Games have changed a lot over the year, concerning both what they are and what they're played on and I expect them to change a lot in the future too, here I'll be looking at each few decades of gaming. For each decade I'll assess how they were in my own opinion and how they influenced the gaming world we see today.
1980 - 1990 (Dawn Of Gaming Evolution) - The 80's introduced the Third generation of consoles and sparked the Fourth generation of consoles which would last all the way to the mid 90's. This decade bared the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Sega Genesis along with the Gameboy much later on into the year, this date could be considered to be the dawn of the first ever console war. During the 80's, 2D graphics greatly improved from the Third to the Fourth generation of home consoles (starting with 8-bit and later transitioning over to 16-bit), meaning that these console generations were very important in staging the developed of the gaming world as a whole. Concerning my own opinion, the 80's caved way for many of the titles I really enjoy today such as Super Mario.
1990 - 2000 (Visual Enhancements) - The 90's were perhaps the most innovative decade for games of all, being the decade we went from 2D to 3D graphics. Thanks to the Gameboy's release in the 80's, arcade gaming started to die down slowly although still popular in the early 90's but eventually died down much more as home consoles took over, leaving the Fourth generation to flourish for a while. Soon after this, the Fifth generation of consoles took over thanks to systems like the PlayStation, sparking the evolution of bits, moving up to 32/64 bits around this generation. This generation was when consoles first started to move from game cartridges like before to CDs. The 90's also introduced the very early Sixth generation, starting with the Dreamcast. The Dreacast and consoles alike of the time came with new features like online gaming. The 90's were very important because without the introduction of certain systems video games might still be rather low res.
2000 - 2010 (Evolution Of How We Play) - The Sixth generation carried on until the mid 2000's, starting with the Dreamcast becoming very short lived and being replaced by the PlayStation 2. This decade really set the Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony gaming battle into full swing, with the releases of the Xbox and the Nintendo Gamecube. The PlayStation 2 became the best selling console of all time. 3D graphics were really improved prior to the Fifth generation. A lot of famous titles such as Halo came around in the Sixth generation of consoles. After the Sixth generation came the Seventh generation, my personal favorite generation due to very famous systems such as the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS, which along with the rival counterparts, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, really changing how we play games and ending up really expanding what was possible. The way Nintendo orientated their consoles to family friendly and portable gaming meant that they dominated the home console market and set a standard in the handheld market. This is my opinion is also the most important generation in gaming history.
2010 - Present (Breaking The Barrier To What Is Possible) - The Seventh generation continued on for a while, with Sony and Microsoft competing for the best game console of the era whilst Nintendo stuck to the family orientated side of gaming. Handheld gaming was a competition against Sony's PlayStation Portable against Nintendo's evolving handheld department. This generation ended with Nintendo announcing the release of the Wii U and starting the Eight and current generation, bad marketing lead to this console not doing very well, meaning the 3DS managed to outlive it. The competing rivals Sony and Microsoft both announced their next generation of consoles, the Xbox One and the PlayStation Four. Increasing competitiveness in the market lead to the release of even more successors, the Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X. Once again, Sony and Microsoft fought for the title of best console in the era and by doing so allowed for 4K gaming whilst Nintendo bargained on their previous success by implemting much more emphasis on handheld gaming whilst making the Nintendo Switch a home console too. This generation also fell victim to the likes of Mobile Gaming, making the gaming scene much more competitive then before.
Future? - The future of gaming in uncertain but what remains so is the big competitiveness of Nintendo, Xbox and Sony following the announcement of the PlayStation 5 soon to come. VR gaming will definitely become more prevalent as time goes on due to the sheer openness of what is possible.
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