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A History of Game Consoles and Game Technology
1950s
Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist William Higinbotham built a two-player tennis game on an oscilloscope driven by a small analog computer for the lab's open house. Never commercialised, it was one of the earliest deliberately entertaining video games—fourteen years ahead of Atari's Pong (1972).
1970s
The arcade tennis game Pong, designed by Atari's Nolan Bushnell and Allan Alcorn, was placed for trial at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. Within a week the machine was clogged with quarters. The commercial video game industry effectively starts here.
1980s
Nintendo released the Family Computer—the Famicom—in Japan. The 1983 North American video-game crash (the 'Atari shock') had levelled the industry; Nintendo's 1985 launch of the same hardware as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in North America effectively rebuilt it. Together with Super Mario Bros. (1985), Famicom/NES opened a thirty-year period in which Japanese companies held the centre of the home console market.
1990s
Sony's 32-bit home console, sold through its Sony Computer Entertainment subsidiary. The project began as a joint CD-ROM extension with Nintendo; when that partnership broke down, Sony continued alone. With 3D polygon graphics and the large capacity of CD-ROM, the PlayStation moved home consoles a generation beyond 2D into a different kind of experience.
Nintendo released the 64-bit Nintendo 64, built around a custom SGI processor. It introduced hardware that shaped the modern gamepad's conventions: the analog stick, the Rumble Pak, and four built-in controller ports. *Super Mario 64* and *The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time* on this hardware set the grammar for control in 3D games.
2000s
Microsoft released its first home console, Xbox. Essentially derived from PC hardware (a Pentium III, an NVIDIA GPU, a hard drive), it later led the popularisation of online play through Xbox Live (2002). Xbox added a third major pillar to the PlayStation–Nintendo duopoly and established the three-way contest that continues today.
Nintendo released the Wii, a home console with a motion controller built around accelerometers and infrared positioning. Underpowered next to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but its new control model reached audiences that had never played video games—seniors, families—and the Wii became one of the bestselling home consoles ever made.
2010s
Nintendo released the Switch, a hybrid that erased the line between home console and handheld. Built around an NVIDIA Tegra-based ARM processor, with the detachable Joy-Con controllers and instant switching between TV and handheld modes. In a little over seven years it sold more than 140 million units, placing it among the bestselling home consoles ever.