video game history
history of video gaming
The history of video games can be traced back as far as the 1950's and 1960's when computer scientists began designing simple games on mainframe computers. Some of the first games played on a video display were made available in the early 1960's. In the early 1970's the first home video game console called the Magnavox Odyssey was made along with the first arcade video games called Computer Space and Pong. By the mid 1970s, the first ROM cartridge based home consoles arrived, most notably the Atari Video Computer System. Soon afterward, the video game industry saw a rapid growth in the home console market along with arcade games such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man. In 1985, Nintendo released it's console called the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States which became popular soon afterward. In the late 1980s and early 1990s games became available for personal computers and the competition war between Nintendo and Sega began. The first of the major handheld video game consoles called the Game Boy made by Nintendo became available in 1989. The early 1990s saw the emergence of CD-ROM games in personal computers and Sony's Playstation. By the early 2000s Microsoft entered the console market with the Xbox which soon became competitive with the Playstation. Soon afterward Nintendo developed the Wii with motion sensing controls and soon afterward the Nintendo Switch. From the late 2000s through the 2010s, the industry has seen a shift to online gaming on computers and consoles and mobile gaming on smartphones and tablets along with digital distribution of games.
