The Middle Ages

In 1972 the Magnavox Odyssey is the first video games console released and is followed by a string of other home games consoles. In 1983 there's a crash in the video games industry due to a number of poor quality games being released the increasing popularity of home computer systems. This causes many video games companies to become bankrupt. After two years of no significant developments within the industry Nintendo release the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom and due to its popularity the industry is revived.





In 1990 Sega return with their popular Genesis console and Sonic the Hedgehog is introduced. A year later Nintendo fight back with their Super NES and a follow up to the popular Super Mario series. The first significant console war begins with Sega using advertising to market their console as the mature, "cooler" console while nintendo continue to market their console as being more family friendly. During this time many quality games were released and many of today's popular franchises were born such as Final Fantasy, F-Zero, FIFA, Donkey Kong, Mario Kart, StarFox, Mortal Kombat.

The next major console war began in the mid-90's when Sony entered the video game market with the PlayStation marketed at older male gamers. Sega struggled to compete with their new Sega Saturn console which was much harder to develop games for and the games lacked the graphical quality of the PlayStation. In 1998 Nintendo released their follow up to the SNES- the Nintendo 64. Their decision to continue using cartridges rather than CD's meant that the games were more expensive to produce than the PlayStation's and therefore cost more to buy in shops. The console war was won by Sony because of the early release of the PlayStation and the much larger choice of games available for the system.




Sega, Sony and Nintendo had now proven themselves as being the three major companies in the industry and were the only companies to release consoles for the sixth generation of video games consoles. Sega's Dreamcast was released much earlier than the other consoles but again failed to compete with the popularity of Sonys new console the PlayStaion 2 which was released a year later. By the time Nintendos GameCube was released in 2000 the Dreamcasts life was nearly over. The last console to enter the current generation was Microsoft's first video games console the XBOX.