Sixth generation of video game consoles: Difference between revisions
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Image:NGC Gamecube.jpg|[[Nintendo GameCube]]<br> ''2001-2006: Japan, U.S.<br> 2002-2006: Europe'' |
Image:NGC Gamecube.jpg|[[Nintendo GameCube]]<br> ''2001-2006: Japan, U.S.<br> 2002-2006: Europe'' |
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Image:Xbox_and_controller.jpeg|[[Xbox|Microsoft Xbox]]<br> ''2001-2005: U.S.<br> 2002-2006: Japan<br> 2002-2005: Europe'' |
Image:Xbox_and_controller.jpeg|[[Xbox|Microsoft Xbox]]<br> ''2001-2005: U.S.<br> 2002-2006: Japan<br> 2002-2005: Europe'' |
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Image:Super_Nintendo_and_Famicom_thumb.jpg|[[Super Nintendo Entertainment System|Super Famicom / Super Nintendo Entertainment System]]<br> ''1990-2003: Japan'' ''1991-1999: U.S. 1992-1999: Europe'' |
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Revision as of 23:52, 16 December 2006
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| History of video games |
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The sixth-generation era (sometimes referred to as the 128-bit era; see "Number of bits" below) refers to the computer and video games, video game consoles, and video game handhelds available at the turn of the 21st century. Platforms of the sixth generation include the Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and the Microsoft Xbox. This era began on November 27, 1998 with the release of the Dreamcast. The date the era concluded is disputed. Some people place it on November 21, 2004 with the release of the Nintendo DS as it was the start of the seventh generation. Others place it on November 19, 2006 with the release of the Nintendo Wii, which was the last of the mainsteam seventh generation consoles to be released.
Console war
This era came to a close with the release of the Xbox 360 in late 2005. It was a sales victory for Sony's PlayStation 2 which had nearly twice the sales of all its competitors combined. Microsoft's Xbox came in second and the Nintendo GameCube come in third, with only three million sales less than the Xbox. However, it should be noted that although Nintendo sold less units than Microsoft or Sony, The GameCube did make a far larger profit than any of its competitors.[citation needed] The Sega Dreamcast, which arrived prior to all of the others (1998), came in fourth with only 6.5% of the sixth gen. sales.
The Sega Dreamcast was probably the most revolutionary of the sixth generation. It was the first generation in history to offer the ability to connect to the internet and the controller had a screen in the top. The Dreamcast's internet connection is reported to have been slow and of little practical value. Also, only a few games were released for the DreamCast that made use of it. As a result Dreamcast received more flack for this ability than praise. There was no single reason for the failure of the Dreamcast, but different factors may have contributed. The impending and much-hyped PlayStation 2 competed with the Dreamcast before it was even released. This kept Sega from securing a dominant position in the market as the 360 has done. In addition the failure of the Saturn made many people wary of the Dreamcast as they feared it would have many of the same problems of the Saturn. As the Dreamcast was released a year before the PS2 and near two years before the GameCube or Xbox many people considered it outdated only two years after its release. All these factors along with the vast copyright infringement problems it suffered led the Dreamcast to an early demise.
The brand Sony had established with the original PlayStation was a major factor in its victory, both in terms of securing a consumer base and attracting third party developers; the gradual increase in one tending to reinforce the other. The PlayStation 2 was also able to play DVDs and was backwards-compatible with PlayStation games, which many say helped the former's sales. Any user considering buying a DVD player or PlayStation could view the PlayStation 2 as a sensible alternative, and the system effectively had a back catalogue available before it even went on sale.
The Xbox, despite the formidable financial backing of Microsoft and despite being more powerful than the PlayStation 2 due to its later release date, has failed to significantly threaten the place of PlayStation 2 as market leader. It was even close to dying off like the Dreamcast, only to be saved by, whom some believe, a few highly rated games such as Halo. However, it has attracted a large fanbase in the United States and Europe and has become a recognizable brand amongst the mainstream. In Japan, its sales are far poorer, partly due to Microsoft's inability to acquire many major Japanese developers for their franchises as exclusives for the platform (in contrast with Microsoft's multi-million dollar acquisition of the UK developer Rare). However, there is a niche fanbase, particularly as the online services for the console, "Xbox Live", offer more to users than Playstation 2's non-centralized online system and Nintendo GameCube's near total lack of online games.
