History Of Video Game Consoles (fifth Generation)
The fifth-generation era (also known as the 32 bit era and occasionally, after the release of the Nintendo 64, the 64 bit era and more rarely the 3D era) refers to the computer and video games, video game consoles, and video game handhelds available at stores. The fifth generation lasted approximately from 1993 to 2001 and was dominated by three consoles, the Sega Saturn (1994), the Sony PlayStation (1994), and the Nintendo 64 (1996). Demographics in console sales varied widely, but these three consoles, especially the PlayStation, defined the system wars of this era. The 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Amiga CD32, NEC PC-FX, FM Towns Marty, and the Sega 32X were also part of this era, but their sales were poor and they failed to make a significant impact on the market. This era also saw three updated versions of Nintendo's Game Boy: Game Boy Light (Japan only), Game Boy Pocket, and Game Boy Color.
Bit ratings for consoles largely fell by the wayside during this era, with the notable exceptions of the Nintendo 64 and the heavy usage of references to the 64-bit processing power of the Atari Jaguar in advertisements. The number of "bits" cited in console names referred to the CPU word size and had been used by hardware marketers as a "show of power" for many years. However, there was little to be gained from increasing the word size much beyond 32 or 64 bits because once this level was reached, performance depended on more varied factors, such as processor clock speed, bandwidth, and memory size.
The fifth generation also saw the rise of emulation. During this period, commonly available personal computers became powerful enough to emulate the 8 and 16-bit systems of the previous generation. Also, the development of the Internet made it possible to store and download tape and ROM images of older games, eventually leading 7th generation consoles (such as the Xbox 360, the Wii, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DSi) to make many older games available for purchase or download.
Read more about History Of Video Game Consoles (fifth Generation): List of Consoles, List of Handheld Consoles
Famous quotes containing the words history, video, game and/or consoles:
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say “I do not play bridge” is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn’t “at all a good player, in fact I’m perfectly rotten,” is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“The only thing which consoles for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us imperceptibly ruin ourselves.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)