[dropcap]W[/dropcap] Well, if you are a gamer you would tell that title of this article reminds you of AMD. If yes, you are a serious gamer. If no, read this article it’s time to know what is gaming and it’s not what you think!! Yes, gaming is not just for kids. This series of gaming articles gonna prove you that.
Well, the title may say evolution but gaming industry has been evolved a long back, and currently it’s a revolution in a digital entertainment. Gaming industry has seen tremendous growth from its Atari generation to the current generation of PlayStation’s, Wii U’s and Xbox’s, pushing hardware to its limits to render the game on your screen of any size. The intention of this article is to bring you an idea about how big the gaming industry has grown to and definitely to tell you that it’s not just for kids.
Maybe, not so long back video games were just a realm of nerds and the children of privilege. Video games were industrialized during 1970’s when ATARI was founded and released a successful video game, “Pong” which let players play Ping Pong on their television. In 1979, Japan saw a birth of first Color TV console put out by company which later became to be Nintendo, (this might ring a bell in your mind, these are the guys who bought Super Mario for you).Until 1985, Nintendo could not reach shores of the American market. Once it did there was an evolution in the gaming industry with the release of games like Super Mario, Final Fantasy, Golden Axe and Legend of Zelda. This might be termed as the golden age of video games.Meanwhile, Nintendo received competition from a fellow Japanese company called SEGA when it released the console SEGA Genesis in1990’s.Popular games that were released on Genesis were Sonic and Crash Bandicoot. Games used to come up in a cartridge until Compact Disk (CD) became the storage media to carry the games. In 1995, Sony came up with its first ever console PLAYSTATION and revolutionized the industry. Sony’s console carried the games in CD-ROM (700MB of space). At that time, 700MB of storage was huge for game developers and games started coming out in 3D Model. Nintendo was still shipping their games Cartridge until 2001 for its Nintendo 64 but whereas Sega competed with PlayStation by bringing out games in CD-ROM with its console Sega DreamCast. Year 2001 when Nintendo switched to the Sony’s competition with its new console GameCube, a Software giant stepped into the gaming industry with its first console called XBOX. With the entry of Microsoft and its intense competition/rivalry with Sony’s PlayStation gaming has seen tremendous growth and now gaming has reached its full glory. You have to experience it to believe it. Games that used to come up several MB’s in the 1990’s have reached the size of several GB’s, recent Call of Duty game was nearly 50GB.
Since 2001 gaming industry has seen consoles coming with cheaper price tags and has been in part of everyday man’s life. Sony when released it’s PlayStation 2 (still available in India :)) started shipping games in DVD’s and also supported multimedia in its console.Nintendo released Nintendo GameCube which supported DVD as in PlayStation 2. It’s in year 2005-2006 gaming industry saw its biggest release when Microsoft unveiled its Xbox 360 and Sony with its PlayStation 3 and revolutionized gaming in High definition whereas Nintendo released Wii, but it supported only SD resolution i.e. 480p. Televisions supported higher resolution, pixel war started, games started coming in 720p, 1080p. Nintendo joined the club bit late on 2012, it released Wii U with Superior hardware to Wii which could output even 1080p.
As of now gaming industry is dominated by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Sega could not compete with PlayStation 2 with its DreamCast. DreamCast considered to be a failure and Sega stepped out of the competition. PC was there all the time, supporting most of the game released in Consoles. But PC could not dominate on its own as developers were developing and optimizing games for consoles rather to PC. Most of the games were just ported from its console part for PC. Still PC has large gaming market with some of the dedicated RPG games like DOTA, League of Legends and shooters like counter strike.
In Year 2013 Microsoft and Sony released their next big console with Xbox one and PlayStation 4. Though in India Gaming is still a growing technology. Japan, American, and Europe market has become the home of consoles and high-end gaming computers.
Let me tell you some facts, Earlier Nintendo 64 has sold 41 million units, older Wii has reached whopping [pullquote-left] World’s bestselling console PlayStation 2 has sold 155 million consoles. Playstation4 just a one-year-old console has already been sold 20 million consoles in its initial generation cycle (A generation cycle usually lasts 5 to 7 years). [/pullquote-left] 100million mark in its journey. World’s bestselling console PlayStation 2 has sold 155 million consoles. Playstation4 just a one-year-old console has already been sold 20 million consoles in its initial generation cycle (A generation cycle usually lasts 5 to 7 years). Do you think these are kids buying the consoles? Nope, Nope …..
Do you know the average age of a gamer, it’s not 10-year-old kids, not even teenagers, not even students, its 30-year-olds Only 25% gamers are kids , rest are all adults, interestingly its guys like me, it’s the dads, bro’s, sisters, may be your neighbors girlfriend . Its definitely not what majority of people in our country know. Yes, that’s why I told in the beginning gaming is not just for kids, its damn serious form of digital entertainment.
We will get to know much about consoles, developers and of course about games in our upcoming article. It will be an exciting journey.Happy gaming.
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