First videogame console for a home TV was the Magnavox odyssey, it only play pong and a few other games that comprised of a few dots on a screen, came out it the 70's. The next big console was Atari Pong, and as the name suggests, it only plays pong. The next few years were all Pong consoles that were made by hundreds of companies, you had a large variety of consoles to choose from. Probably the most influential console ever was the Atari 2600 and that was Atari's most successful console that had a very large variety of cartridge games that contained most classics like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. I personally own 30 games and most are relatively good, and some are just horrible, but at the time, no one cared. There weren’t any consoles to compete with the 2600 until Atari's new console, the Atari 5200, which was a huge disaster because the console itself were very large and the controllers were huge, clunky, and very fragile. Besides the controllers, the console was pretty great. But, because of the 5200, the 'great videogame crash' happened, and that cause all videogame companies to fail miserably because no one would buy any console because everything was too expensive and ahead of its time
Atari thought it would be a good idea to try to release another console during The Crash called the Atari 7800. The 7800 took all the problems that the 5200 had and fixed it, but no one bought it, and only a few thousand were sold. Atari's rain of success slowly came to an end as they began to go out of business. Nintendo on the other hand, was just getting started. They released a console to end The Crash by releasing the NES, classified as a 'child’s toy' and not a 'game console'. They included the Robotic Operating Buddy, or ROB. He was a toy robot that played the videogames with the children. It was very advanced technology for the time, but could only play 2 games. The NES sold like crazy. Nintendo ended The Crash and brought video gaming back on the map. Sega decided to take advantage of this and released the Sega Master System that was a relative success. It sold about half as much as the NES, but was a revolutionary console as well. Both consoles played cartridge games, which sold like crazy as well. Cartridge games were the only form of game controlling at the time. The controllers for both of the consoles are basically the same. A rectangle with a d-pad (arrows) on the left, A and B buttons on the right. And it has a start and select button in the middle. The master system only had a start button. After a few years of the NES and Master System, Sega decided to up the ante and release the Sega Genesis that was a console that could process more complex and faster functions 5x more than the NES and Sega began to dominate the market. Nintendo saw that they had a threat, so the made and released the SNES. (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) that did process as fast as the genesis, but could process over 5000 colors and 20000 sounds. The Genesis could only take about 400 colors and made any sound very 'bit tripped' which made them sound very blocky and harsh. In the end, the SNES sold much more than the Genesis, but because of these two consoles, started the Console Wars between Nintendo and Sega for a few years. The console wars started in 92'.
There was a long pause in years before the next big console to come out, the PS1. A 32-bit CD playing console that could process things 200x faster than the genesis and the SNES. The PS1 also played CD-ROM's, which could hold over 600gb, where a cartridge at the time could only hold 10gb. This gave the game developers more room to store memory and more detailed gameplay. Nintendo also saw a threat again and release the Nintendo 64 (N64), and it was awesome. The N64 gave home to some of the most influential games in gaming history. But, the N64 still ran cartridges, because Nintendo thought that a cartridge game was the way to go, because they could load games much faster and they could also process game controls faster. Ps1 and N64 went at it for a few years while Sega decided to play it safe and not get in the middle of this. I not quite sure who one the console war for this set, and I only know a few after these. After these two consoles, and a few years of waiting, Sony released the PS2 in June of 2000 and Nintendo released the GameCube. But, a new player was on the market now, Microsoft, when they came out with the Xbox (the first one). Oh the war between these
Consoles were remarkable. Each company was making fun if each other and embarrassing one another to try to win. In the end, first place went to the PS2; the console that to this day has sold the most Consoles in the history of gaming. Second place was the Xbox that also had some influential games and last place was the GameCube that was one of Nintendo’s worst consoles. After this are the consoles that you probably know. The second most intense Console War was between the three consoles of Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii. Oh how I have gotten into some fight with this one. All three of these consoles were revolutionary. The Wii with motion controls, and the PS3 and Xbox 360 with new revolutionary gameplay mechanics and new abilities. The last console war that has happened began last year and still goes on today. The PS4, Xbox One and Wii U. Now, I never really got into this console war, because all of the consoles that just came out are all horrible. But, I do know which consoles are leading. First off, the Wii U is absolutely failing because no one knows how to make games for it because of its touch pad and all the stuff. The Xbox one is just above the Wii U because of how expensive it is, how very few games it has, and how expensive the controllers are. You have to pay for basically everything with this console. The PS4 is skyrocketing on the markets because of how cheap and innovative everything is. The PS4 is a cheap console in general (price wise) and it actually has a CPU unit that processes faster than the red-eye super computer. The controllers have a cheap price, and all the games that come out are cheap but very good.