Nintendo struggled with conflicting brand images, particularly the family-friendly one developed during the 1990s. Nintendo's arsenal of franchises and history in the industry, though earning it a loyal fan base, have failed to give it an advantage against the Xbox and PlayStation 2. The Nintendo GameCube sits comfortably in second place in Japan, and in a close third place in the United States and Europe. Overall, it has pulled in slightly behind the Xbox. Nintendo develops far more first party games than either of the other companies, and many more second party ones so its profits were increased based on this.
U.S. Sales Standings
| Console | Units Sold | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Sony PlayStation 2 | 111.25 million | November 30, 2006 |
| Microsoft Xbox | 24.40 million | November 30, 2006 |
| Nintendo GameCube | 21.20 million | November 30, 2006 |
| Sega Dreamcast | 10.60 million | N/A |
Number of bits
Bit ratings for consoles largely fell by the wayside after the 32-bit era. The number of "bits" cited in console names referred to the CPU word size, but there was little to be gained from increasing the word size much beyond 32-bits; performance depended on other factors, such as processor speed, graphics processor speed, bandwidth, and memory size.
The Sega Dreamcast was 128 bit and the last video game console to base its marketing on the bit/byte system. It has a dual-issue 32-bit CPU core, 64-bit GPU, and 64-bit data bus although the geometry sub-processor GPU can perform internal math on 128-bit words. One of the PlayStation 2's many processors is known as the “128-bit Emotion Engine” but has a dual-issue 64-bit core. The Microsoft Xbox, which is also more powerful than the PS2, uses a 32-bit CPU and 256-bit GPU. To take the usage to absurdity, one memory bus on the PS2 is 2,560 bits wide. The importance of the number of bits in the modern console gaming market has thus decreased due to the use of components that process data in varying word sizes. It is also important to note that most game companies sell on “n-bit talk” to over-emphasize the hardware capabilities of their system. The Sega Dreamcast and the PlayStation 2 were the last systems to use the term “128-bit” in their marketing to describe their capability.
Video game handhelds
During the sixth generation era, the handheld game console market exploded, with the introduction of new devices from many different manufacturers. Nintendo maintained its large market share of the handheld market with the release in 2001 of the highly upgraded Game Boy called the Game Boy Advance. Two redesigns of this system followed. The first, the Game Boy Advance SP in 2003 and the second, the Game Boy micro in 2005. Also introduced was the Neo Geo Pocket Color in 1998 and Bandai's WonderSwan Color launched in Japan in 1999. Notably, South Korean company Game Park introduced its GP32 handheld in 2001, and with it came the dawn of open-source handheld consoles.
A major new addition to the market was the trend for corporations to include a large number of "non-gaming" features into their handhelds. Everything from cell phones, MP3 players, portable movie players, to PDA-like features began to pop up on a regular basis during this generation. The first of these was Nokia's N-Gage, which was released in 2003 and doubled primarily as a mobile phone. It subsequently went through a redesign in 2004 and was renamed the N-Gage QD. A second handheld, the Zodiac from Tapwave was released in 2004 and was based on the Palm OS; it added numerous features typically found in PDAs.
With more and more PDAs arriving during the previous generation, the difference between consumer electronics and traditional computing began to blur and cheap console technology grew from that blur. It was said of PDAs that they are "the computers of handheld gaming" because of their multi-purpose capabilities and the increasingly powerful computer hardware that resided within them— the capability existed to move gaming beyond the last generation's 16-bit limitations. However, PDAs were still geared towards the typical businessman, and lacked new, affordable software franchises to compete with dedicated handheld gaming consoles.
Video games
Five-horse race
Major developers such as Activision released games covering the PC, Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Dreamcast. Other famous developers (Capcom, Sega, etc.) who released games from previous generations also made a considerable enhancements in gameplay and graphics. The PC and Dreamcast made these leaps from the previous generation of consoles. The generation was the first to help console and computer software grow closer together as well as outperform the arcade market in features, graphics and business.
