A home video game console is a video game console that is designed to be connected to a display device, such as a television, and an external power source as to play video games. While initial consoles were dedicated units with only a few games fixed into the electronic circuits of the system, most consoles since support the use of swappable game media, either through game cartridges, optical discs, or through digital distribution to internal storage.
There have been numerous home video game consoles since the first commercial unit, the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. Historically these consoles have been grouped into generations lasting each about six years based on common technical specifications. As of 2024, there have been nine console generations, with the current leading manufacturers being Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, colloquially known as the "Big 3." Past console manufacturers have included Atari, Fairchild, Mattel, Coleco, Sega, NEC, 3DO, Fujitsu and SNK.
A home video game console is a predesigned piece of electronic hardware that is meant to be placed at a fixed location at one's home, connected to a display like a television screen or computer monitor, and to an external power source, to play video games on using one or more video game controllers. This differs from a handheld game console which will have a built-in screen, controller buttons/features, and a power supply like a battery or battery pack.
Earlier home consoles were typically built from a selection of standard and highly customized integrated computer chips, packaged onto circuit boards and cases. Over time, home console design has converged to a degree with personal computers, using similar component and system design, including standardization with main computer chip architecture. Consoles remain as fixed systems, lacking the customization options that personal computer components have, and most consoles include customized components to maximize space and reduce power consumption to provide the best performance for game playing, while lowering costs with reduced storage and memory configurations.[1]
Home video game consoles typically can play a multitude of games, offered either as game cartridges (or ROM cartridges), on optical media like CD-ROM or DVD, or obtained by digital distribution. Early consoles, also considered dedicated consoles, had games that were fixed in the electronic circuitry of the hardware. Some facets may be controlled by switching external controls on the console but the games could not be changed themselves.
Most home consoles require a separate game controller, and may support multiple controllers for multiplayer games. Some console games can only be played with special, unconventional game controllers, such as light guns for rail shooters and guitar controllers for music games. Some consoles also possess the ability to connect and interface with a particular handheld game system, which certain games can leverage to provide alternate control schemes, second screen gameplay elements, exclusive unlockable content or the ability to transfer certain game data.
The first commercial video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, developed by a team led by Ralph H. Baer and released commercially in 1972. It was shortly followed by the release of the home version of Pong by Atari Inc. in 1975 based on the arcade game. A number of clones of both systems rushed to fill the nascent home console market and the video game industry suffered a small recession in 1977 due to this.
The Fairchild Channel F, released in 1976, was the first console to use game cartridges, which was then used by the Atari VCS and several other consoles of the second generation and led to a second boom in the video game industry in the United States and around the globe. During this time, Atari Inc. had been sold to Warner Communications, and several programmers left the company and founded Activision, becoming the first third-party developer. Activision's success led to a rush of new developers creating games without any publishing controls for these systems. The market became flooded with games, and combined with the rising popularity of the personal computer and the economic recession of the early 1980s, led to the video game crash of 1983 in the U.S. market. Nintendo, which had released its Family Computer console in Japan that year, took several cautionary steps to limit game production to only licensed games, and was able to introduce it, rebranded as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 into the U.S. market. The NES helped to revive the console market and gave Nintendo dominance during the late 1980s.
Sega took advantage of the newfound U.S. growth to market its Sega Genesis against the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in the early 1990s in the so-called "console wars" and emphasized the notion of "bits" as a major selling point for consumers. The consumer adoption of optical discs with larger storage capacity in the mid-1995 led many console manufactures to move away from cartridges to CD-ROMs and later to DVDs and other formats, with Sony's PlayStation line introducing even more features that gave it an advantage in the market; the PlayStation 2, released in 2000, remains the best-selling console to date with over 155 million units sold. Microsoft, fearing that the PlayStation 2 was threatening the competitive edge of the personal computer, entered the console space with its Xbox line in 2001. Internet connectivity had become commonplace by the mid-2000s, and nearly all home consoles supported digital distribution and online service offerings by the 2010s.
