History of video game consoles (sixth generation)
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The sixth-generation era (sometimes referred to as the 128-bit era; see "Number of bits" 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 include Sega's Dreamcast, Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft's Xbox. This era began on November 27, 1998 with the release of the Dreamcast, and it was joined by the PlayStation 2 in March 2000. The Dreamcast was discontinued in March 2001 and that same year saw the launch of the Nintendo GameCube in September and Xbox in November.
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[edit] Home systems
Sony's PlayStation 2 achieved sales dominance, with nearly twice the sales of all its competitors with over 100 million shipped, making the Playstation 2 the best selling console in history. Microsoft's Xbox came in second with 24 million and the Nintendo GameCube was third with 21 million. The Dreamcast, which arrived prior to all of the others and was discontinued prematurely (1998-2001), came in fourth with 10.6 million, representing 6.5% of the sixth generation sales.
The release of the Nintendo DS on November 21, 2004 is often considered the start of the seventh generation. The sixth generation started to come to a close when the Xbox was succeeded by the Xbox 360 in late 2005. The GameCube was discontinued when the Wii was released in late 2006; however, PlayStation 2 sales have continued to be strong as of Christmas 2006, due to the systems popularity and high demand, as well as the high price point and critical reception of the next generation PlayStation 3. Games are still being produced for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube as of 2006, while Dreamcast games were officially discontinued in 2001, there are still a few games being released even in 2007.
[edit] Dreamcast
Sega's Dreamcast was the first console of the sixth generation and introduced several innovations. It was the first generation in history to offer a controller with a screen in the top. It also introduced Internet gaming as a standard feature through its built-in modem system, and online gaming would later be adopted by the Xbox and PlayStation 2.
Initially, the Dreamcast was successful, due to its lineup of critically and commercially successful titles, setting video game sales records at its launch. The console helped to restore Sega's reputation which had been damaged by the earlier Sega Saturn and Sega 32X.
Nonetheless, the Dreamcast was overall unsuccessful due to numerous factors. The impending and much-hyped PlayStation 2 slowed Dreamcast sales momentum a year before it was even released, preventing Sega from grabbing a dominant position in that generation. In addition, the failure of the Saturn (due in part to Sega's decision to quickly end the Saturn in favour of the Dreamcast - much as it had done with the earlier 32X in favor of the Saturn) had left developers (such as Electronic Arts) and customers skeptical, with some holding out to see whether the Dreamcast or PS2 would come out on top.
Sega's decision to implement a GD-ROM (though publicly advertised as a CD-ROM) for storage medium did save costs but it did not compare well against the PS2's much touted DVD capabilities. As the Dreamcast was released a year before the PS2, and with the announcements of the Xbox and GameCube in late 2000, Sega's console was considered by some to be outdated only two years after its release. The previous losses from the Saturn and 32X, stagnation of sales due to the PS2, and impending competition from Microsoft and Nintendo convinced Sega to pull out of console manufacturing entirely, devoting its resources to game development instead.
[edit] PlayStation 2
The brand Sony had established with the original PlayStation was a major factor in its dominance, both in terms of securing a consumer base and attracting third party developers; the gradual increase in one tending to reinforce the other. The PlayStation 2 was also able to play DVDs and was backwards-compatible with PlayStation games, which many say helped the former's sales. Sony Computer Entertainment secured exclusive licensing for key games such as Grand Theft Auto III and Metal Gear Solid 2 for the 2001 holiday season, enabling the PS2 to outperform its competitions' launches.
[edit] Xbox
While the Xbox had the formidable financial backing of Microsoft, it was unable to significantly threaten the dominance of the PlayStation 2 as market leader; however, the Xbox has attracted a large fanbase and strong third-party support in the United States and Europe and has become a recognizable brand amongst the mainstream. The Xbox Live online service with its centralized model proved particularly successful, prompting Sony to add online capabilities to the PlayStation 2, while the GameCube had a near total lack of online games.
In Japan, its sales are far poorer, partly due to Microsoft's inability to attract major Japanese developers for their franchises, and because of the size of the Xbox which did not fit local aesthetics.
[edit] Nintendo GameCube
Nintendo struggled with conflicting brand images, particularly the family-friendly one developed during the 1990s. Its arsenal of franchises and history in the industry, though earning it a loyal fan base, failed to give it an advantage against the Xbox and PlayStation 2 which captured the majority of the mature audience. Nintendo also made little headway into online gaming (in fact only releasing a small handful of online-capable games, the most popular of which was Phantasy Star Online, which was in fact a port of the Dreamcast game), instead emphasizing GBA connectivity. As a result, the GameCube failed to match the sales of its predecessor Nintendo 64.
Nintendo did however rejuvenate its relationship with many developers, often working in close collaboration with them to produce games based upon its franchises, in contrast to the past where it was frequently seen as bullying developers. As a result, the GameCube had more first and second party releases than its competitors, whose most successful titles were mainly third party developers.