Controversies
This generation was noted to have extensive criticism by public figures of "objectionable" content in gaming such as sex, crime, violence, profanity, drug use, and social propaganda as well as topics of debate such as religion, politics, feminism, and economics. However, this has been widely dismissed as a myth; many people will note that controversies are hardly unique to the sixth generation, and extend much farther back into gaming history with Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Night Trap. The earliest occurrences of such public outcry dated, in fact, as far back as the 1970s, with extremely violent or explicit games such as Death Race and Custer's Revenge.
The sixth generation was notable because it saw the continuation of lawmakers taking actions against the video game industry. The most famous was the Grand Theft Auto games with Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City facing lawsuits over alleged racial slurs and influencing minors to commit crimes, while Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was briefly given an adult rating and banned from stores over the availability of an abandoned sex mini-game using the Hot Coffee mod.
The sixth generation also covered the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and The Pentagon, which had a huge impact on the entertainment industry as well as the video game industry forcing many games to be toned down. Most notable was Metal Gear Solid 2, which prior to its release depicted the destruction of the Statue of Liberty and a good portion of Manhattan. Similarly, several undisclosed modifications were made in Grand Theft Auto III, most notably the change of the police cars' color scheme (the old scheme resembled that of NYPD's older blue and white design). And the Dreamcast game Propeller Arena was never officially released, the main reason probably being that a certain level was visually very similar to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Emulation and retro gaming
Due to the increased usage of emulators and the increasing ease of finding ROM images of previous video game consoles, most notably the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sega Master System, and the Mega Drive/Genesis, the sixth generation of consoles coincided with the rise of console emulation.
It was also a time when an increasing number of retro games were being enhanced or redistributed on newer systems. Nintendo, for example, introduced a line of "classic" NES and SNES games for its Game Boy Advance handheld. Enhanced games include Wild ARMs: Alter Code F, Square Enix's Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls, and Nintendo's Metroid: Zero Mission. Also, an increasing number of third-party developers released anthology collection games such as Midway Games, Capcom, Namco, Atari, and Sega, even though Atari and Sega both released new, enhanced versions of their retro titles. Additionally, this is also a time when certain video games or video game series that were originally confined to Japan came to North America and Europe.
Sixth generation systems
Consoles
-
-
Sony PlayStation 2
2000-2006: Japan, U.S., 2000-present : Europe -
-
Remakes
Handhelds
-
Neo Geo Pocket Color
1998-2003 -
Bandai WonderSwan Color
2000-present -
Bandai Swan Crystal
2002-present -
Game Boy Advance
2001-2005 -
GP32
2001 - 2005 -
Tapwave Zodiac
2003 - 2005 -
Nokia N-Gage
2003 -
Game Boy Advance SP
2003-present -
Nokia N-Gage QD
2002 - 2005
Video game franchises established during sixth generation
Milestone titles
- Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast went down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive title to date ($20,000,000). Produced by Sega's AM2 division, this game helped set the graphics standards of its time.
- Halo was the Microsoft Xbox's most successful launch title. Its sequel Halo 2 set records as the fastest grossing release in entertainment history [1] and was a very successful killer app for the Xbox Live online gaming service.
- Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels for PlayStation 2 (later Xbox and PC) brought violence and other potentially objectionable content in video games back into the mainstream spotlight, thus reviving the video game controversy. The series remains the highest selling franchise in the US for the past ten years. It signaled the prominence of mature gamers in today's market.
- Metroid Prime remains one of the Nintendo GameCube's highest rated titles, as well as an outstanding example of how cooperation between Nintendo and a second-party studio revived a long-time franchise.
- Soul Calibur for the Sega Dreamcast is widely considered one of the greatest fighting games of all time, and is the only game of its genre, on any platform, to have ever received a perfect 10.0 rating from IGN (review) and GameSpot (review) and also a perfect 40/40 (second of only six games) by Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu.
- A game for the Sonic the Hedgehog series is, for the first time, created for a non-Sega console with Sonic Pocket Adventure for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, Sonic Advance for the Game Boy Advance and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the Gamecube. The series also goes multi-console with the introduction of Sonic Heroes.
- Super Smash Bros. Melee is considered to be one of the best games for the Gamecube. It has been on the top selling game list since it was first release, with an exception of one month in 2005.
References
- The Xbox factor, a November 22, 2005 article from The Economist
External links
- Article on the Sega Dreamcast's CPU, including notes on its "bit-rating".