From the year 2000 games became much more popular and the technology of games consoles rapidly increased in performance ability. The two main competitors in this market were the Playstation 2 and Xbox. Although other consoles such as the Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo Gamecube were also released.
The Sega Dreamcast had a very short lifespan, although technically it was ahead of its time and supported online play. It was released in 1998/99 and discontinued in 2001. Sega stopped making games consoles after this and focused on software.
The Nintendo Gamecube was also released and in my experience wasn't as popular as the Playstation or Xbox. The system seemed aimed more towards the family/younger market, this might mainly be because of the lack of 3rd party developers.
The Playstation 2 is the best selling consoles of all time and is still being sold today. It had more than twice as many sales as the Xbox and Gamecube. This was evidently a very popular console.
The Xbox was my favourite console for this era and the first console i had bought close to release, although I also owned a Playstation 2 i preferred the games on the Xbox and its online ability. The game witch i remember most for the Xbox would be Halo, which was the launch game for the Xbox and Halo 2 which was the best selling Xbox game. This was the most technically advanced console for this generation. I think the reason for the limited sales was most likely because of it being a new console, having a horrible launch controller (many found it too big and clunky, but i liked it) and consoles like the Playstaion already had a lot of support from its fans.
Playing Xbox live on games such as Rainbow Six 3,Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Halo are some of my best video game memories to date and i wish they made games as tactical and fun as they used to. Instead of them relying on better graphics and a more "cinematic experience", which although is probably the reason more games are sold, as casual gamers and quickly pick up a game and play. I wish they made fun tactical online games like they used too. I also owned a PS2 for a few games which i couldn't get on the Xbox (although many games where cross-platform), mainly just so i could play SOCOM 2 online (which was free on the playstation).
Next is the 7th generation of games consoles which included the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii. These are the current consoles of today. I have only owned an Xbox 360 but played both other consoles. I remember when the Xbox 360 was it released it was very hard to get one as there was a shortage and many people had to wait for the next batch.
These consoles where sold as "the next generation" mainly because of the HD visuals and many new features. All consoles now had good online capabilities where as before, Xbox Live had the most advanced features. Gamers can down download game demos, videos, content, go online, make avatars, stream radio etc. Some of this stuff, like downloading game content has already been done, but because of the faster broadband speeds and better technology things like streaming videos are much more efficient.
Surprisingly for a lot of people the Wii has sold the most units. I think this is mainly down to the Wii remote which detects the movement of the user and can be used as a pointing device. It was also cheaper than the other console. I personally thought this was something which would get boring and tedious over time, but the sales figures prove otherwise. I think this is because the system appeals to casual gamers more and is easy to pick up and play. Now the other consoles are introducing similar motion devices such as Xbox Kinect and Playstation move.
I think the aim of most console developers now is to create more rounded games and hardware for their systems which appeal to a larger target group. As opposed to the previous generation of consoles, such as the Xbox and Playstation which mainly had games which appealed to teenage boys for example. I personally am not interested in family fun games with motion sensing and the now new "3D" technology and would prefer to play geeky shooters/rpgs instead.
It seems now gaming is more popular and less for "geeks with no lives" which was generally the view of many people. Games like the very popular Call Of Duty are now played by almost every boy and many girls I know. Whereas earlier games were not as well known.
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