really wonderful array of games. >> So what you got? >> What do I got? 2 words, Mon- tage. >> Now all of this is happening, the HD twins are colliding just duking it out. Sony is losing and again in the background there's this other kid lining up for a Wii. >> Wii would like to play. >> The Wii came out kind of out of nowhere. It was a console that everyone could play. That's what led to it being such a popular, popular hit. >> So many people throughout the industry myself included we'd see it and say why would anyone wanna play a game that way. Why would anyone wanna do this when they're playing instead of doing this and it just took the world by storm. >> This was the biggest Trojan horse I think anyone's ever pulled off. Nintendo sold it to the gamer, but they brought it in with this Wii sports game that they knew people would come in and seeing it way by and that's why we see these articles write up. Oh, man every retirement home has got a Wii now. People love bowling they love this blah blah. >> This retirement community in New Jersey you'll find cards, music, but the main attraction here is video games. >> For more than a year, more than a year, you couldn't walk into a store and buy a Wii. >> And more bad news for holiday shoppers nearly a year after the Wii's debut Nintendo is still having supply problems with the video game console. >> And you're like what is happening with video games right now. There are these 2 expensive HD devices literally destroying each other and then over here sprinting away from what everybody else is doing Nintendo is winning and now granted they didn't pay out to gamers in the end, right? >> Loved it. They sold a ton of them but they used it primarily to do one thing was to play Wii sports. This brought me back to the old days before the Atari 2600 where everyone just had Pong machines. >> You're watching the most exciting game you'll ever see on your TV set. >> Where you just hook this thing up to your console and it could do one thing. It could play Pong. >> Suddenly third- party developers see look how many units are in people's houses right now and like let's make all-- just stop what you're doing. Put all of the crazy ass mini games you can on the disk and let's get them out to these, you know Wii families. People wanna play Bingo. People wanna do this. They want and suddenly like there's a glut of Nintendo Wii games and a lot of them are shoveled. >> Cruise around the world as you perform tons of different dance moves. >> And you get this bad taste in your mouth that once again Nintendo is only playing with the toys in their sand box and alienating everybody else. >> So the 7th generation of gaming is not just important for gaming, but it's also important for how much more these consoles prove that they were able to do it. It really became a generation of entertainment as much as it was in the game. >> And now of course we come to the 8th and final generation, the generation that makes my back hurt, makes me feel old, makes me feel pretty old, we've got the Wii U, PlayStation 4, and the Xbox One. >> We've got Microsoft versus Sony right now and I think without that type of rivalry I think things would get stagnant very quickly and you wouldn't see the advances that you're seeing today. >> And that is definitely caused every fan boy out there to decide, you know, why the PS4 is terrible or the Xbox is just a one is such a worst system ever. >> Well, the price is the one thing, $ 100 cheaper. >> I think the Xbox overall is a more balanced system. >> Microsoft stands on a lot of-- of course on the right issues have rubbed you the wrong way. >> The PS4 just cannot match the teams that Microsoft has. >> And in the end it's not apples or oranges. It's apples to apples, they're video games and they're great and each one of them has awesome exclusives and each one of them has a number of problems. >> Of course always on the periphery, potentially always ready to up end everything is Nintendo and who knows who else trying to come in and basically challenge the idea that a PlayStation or Xbox is the thing that you should be playing these one at home. >> The current generation of consoles have a big question mark hanging over their existence really. >> There are valid questions out there as to whether these boxes are still the things that make sense to be playing games on even on to your television and an arrow where you can have a portable like an iPad or something like that that can output to your TV. >> Odyssey. >> So, you know, games started off as toys for kids to machines that have created experience that I think people recognize as a fundamental part of American and world culture. >> You can compare us to other popular forms of entertainment and see the same fights even, right? Dee Snider testifying it from Congress for freedom of speech. >> Who will address Twisted Sisters music being completely misinterpreted and unfairly judged by supposedly well- informed adults? >> Suddenly video games have to do the same thing. I think Grand Theft Auto come out and say all these stuff. >> Could send shivers down your spine if you hear these 3 words, Grand Theft Auto. >> Grand Theft Auto. >> Modern Warfare 2. >> Mass Effect. >> Kids into video games? >> No. >> Okay. That's a good thing. >> You're starting to see an arrow where even the way games are rated by the press, you're starting to become more and more similar to the evolution of how films have been rated. >> And now you are seeing a generation of people who had been raised with video games in their living rooms in their lives on their phones everyday of their lives. Video games have been around long enough. Now we're were at the tipping point. >> And when we're all dead and gone people will be looking back on video games like the most important type of entertainment that ever existed because it was interactive entertainment and it wasn't passive. >> Imagine the generation right now who their first video game console is the PlayStation 4, is the Xbox One, what are they gonna be making in 30 years? That's the future of video games that there is no limit. There is no end. There is no way to predict what will happen next. >> What's gonna happen? Are people just gonna use their smartphones to play games? Are people gonna go back to using their computers to play games? Are boxes gonna shrink into nothing and just be embedded in your TV? I don't know. All I know is when I get out of bed in the morning, my back hurts. I'm old. There's been 8 generations of consoles. 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