Video Games History 2000-2009

Jon King

Video Games history

2000-2009

At the turn of the century the sixth generation of consoles was underway. It was headed by the Dreamcast for a short time, until the worldwide release of the “Play Station 2” in November 2000. The PS2’s success was instant and so was the demise of the Dreamcast. In comparison the Dreamcast sold around 10.6 million units whereas the PS2 sold a staggering 140 million! The best selling game on the Dreamcast was “Sonic Adventure”, selling a total of 2.5 million copies. Whereas the best selling game on the PS2 was “Grand Theft Auto”, selling a total of 12 million copies. No console war here.

Due to the success of the PS2, and the impending release of Nintendo’s “Game Cube” and Microsoft’s “Xbox”, Sega decided to leave the console market altogether and would instead concentrate on developing software.

In March 2002 Microsoft released the much anticipated “Xbox”, which was closely followed by Nintendo’s “Game Cube”. The two new consoles both did fairly well in terms of unit sales with the Xbox selling 24 million units and the Game Cube selling around 21 million units.

Although the PS2 unit’s sales far outweighed that of the Xbox the competition between the two was quite fierce. This was mainly due to the fact that there were good titles licensed solely to each console. Meanwhile the Game Cube was losing out mainly due to the fact that it only released a hand full of online games and there was a lack of mature titles available on this platform. The Game Cube didn’t manage to match the unit sales of its predecessor, the N64, and as a result of this lagged behind in the current console rat race.

Microsoft managed to do what the Game Cube failed to do, which was to attract software developers to design good quality games for its Xbox. Titles such as “Halo” and “Halo2” did particularly well with the latter of the two selling 8 million copies, a very respectful figure.

The success of the PS2, as stated earlier, was also due to the fact that it had backwards capability, meaning that it could play PS1 games as well, one of the first consoles to have this function. The Game Cube was also backwards compatible but in a different way. Nintendo released the “Game Boy Player” in 2003, which was a bit of kit that allowed the user to play “Game Boy”, “Game Boy Colour” and “Game Boy Advanced” cartridges on a television through the Game Cube. This setup wasn’t anywhere near as good as the PS2’s as it defeated the purpose of the mobility of this Nintendo range.

The PS2 remained at the top with the release of key game titles such as “Final Fantasy X”, “Grand Theft Auto III” and “Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty”. However Xbox fought on and in November 2002 it unveiled its “Xbox live” online service. Due to the PS2’s lack of a built in network adapter, the Xbox had found a gap in the market, as people lent more towards online gaming with the Xbox as it came with the built in network adapter at no extra cost.

Critics slated the concept, as at the turn of the century the capability of broadband wasn’t as good as today’s standards. However Steve Balmer and Bill Gates vision had become reality and customers could now download updates for games for a premium. The excitement of purchasing a game that could evolve rather than gather dust on your shelve was an innovative vision indeed.

With the edge in the online market Microsoft’s Xbox was competing well with the PS2 as the Game Cube fell away in the console rat race. In August 2007 the Nintendo Game Cube was discontinued, due to a largely unsuccessful 5 years in the market and the release of Nintendo’s latest console, a year earlier, the Nintendo “Wii”. The Wii has put Nintendo back on the map and more. Its new console has sold over a staggering 52 million units since its release in November of 2006 and it has the record for best selling game of all time, “Wii Sports”, with 45.71 million copies sold! This is a massive turn around for Nintendo who had looked to be going the same way as Sega did a few years earlier. However the appeal of the Wii which has seen it reach out to parts of the market that, just simply were not being catered for prior to its release has seen Nintendo jump back to the top of the console podium.

In November 2006 Microsoft decided to discontinue its Xbox as they had released their new console, the Xbox 360, a year earlier. The 360 has sold 34 million units worldwide to date and its current top game is “Halo 3”, which has sold over 10 million copies. So looking at the current figures the Xbox 360 has increased Microsoft’s profits by a considerable margin to its predecessor the Xbox. It had seemed like the Microsoft had got things right with the 360 in the build up to its release with Sony stalling on its latest console release due to technical problems and Nintendo having not yet released their new console, going by Nintendo’s unsuccessful Game Cube console.

The future looked good for the 360 until customers, including myself, started to report massive failure to the console. This was and is known as the “Red Ring of Death” and would consist of three out of the four lights on the front of the console lighting up red when it was turned on. This was due to several things like, the number, size and placement of components, the addition of dabs of epoxy on the corners and edges of the CPU and GPU as glue to prevent movement relative to the board during heat expansion and a second GPU heatsink to dissipate more heat.

Microsoft’s answer to this was to extend the consumers warranty to three years in order to protect the individuals purchasing rights and enable you to send it away to be repaired free of charge. This seemed like a good compromise, after all it was free, however I do think this had effect to consumer confidence and probably pushed people towards the two other consoles. In 2009 Microsoft decided to extend the warranty to cover all E74 error codes, rather than just the initial three years that it originally permitted, meaning any further occurrence of the problem the “Red Ring of Death” would be fully covered and repairs paid for by Microsoft. This was an embarrassment for Microsoft and it now seems like Sony did the right thing to hold back on their release of the “Play Station 3”.

In November 2006 Sony released their delayed but long awaited “Play Station 3”. The new console had ironed out the previous problems of the PS2 by having a built in network adapter and not only that but its online gaming was free of charge. Also the PS3 comes with various sized hard drives and is also, unlike the 360 or the Wii, a Blu-ray player.

The PS3 was criticised at its launch due to its high price and its lack of quality games. However after price reductions, Blu-ray seemingly winning the race over HD DVD and several top titles being released, the PS3’s critics started to change their views and in 2008 the PS3 ranked first for best game line up of 2008.

The PS3 also utilised the wireless controller, like the 360 and the Wii, however its controllers came with a built in rechargeable battery and a wire to connect it to the console in order to charge them up. The 360 and the Wii remotes both came with standard entry points for the user to place batteries. 360 users could buy a plug and play unit similar to the PS3, but at an extra cost. The PS3’s remotes also had “Sixaxis Dualshock” capabilities in order to compete with the Wii’s innovative motion sensitive controller, however I think that the Wii most definitely has the edge in that field, due to the fact that nearly all of its games are designed to be played using the person’s body movement.

To summarise the current generation of consoles, I would have to say that the Wii has the edge in the market, with the most unit sales and the best selling game of all time. Not only has this but its advertising campaigns sports well known people like famous footballers and TV representatives. The appeal of the Wii has reached areas of the general public that had previously been mostly untouched by the games industry. This is down to the type of games that the Wii has released. They are the types of games that is bringing real social aspects of gaming back into the market, with people congregating in homes during holidays and other occasions.

Part of society would argue that computer games are a contribution to child obesity. The Wii is tackling that head on. You don’t sit and play these games. Nintendo has even bought out the “Wii fit board” which is becoming increasingly popular amongst women. Its novel gimmicks, innovative software, innovative hardware and its good advertising campaigns have put Nintendo back at the top of the consoles for this generation at least.