How many game consoles are there

The vast majority of these, around , are part of the first generation of consoles that started in The reason for such a huge number is that even those systems designed exclusively for a single game are counted: think for example to the incalculable consoles focused on Pong built during the 70s, alone capable of covering a large part of the total seen over the decades. The second generation starts with the Fairchild Channel F , but the iconic ones are also part of that era Atari e Intellivision.

The seventh marks the advent of high definition thanks to PlayStation 3 e Xbox , while Nintendo offers the called revolution Wii. And just as the machine was beginning to age, its S and X iterations came along and boosted the specs. State of the art, in many ways. From those slightly Orwellian foundations came a robust, powerful and exciting machine, its back catalogue of more than games boasting one of the greatest console first-person shooters ever in Halo, as well as gritty brawler Ninja Gaiden, surreal adventure Psychonauts and Star Wars epic Knights of the Old Republic.

From the beginning, Xbox understood the rising importance of online play, with its integrated ethernet port and robust Xbox Live infrastructure. Suddenly, whole families could compete together, from the youngest to the oldest — and Nintendo sold more than m units as a result. A victory for utilitarian design over technological obsession. The machine saw an array of idiosyncratic titles — Jet Set Radio, Shenmue, Seaman, Rez, Phantasy Star Online — that either invented new genres or utterly revolutionised old ones.

But the lack of support from western developers and the sheer might of the PS2 ensured that its life was as brief as it was beautiful.

The Switch is a brilliantly flexible home console, seamlessly switching local multiplayer between the living room and the world at large, somehow combining the genius of the Wii and the Game Boy. He designed an architecture that was powerful yet easy to develop for and focused on pushing 3D shapes around the screen as efficiently as possible.

Sony then solved its lack of development experience by purchasing UK studio Psygnosis and inking an exclusive deal with Japanese arcade veteran Namco. This machine changed everything. Like Hoover and Aspirin before it, the brand was so synonymous with the activity that it became genericised.

But the games, oh the games. Based around similar tech as the Xbox One and launched almost simultaneously, the PS4 saw Sony concentrating on games rather than multimedia functionality, immediately winning the PR war against Microsoft.

By building an architecture capable of accurately converting arcade hits such as Golden Axe, Strider and Altered Beast, and bullishly marketing at teenagers, Sega made Nintendo look fusty and old-fashioned. This punk attitude was amplified further in by the arrival of Sonic the Hedgehog, a speed-obsessed, spiky-haired dude-bro perfectly in tune with earlys MTV culture.

The Mega Drive would go on to sell 35m units and host a wide range of experiences from romantic role-playing adventures to real-time military sims. In the process, for better or worse, it invented the whole idea of console gaming as a lifestyle — an identity.

The first console of the broadband era, Xbox put online multiplayer functionality at the core of its offering from the very start. In that same year, in the U. Its best-sellers included games like Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy. The sheer success of that number would be nothing compared to the next version of the Sony PlayStation.

But this first console was remarkable in many of the standards it set:. Its obvious perk was that you could save your game, take it around to your friend's place and continue where you left off. Known simply to gamers as the " N64 ", the console ushered in the age of 3D game development and gameplay. As a fifth-gen console, it significantly juiced up its graphics and capabilities, introducing excellent, workstation-level graphics to the regular consumer. It was the first console to feature a four-way split-screen, with four-controller ports Mario Kart 64 , anyone?

The split-screen was especially fantastic because it didn't produce a significant lag. That was thanks to its more advanced motherboard and a memory interface operating at MHz, 10 times faster than any other DRAM.

Of course, the legacy of Mario and Zelda continued, with the very popular Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64 and the surprise first-person shooter success, GoldenEye The stage is set with all new players now and they're a far cry from the brands we started out with.

We can barely remember Atari and Intellivision. In the sixth generation of gaming, it's all about Sony v. Microsoft, with Nintendo still trading on its legacy. There is an incredible amount of fast-paced development going on at this point, but Nintendo is late to the game because the PS2 and the Xbox are focused on a goal rather than on functionality or game production.

The goal is simple: convergence. Which system can become a consumer's solution for an "all-in-one" entertainment experience? This "trend" was set to define a new reality and would be the major catalyst for development in the next decade. Dark black, beautifully thin and incredibly compact, the PS2, as it would come to be known, sold over 70 million consoles by the year And that was to say nothing of the sales it was about to rake in through its "gaming network".

Not surprisingly, it became the best and fastest selling console in the history of gaming at that point in It sold a collective million units and this success all came down to a well-strategized combination of beautifully-designed and powerful gaming hardware, at an affordable price point, with stellar games.

Besides the crafty and titillating Tomb Raider which was also released on the Xbox , the PS2s other "greatest hit" was Shadow of the Colossus. While it played like a puzzle game, the environments were minimalist and there was deep attention paid to things like audio score and quality, emotional and immersive game design and storytelling.

It didn't waste a lot of time, money and attention on marketing. It released rather quietly but very quickly became a "must-have" console. What was interesting was that, by the time the Xbox released, hardcore gamers found that they enjoyed owning both brands and that one was not necessarily more important than the other. The system ran on Windows and felt very familiar to gamers, especially those who were traditionally PC gamers.

Halo , for example, was one of Xbox's most popular and long-sustaining games so beloved, in fact, that it spawned a major indie web-series produced by Rooster Teeth called, "Red v. As a third-person shooter, Halo made the best use of the Xbox's vastly improved console specs and gave players the potential for both online play and internal storage of downloaded content. While the PS2 shattered all console records, Halo shattered all game records: it sold more than 1 million copies in the first few months of release.

Between and , Microsoft, PlayStation and Nintendo were all poised to face off, trying to capture or, in the case of the Nintendo Wii, trying to re capture the majority of the market share. The Kingdom Hearts franchise, borrowing from SEGA's strategy of using Disney-licensed characters, made a huge impact for PS2 and 3 and there came a new age of first-person shooter games thanks to smaller predecessors like Counter Strike.

Portal and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion would set the stage for extensibility that focused not just on additional hardware but, rather, new DLC or "downloadable content", in-game Easter eggs and battle royale-style multi-player gaming.

And it was all happening on an online gaming network. The Microsoft Xbox opened up development through "developer kits" to indie gamers and game developers at large — a trend that Playstation developers wouldn't catch on to until the PS4. It was the second successor to the original Microsoft Xbox and quickly became its main seller. Coupled with the movable add-on "Kinect" and its online gaming network access, the Xbox created interactive experiences for its gamers, putting tech specs front and centre.

Suddenly, gaming was not only immersive and story-driven, but also about the power of the actual console machine. Since gaming was moving online, the question became whether or not the graphics card, memory, GPU performance, CPU core and processor featured in these machines could withstand real-time play, profile service, social leaderboards ,and downloadable content.

Once again the Xbox seemed to lead the way in first-person shooters with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. By now, Sony's PlayStation console had a mass following so the reception for the PS3 was unparalleled.