| Game systems (or systems for short) have been around since the Atari 2600 was first introduced in 1977. Since then, a huge number of gaming consoles have been released, some more popular than others. Many of these consoles died quick deaths shortly after their releases, fading into obscurity only to be forgotten about by everyone except die-hard classic gamers. One of these consoles was Atari's Jaguar, which was released in 1993 to compete with Sega's Genesis and Nintendo's Super Nintendo. Even though the system was considered by many to be a 64-bit console in an era of 16-bit systems, its horsepower didn't help the console succeed. Three years after its release, Atari pulled the plug and the system lived on only as a cult curio with independent developers creating games for fun. After the release of the Atari Jaguar, the only home gaming consoles to achieve success were developed by three main companies: Sega, Nintendo, and Sony. In 2001, Microsoft made a bold move by jumping into the console gaming world with the release of its Xbox console. The console received a fair bit of criticism upon its release, but went onto become the second-most-popular game system of the sixth generation--slightly ahead of Nintendo's GameCube, and far behind Sony's PlayStation 2. 2004 marks the beginning of video gaming's seventh generation, featuring the Xbox 360, Nintendo Revolution, and PS3. It will be interesting to see how things develop as each manufacturer introduces surprising new elements into their consoles' designs. The Revolution, for example, will include a new type of controller which looks more like a television remote and is controlled like moving a computer mouse in a three-dimensional space. |
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