Currently, the Nintendo GameCube sits comfortably in second place in Japan, and in a close third place in the United States and Europe. Overall, it finished its run only 3 million units behind the Xbox.
[edit] Worldwide sales standings
| Console | Units Sold | Date |
|---|---|---|
| PlayStation 2 | 115.36 million shipped[1] | December 31, 2006 |
| Xbox | 24 million[2] | May 10, 2006 |
| GameCube | 21.52 million [3] | September 30, 2006 |
| Dreamcast | 10.6 million [4] | August 7, 2006 |
[edit] Number of bits & system power
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 Dreamcast was 32-bit and the last video game console to base its marketing on the bit/byte system. It 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. PlayStation 2's CPU is known as the “128-bit Emotion Engine” but has a dual-issue 64-bit core. The Microsoft Xbox uses a 32-bit (general purpose) CPU and 256-bit GPU. To take the usage to absurdity, one memory bus on the PS2 is 2,560 bits wide.
The importance of the number of bits in the modern console gaming market has thus decreased due to the use of components that process data in varying word sizes. Previously, console makers advertised the “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.
It is not easy to compare the relative "power" of the different systems. Having a larger CPU word size does not necessarily make one console more powerful than another. Likewise the operating frequency (clock rate) of a system's CPU is not an accurate measure either.
The Xbox's CPU runs at 733 MHz, the highest of the sixth generation consoles. It is designed as a general purpose CISC x86 architecture CPU, with an instruction set equal to that of the Coppermine core Pentium III, though it has less cache memory (128 kB) than the PC equivalent. It also has the most memory with 64 MB RAM (shared) and it is the only console that supports Dolby Digital. Most notably, its NV2A graphics processor, which is based upon the top-of-the-line GeForce 3 for desktop computers, makes it the only console with vertex and pixel shaders and allows for numerous graphical enhancements;[2] however, the Xbox's features were not fully exploited by developers early in its life cycle. Many of this generation's late games, for example Far Cry Instincts, Doom 3 and Half Life 2, which were all originally scheduled for multi-console release, only made it to the Xbox, owing to its superior hardware performance which was undoubtedly the most powerful among its generation.
The Nintendo GameCube is generally regarded as having the second fastest of this generation of consoles, also considering that it is the most compact and cost-efficient to produce. Its IBM "Gekko" PowerPC CPU runs at 485 MHz, while its "Flipper" graphics processor is comparable to the ATI Radeon 7200, and it has 32 MB of system memory. The GameCube supports Dolby Pro Logic II.[3]
The PlayStation 2's CPU on the other hand is purposely designed for running videogames based on MIPS architecture. It actually includes three separate execution units inside the one processor and each one is capable of executing two instructions per cycle. The Emotion Engine in the PS2 can potentially achieve competitive performance with its rivals, despite running at a "slower" speed, though few game programmers were able to exploit this. The Emotion Engine also has fast dedicated video memory, though it is limited in the amount of data it can hold. It also does not have a T&L unit like the ones found in the Xbox NV2A and GameCube "Flipper". Consequently, many of the PS2's games have reduced textures compared to versions for other consoles. Also notably is that the PS2 has been extremely difficult to reverse-engineer due to its custom designed architecture.
[edit] 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 its 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. Notably, South Korean company Game Park introduced its GP32 handheld in 2001, and with it came the dawn of open-source handheld consoles.
A major new addition to the market was the trend for corporations to include a large number of "non-gaming" features into their handhelds. Everything from cell phones, MP3 players, portable movie players, to PDA-like features began to pop up on a regular basis during this generation. 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 Palm OS offering specialized gaming-oriented video and sound capabilities, but an unwieldy development kit due to the underlying PalmOS foundation.
With more and more PDAs arriving during the previous generation, the difference between consumer electronics and traditional computing began to blur and cheap console technology grew from that blur. It was said of PDAs that they are "the computers of handheld gaming" because of their multi-purpose capabilities and the increasingly powerful computer hardware that resided within them— the capability existed to move gaming beyond the last generation's 16-bit limitations. However, PDAs were still geared towards the typical businessman, and lacked new, affordable software franchises to compete with dedicated handheld gaming consoles. The Sixth generation had also continued with the Nintendo DS. This handheld was based on a design fundamentally different from the Game Boy and other video game systems. The Nintendo DS offered new modes of input over previous generations: a touch screen and a microphone. Around the same time, Sony released its first handheld, the PlayStation Portable in Japan, marketed to a different audience than the Nintendo DS. Also in 2005 was the release of the Gizmondo from Tiger Telematics. However, the Gizmondo sold poorly and Tiger Telematics was forced into bankruptcy by February 2006; the Gizmondo was discontinued. 2005 and 2006, respectively, saw the release of the GP2X from Gamepark Holdings and the formal announcement of the XGP from GamePark. Both handhelds follow a completely different market strategy from either the Nintendo DS or the PlayStation Portable. They utilize a Linux-based operating system on an open-source architecture for emphasis on portable software emulation and homebrew games. The GP2X is a 2D handheld that focused on stored media content such as user-uploaded music and videos. The XGP will be a 3D handheld similar to the PlayStation Portable, designed for commercial games. It promises the same open-source Linux architecture, while also supporting Windows CE. The XGP will be a much more advanced handheld than the GP2X, offering the same stored-content features while integrating advanced live-content features such as T-DMB mobile television and Wi-Fi. The release of the XGP may spark renewed controversy over the two GamePark companies that split from the one mother company, GamePark, over disagreements about the successor to the GP32 handheld (which eventually became the two handhelds mentioned). The two handhelds mark South Korea's official entry into the sixth generation handheld market.
