As we approach the release of the PS4 and the Xbox One, we prepare to truly enter next era of console gaming. But the history of console gaming goes back decades, 40 years of history. Wars, alliances, betrayals, and the rise and fall of many companies. Exeposé Games sets out on a journey of great historical importance, charting each generation of…The Console Wars.
The sixth generation of consoles began in 1998 with Sega. After losing out massively to the PlayStation and N64, Sega released their new console, the Dreamcast, on 27th November 1998.
It was a pioneer in many regards, being the first console to render full frames and the first to have a built-in modem and Internet supporting online play for the rising online sector.
The console got a slow start. Sega had discontinued the Saturn ready for the Dreamcast. But this led to people going elsewhere for a console.
The console also came out too early for the software, with only one title, Virtua Fighter 3, available at launch. It resulted in the Dreamcast being less popular than its predecessors, though the release of Sonic Adventure a few weeks later gave it a boost. When it release through September to November 1999 in the rest of the world, it was a different story.
It released with 17 launch titles and, in the US, had the most successful launch in history to that point. Sega was once again a force to be reckoned with.
A year later, however, Sony launched the PS2, and the Dreamcast’s sales plummeted. The PS2 was a ramping-up of the PlayStation’s hardware, matching the Dreamcast in quality. It was also backwards compatible and, more importantly, had the function of playing DVDs along with games.
PS2 wasn’t only a console it was a multimedia platform. The market swarmed to the PS2’s launch, and it made $250 million on day one, doubling the record set by the Dreamcast.
It was the final nail in the coffin. Though the console had been doing well, Sega was having major problems. Fallings out with EA were reducing the available game library, and the company had already been haemorrhaging money before the release of the PS2. Unable to compete with the PS2, and more competitors on the way, Sega left the console market entirely on the on 30th of March 2001. They discontinued the Dreamcast and became a third-party developer. The story of Sega’s consoles didn’t end there though.
In November 2001, two more consoles released to the market: Nintendo’s GameCube, and Microsoft’s Xbox.
The GameCube, having released in September in Japan, was Nintendo’s first disc-based console. It was a large improvement in terms of hardware and could also connect to Nintendo handheld, the Gameboy Advance, via a link cable. The consoles controller was also a move forward. It took many points from the Dualshock, namely its dual thumbsticks, but made its own changes by flipping the placement of the d-pad and left thumbstick. It released with 15 launch titles to promising sales, though nowhere near the PS2.
The Xbox, meanwhile, was something of a dark horse. It was created by Microsoft, a US-based company. A US console hadn’t been a true major player on the market since the Atari 7800, and hadn’t been a dominant once since the 1983 crash. Microsoft weren’t going in blind though, they had spent the late 1990s working with another company’s console research: Sega and the Dreamcast.
This showed in the Xbox’s design. The Xbox had a built-in modem, and much of the layout of its controller, with the A, B, X, Y buttons on the left along with a lower thumbstick, and the reverse d-pad – thumbstick layout used by both the Dreamcast and GameCube.
Sega representatives regarded the Xbox as the spiritual successor to its consoles, which showed when games received successors or sequels, such as Jet Set Radio, on the console. It also added improvements which were used by Sony, such as media player capabilities.
The Xbox released on 15th November 2001, with multiple launch titles, to huge success. During the generation the Xbox would come to beat Nintendo in terms of sales. The Xbox’s success can most likely be pinpointed to two areas: Xbox Live, and Halo.
A year after the release Microsoft enabled its key innovation: its dedicated online service, Xbox Live. Whilst Sega and (after launch) Sony, both had online capabilities, they didn’t have the dedicated servers of Xbox Live.
It was an innovation, a costly one at that,due to its subscription service. It could have been a turnoff, but instead became one of the driving forces for the console, and knocked its competitors down a step or two.
Another reason was the popularity of its game library. Exclusives like Forza rivalled Gran Turismo, while backing from third-party companies like EA gave them a vast library of games.
Then there was the flagship: Halo. The first title had been a launch game, and had shattered software records.
The sequel, Halo 2 did something that would have been impossible in previous years.
Its launch made it the fastest grossing release in entertainment history. Not gaming, entertainment.
Halo 2’s multiplayer was the flagship of Xbox Live, having more gaming hours than any other game, along with the flagship of online console gaming and the FPS genre in general. The Xbox’s online power was an area that even the PS2 couldn’t beat it in.
The Sixth Console War was more a foregone conclusion than anything, though.
The PS2’s sales dwarfed all others, becoming the best selling console in history, at 155 million. Nintendo had weathered again, selling 22 million GameCubes. Sega had fallen, but its legacy continued with Microsoft and the Xbox. Like the Dreamcast though, its innovation had been costly, and the console made a loss overall. Regardless, with Xbox Live and Halo, the Xbox became the number 2 console of the generation, selling 24 million and breaking Japan’s complete stranglehold on the market. The market also had another surprise: with massive success of the PS2, the Halo games and Xbox Live, the gaming market had truly gone mainstream.
The next console war was to be the largest yet, one that no-one wouldn’t know about. It would be total war, and Microsoft prepared to make the first move.
Check in tomorrow for the full history of The Seventh Console War…
Luke Pilchowski
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