History of Video Games (Sixth Generation Era)

The sixth-generation era (sometimes inaccurately referred to as the 128-bit era; see section 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 are the Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2, and Microsoft Xbox.

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 their 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.

A major new addition to the market was the introduction of features not exclusive to the video game industry. Everything from cell phones, MP3 players, portable movie players, to Palm Pilot-like features. 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 PalmOS; it added numerous features typically found in PDAs.

With more and more PDAs arriving last generation, the difference between consumer electronics and traditional simplified and cheap console technology grew. Multi-task PDAs are said to be the computers of handheld gaming because of their multi-purpose capabilities and dominant computer hardware. New console technology was reinstituted when Nintendo DS hit the market by introducing portable "32-bit era" last generation console technology as an affordable item for the consumer. As of last generation, the video-game market had only rendered "16-bit era" graphics to target the gamer as opposed to the business man. PDAs and Palm Pilots were ahead of the market in sheer graphical power but lacked affordable and new software franchises to back their hardware up.

With more and more handhelds arriving towards the end of this generation, it gets harder to locate exactly where the sixth generation ends and where the new seventh generation begins. It is believed that the seventh generation began in late 2004 with the introduction of Nintendo's Nintendo DS and Sony's PlayStation Portable.

Video game handhelds released during the sixth generation era include:

Note: First year of release is the first year of the system's availability in the world.

Emu 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 Sega Genesis, the sixth generation of consoles coincided with the rise of console emulation.

It is also a time when an increasing number of retro games are being enhanced or redistributed on newer systems. Enhanced remakes occur mostly on consoles, while redistributions occur mostly on handhelds. While the enhanced remake idea was actually devised during the 16-bit era with Nintendo's Super Mario All-Stars, it was popularized during this era. Examples of the redistribution idea include Nintendo's introduction of a line of "classic" NES and SNES games for their Game Boy Advance handheld. Examples of the enhancement idea include Wild ARMs: Alter Code F, Square Enix's Final Fantasy Origins, and Nintendo's Metroid: Zero Mission. Also an increasing number of third-party developers releasing 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.

Video game systems

Video game consoles

Video game consoles released during the sixth generation era include:

Note: First year of release is the first year of the system's worldwide availability.

PlayStation 2 dominated sales, with 100 million units shipped to retailers. Xbox was a distant second, with 22 million units, and Nintendo kept in close competition with 18.5 million GameCubes sold during the same period.[1] The Sega Dreamcast sold roughly 16.9 million consoles despite its shorter lifetime.

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, the first of the "128-bit" consoles, 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 graphics synthesizer has a 2560-bit DRAM bus. The Microsoft Xbox, the most powerful of the sixth-generation era consoles, uses a 32-bit CPU and 256-bit GPU, a configuration that is becoming standard in many desktop PCs. The importance of "bitness" 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 games

Three horse race

Major developers such as Electronic Arts and Activision for the most part released games covering the PC, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube. Notable cross-platform games released every year include EA Sports and the Tony Hawk series.

Controversies

The sixth generation era became the most controversial, with extensive criticism of "objectionable" content such as sex, crime, violence, profanity, and drug use as well as topics of debate such as religion, politics, feminism, and economics. Such controversies are hardly unique to the sixth generation, and go back at least as far as 1994 with Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. The earliest occurrence of such public outcry was in 1976 with the arcade game Death Race.

The sixth generation was notable because it spurred lawmakers into taking action against the video game industry. The most infamous was the Grand Theft Auto games with Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City facing lawsuits over allegedly 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 began just prior to 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 notably Metal Gear Solid 2, which prior to its release depicted the destruction of the Statue of Liberty and a good portion of Manhattan. Similarly, Grand Theft Auto III also had to modify its rendering of Manhattan, as well as changing the colour scheme of police cars (the old scheme resembled that of NYPD's older blue and white design).

Franchises started

Amped
Animal Crossing
Baten Kaitos
Battlefield series
Boktai
Brothers In Arms
Burnout
Call of Duty
Crazy Taxi
Crimson Sea
Dark Cloud
Devil May Cry
Deus Ex
Disgaea
Fable
Fatal Frame
Far Cry
Icewind Dale series
The Getaway
Golden Sun
God of War
Halo 		Hitman
Jade Empire
Jak and Daxter
Jet Grind Radio
Katamari Damacy
Kessen
Kingdom Hearts
Max Payne
Magna Carta
Mech Assault
Midnight Club
MotoGP
Neverwinter Nights
NBA Street
NFL Street
NFL 2K
Onimusha
Pikmin
Project Gotham Racing
(Metropolis Street Racer)
Project Snowblind (unofficially Deus Ex Clan Wars)
Ratchet & Clank
Rallisport Challenge 		SEGA GT
Shenmue
Sly Cooper
SOCOM
Soul Calibur
Soul Reaver on Dreamcast
Splinter Cell
SSX
Super Monkey Ball
TimeSplitters
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
Viewtiful Joe

Milestone titles

  • Halo was the Microsoft Xbox's most successful launch title. Many people consider it to have revolutionised the first-person shooter, and many of its features (such as limited weapon "slots") were incorporated into later FPSs. Its sequel Halo 2 set records as the highest grossing release in entertainment history [2] 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) brought violence and other "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 signalled 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.com.

References

External links

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