[edit] Video games
[edit] Five-horse race
Major developers such as Activision released games covering the PC, Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Dreamcast. Other famous developers (Capcom, Sega, etc.) who released games from previous generations also made considerable enhancements in gameplay and graphics. The PC and Dreamcast made these leaps from the previous generation of consoles. The generation was the first to help console and computer software grow closer together as well as outperform the arcade market in features, graphics and business.
[edit] Controversies
This generation was noted to have extensive criticism by public figures of "objectionable" content in gaming such as sex, crime, violence, profanity, drug use, and social propaganda as well as topics of debate such as religion, politics, feminism, and economics. However, this has been widely dismissed as a myth; many people will note that controversies are hardly unique to the sixth generation, and extend much farther back into gaming history with Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Night Trap. The earliest occurrences of such public outcry dated, in fact, as far back as the 1970s, with extremely violent or explicit games such as Death Race and Custer's Revenge.
The sixth generation was notable because it saw the continuation of lawmakers taking actions against the video game industry. The most famous was the Grand Theft Auto games with Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City facing lawsuits over alleged 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 coincided with 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; in the subsequent market climate many games were edited in response to the sensitivity surrounding the event. Most notable was Metal Gear Solid 2, which prior to its release depicted the destruction of the Statue of Liberty and a good portion of Manhattan. Similarly, several undisclosed modifications were made in Grand Theft Auto III, most notably the change of the police cars' color scheme (the old scheme resembled that of NYPD's older blue and white design). The Dreamcast game Propeller Arena was never officially released, the main reason probably being that a certain level was visually very similar to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
[edit] Emulation 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, the Mega Drive/Genesis and most impressively, the Nintendo 64 (as well as PlayStation game CDs ISO images), the sixth generation of consoles coincided with the rise of console emulation.
It was also a time when an increasing number of retro games were being enhanced or redistributed on newer systems. Nintendo, for example, introduced a line of "classic" NES and SNES games for its Game Boy Advance handheld. Enhanced games include Wild ARMs: Alter Code F, Square Enix's Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls, and Nintendo's Metroid: Zero Mission. Also, an increasing number of third-party developers released 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.
[edit] Comparison
[edit] Consoles
| Console | Dreamcast | PlayStation 2 | GameCube | Xbox |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image |  |
 |
 |
 |
| Price (USD) | US$199.99 (at launch) US$49.99 (final) |
US$299.99 (at launch) US$129.99 (current) |
US$199.99 (at launch) US$99 (final) |
US$299.99 (at launch) US$150 (final) |
| Top-Selling Game | Sonic Adventure | Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas | Super Smash Bros. Melee | Halo 2 |
| Release Date |  November 27, 1998 September 9, 1999 October 14, 1999 |
March 4, 2000 October 26, 2000 November 24, 2000 November 30, 2000 |
September 14, 2001 November 18, 2001 May 3, 2002 May 17, 2002 |
November 15, 2001 February 22, 2002 March 14, 2002 |
| Accessories (retail) |
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|
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| CPU | 200 MHz SuperH SH-4 | 300 MHz MIPS "Emotion Engine" | 485 MHz PowerPC "Gekko" | 733 MHz x86 Mobile Celeron |
| GPU | 100MHzPowerVR CLX2, 7.0 Mil polygons/second (peak), about 3 million polys with texture | 147 MHz "Graphics Synthesizer"; fill rate 2.352 gigapixel/sec; 1.1 gigapixel w. 1 texture(defuse); 588 megapixel/sec w. 2 textures (2 defuses or 1 defuse map and other(0 around 74 mill, 1 around 40 mill, 2 around 20 mill); 2 textures per pass
Capable of multi-pass rendering; Connected to VU1 on cpu (a vector only for visual style coding things with 3.2Gflops) to deliver enhanced shader graphics and other enhanced graphics |
162 MHz ATI "Flipper"; fill rate 648 megapixels/sec no matter texture layer (around 6-12 million triangle/sec); 8 textures per pass