With Sony and Microsoft's dominance in hardware capabilities, most other major manufacturers have since dropped out of the hardware business, but maintain a presence in the game development and licensing space. Nintendo remains the only competitor having taken a blue ocean strategy by offering more original console concepts such as motion sensing in the Wii and the hybrid design of the Nintendo Switch.
Within the home video game console market, the leading consoles have often been grouped into generations, consoles that were major competitors in the marketplace. There have been nine generations of consoles since the 1970s, with a new generation appearing about every five years.
Overview of the console generations, including generation overlaps. Major consoles of each generation are given for each.
List of home video game consoles
There are more than 1000 home video game consoles known to exist, the vast majority of which were released during the first generation: only 103 home video game consoles were released between the second and current generation, 15 were canceled.[a] This list is divided into console generations which are named based on the dominant console type of the era, though not all consoles of those eras are of the same type. Some eras are referred to based on how many bits a major console could process. The "128-bit era" (sixth generation) was the final era in which this practice was widespread.
This list only counts the first iteration of each console's hardware, because several systems have had slim, enhanced or other hardware revisions, but they are not individually listed here. The list also includes unreleased systems. If a series of home video game consoles begins in a generation and lasts to another generation, it is listed in the generation the series began. This list does not claim to be complete.
This list does not include other types of video game consoles such as handheld game consoles, which are usually of lower computational power than home consoles due to their smaller size; microconsoles, which are usually low-cost Android-based devices that rely on downloading; retro style consoles; or dedicated consoles past the first generation, which have games built in and do not use any form of physical media. Consoles have been redesigned from time to time to improve their market appeal. Redesigned models are not listed on their own.
^The Videopac+ G7400 was planned to be released in America as the Odyssey³ Command Center, with a different case design, but it never occurred, although some prototypes exist.
^SNK created the Neo Geo CD as a much cheaper alternative to the AES, lowering the price of games considerably, from ≈300$ to ≈50$ . It's essentially an AES console with a media format change from cartridges to CDs, placing it in the fourth generation.
^ abStarting with Microsoft's fiscal quarter ending June 2014 (Q4), the company stopped divulging individual platform sales in their fiscal reports and subsequent Xbox sales are based on industry estimates.[20][21][22][23]
^The Nintendo Switch was released during this period, but has been referred to as a hybrid video game console, combining features of home and handheld systems. This is why the Switch appears in both the list of home video game consoles and the list of handheld game consoles.
^Although fully developed, functional, and with 2 games ready, the few Halcyon units that exist were handmade for investors of the company to try out the product, it is not believed that it ever went into full production or entered the market at all. Less than 12 main control units (Halcyon 200LD, the console itself) are known to exist, but more Halcyon branded Laserdisc players (LD-700, made by Pioneer) exist.[citation needed]
^The Krokha (Russian: Кроха, lit. 'Baby') was a Soviet console that was ready to launch in 1990, but production halted, only one game was made, and the approximately 200 consoles were given out to employees of the factory that manufactured it.[35]
^"Earnings Release FY14 Q3". Microsoft. April 24, 2014. Retrieved April 24, 2014. Microsoft sold in 2.0 million Xbox console units, including 1.2 million Xbox One consoles.
^"Earnings Release FY14 Q4". Microsoft. July 22, 2014. Retrieved August 13, 2014. We sold in 1.1 million consoles in the fourth quarter, as we drew down channel inventory, compared to 1.0 million consoles during the prior year.
^"Microsoft Annual Meeting of Shareholders". Microsoft. December 3, 2014. Retrieved January 31, 2015. Finally, our gaming business is thriving with the Xbox One hitting 10 million units sold. I am thrilled to welcome Mojang and Minecraft community to Microsoft.
^Hood, Vic; Pino, Nick; June 2021, Adam Vjestica 01 (August 25, 2021). "Xbox Series X review". TechRadar.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^ ab"Archived copy". Archived from the original on February 20, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
