Video game console

Video game console, a dedicated electronic device designed to play video games. Often the output device is a separate television and generally they don't come with all the accoutrements of modern PC's (Monitor's, Keyboards, Modems), however as consoles have become more powerful they have started to gain more PC'ness (and indeed some consoles can have have full Linux OS's running with hard drives and keyboards).

The console market has been one that has steadily developed from simple one off games (for example had a few variations on pong) to fully featured general purpose games systems. Indeed Microsoft's Xbox is basically a stripped down PC running a version of Microsoft Windows.

Older game consoles and their software now live on in emulators? as they are no longer supported by their manufacturers; however, console makers try to prevent legitimate console and software buyers from playing games on emulators, using a special mask work copyright and a special copyright on encrypted media created by the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act and foreign counterparts.

Note that the "bit" names of generations were in large part created by the console makers' marketing departments and may have little to do with the actual architecture of the systems.

Future systems (as of November 2001)

• Microsoft Xbox
• Nintendo GameCube

Current systems (as of November 2001)

• Sony PlayStation 2
• Sega Dreamcast?

Second "32-bit" generation

• Sega Saturn (1995)
• Sony PlayStation (1995)
• Nintendo 64 (1995-1996)

First "32-bit" generation

• Sega CD (1991)
• 3DO (1993)
• Atari Jaguar (1993)
• [Sega Genesis 32X]? (1993)

"16-bit" generation

• TurboGrafx 16 or PC-Engine (1987-1989)
• Sega Genesis (1989)
• Neo-Geo (1989)
• Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Super-Famicom (1990-1991)

Third "8-bit" generation

• NES or Famicom (1983-1986)
• Sega [Master System]? (1986)
• Atari 7800 (1986)

Second "8-bit" generation

This generation was followed by a collapse in the video game market (1984).

• Intellivision (1980)
• Colecovision (1982)
• [Philips G7400]? (1983) (This was to be released in the USA as the Odyssey 3, but changing market conditions prevented this from occuring.)

First generation of "8-bit" programmable systems

• Atari 2600 VCS
• Odyssey2 (1978) (Known in Europe as the Philips G7000)
• Vectrex

First generation home video games (non-programmable)

Consoles of this era were often inaccurately called "analog" but actually used discrete logic.

• Several Odyssey consoles
• Several Pong consoles

The First commercial home video game ever

The Odyssey - discrete logic

Console that never made it

• [Konix Multisystem]?

---

See hand held consoles which have their own display device.

These should probably be in the hand held part

• Game Boy
• Game Boy Advance

/talk