Capable of multi-pass rendering; TEV "Texture EnVironment" engine (similar to "pixel shader") for enhanced graphics |
233 MHz Custom Nvidia NV2A;
fill rate 932 megapixels/sec no matter texture layer (around 30 million triangles/sec); Capable of multi-pass rendering; 2 vertex shaders for enhanced graphics |
| RAM | 100 MHz 64-bit SDRAM Main RAM 16MB 0.8GB/sec;100MHz 64-bit SDRAM Video RAM 8MB 0.8GB/sec | Main RAM 32MB RDRAM 2 16-bit channels at 800 MHz 3.2gb/sec bandwidth; Video RAM 4MB 48 GB/sec (System RAM can be used as VRAM due to fast connection to CPU); 38.4GB/sec frame buffer; 9.6gb/sec texture buffer | Main RAM 24MB 1T-SRAM 2.6gb/sec bandwidth; Video RAM up to 3MB ; 10.4gb/sec texture buffer ; 7.6gb/sec frame buffer | 64MB unified 128-bit DDR SDRAM channelled at 200 MHz 6.4gb/sec bandwidth |
| Online service | Web Browser, some games | Non-unified service | Limited to select games | Xbox Live |
| Backward compatibility | N/A | PlayStation | GB, GBC, and GBA (using Game Boy Player) |
N/A |
| System software | SegaOS, WindowsCE, KallistiOS | proprietary OS, Linux DVD Playback Kit |
Game Boy Player (startup disc) | Xbox Music Mixer DVD Playback Kit |
| Consumer programmability | Homebrew possible | Yabasic software | Homebrew possible via hack | Softmods and hardware modchips |
[edit] Remakes
 Atari Flashback (Atari) |
[edit] Handhelds
 Neo Geo Pocket Color |
 Bandai Swan Crystal |
 Game Boy Advance |
 GP32 |
 Tapwave Zodiac |
 Nokia N-Gage |
 Game Boy Advance SP |
 Nokia N-Gage QD |
 Game Boy Micro |
 Gizmondo |
 Nintendo DS |
 Nintendo DS Lite |
 PlayStation Portable |
| Console | Units Sold | Units Shipped | Release Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nintendo DS | 35.61 million (inc. 17.33m DS lite sales) as of January 25, 2007[5] | N/A | November 21, 2004 |
| PlayStation Portable | 11.21 million in United States and Japan only[6][7] | 24.70 million as of December 31st, 2006[8] | December 12, 2004 |
[edit] Video game franchises established during sixth generation
[edit] Milestone titles
- Resident Evil 4 (originally for the GameCube but later for the PS2 and a PC release planned) brought the franchise in a new direction, abandoning existing gameplay and opening the franchise up to an entirely new generation.
- Half Life 2 saw not only some of the best graphics to date, but more importantly some of the best game physics.
- Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast went down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive title to date ($20,000,000). Produced by Sega's AM2 division, this game helped set the graphics standards of its time.
- Halo was the Microsoft Xbox's most successful launch title. Its sequel Halo 2 set records as the fastest grossing release in entertainment history [4] and still is a very successful killer app for the Xbox Live online gaming service.
- Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels for PlayStation 2 (later Xbox and PC) brought violence and other potentially 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 signaled 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 franchise that not only was missing for a long period of time, but had even lost its creator- Gunpei Yokoi.
- 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 (review) and GameSpot (review) and also a perfect 40/40 (second of only six games) by Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu.
- A game for the Sonic the Hedgehog series is, for the first time, created for a non-Sega console with Sonic Pocket Adventure for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, Sonic Advance for the Game Boy Advance and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the Gamecube. The series also goes multi-console with the introduction of Sonic Heroes.
[edit] References
- ^ Cumulative Production Shipments of Hardware / PlayStation®2. Sony Computer Entertainment.
- ^ [1]
- ^ CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (PDF) 28. Nintendo Co., Ltd. (2006-12-01). Retrieved on October 26, 2006.
- ^ Russell Carroll:Good Enough: Why graphics aren't number one. GameTunnel (2005). Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Nintendo - Consolidated Financial Highlights. Nintendo (2007-01-25). Retrieved on January 25, 2007.
- ^ Brightman, James (2007-01-11). Updated: Breaking: U.S. Video Game Industry Totals $12.5 Billion in 2006. GameDaily Biz. Retrieved on January 11, 2007.
- ^ Sony Misses PS3 Targets in Japan. IGN. Retrieved on January 11, 2007.
- ^ Sony cumulative shipment figures. Sony. Retrieved on October 26, 2006.
- The Xbox factor, a November 22, 2005 article from The Economist
[edit] External links
- Article on the Sega Dreamcast's CPU, including notes on its "bit-rating".
