The 2000s showed innovation on both consoles and PCs, and an
increasingly competitive market for portable game systems.
In the sixth generation of video game consoles, Sega
exited the hardware market, Nintendo fell behind, Sony solidified its lead in
the industry, and Microsoft developed a gaming console.
The generation opened with the launch of
the Dreamcast in 1998. It was the first console to have a built-in
modem for Internet support and online play.
The second release of the generation was Sony's
PlayStation 2. Nintendo followed a year later with the Nintendo GameCube,
their first disc-based console.
Before the end of 2001, Microsoft Corporation, best known for its Windows operating system and its professional productivity software, entered the console market with the Xbox.
Before the end of 2001, Microsoft Corporation, best known for its Windows operating system and its professional productivity software, entered the console market with the Xbox.
Microsoft then sold the Xbox so that they could
concentrate on
drawing profit from game development and publishing instead. From this in in November 2001 they released Bungie Studio's Halo:
Combat Evolved instantly
became the driving point of the Xbox's success.
In 2001 Grand Theft Auto III was released,
popularizing open world games by using a non-linear style of game play.
In 2001 Nintendo demonstrated it’s dominance in the
handheld market through the sales of the Game Boy Advance.
In the early 2000s, mobile games had gained mainstream popularity
in Japan's mobile phone culture, years before the United States or Europe.
By 2003, a wide variety of mobile games were available on Japanese phones,
ranging from puzzle games and virtual
pet titles that utilize camera phone and fingerprint
scanner technologies to 3D games with PlayStation-quality graphics.
From 2004 to the present this generation opened
early for handheld consoles, as Nintendo introduced their Nintendo
DS and Sony premiered the PlayStation Portable within a month of each other in 2004.
In console gaming, Microsoft stepped forward first in
November 2005 with the Xbox 360, and Sony followed in 2006 with the PlayStation 3, released in Europe
in March 2007.
With high definition video an undeniable hit with
veteran gamers seeking immersive experiences, expectations for visuals in games
along with the increasing complexity of productions resulted in a spike in the
development budgets of gaming companies producing many of the launch titles for the
Xbox such as: Call of duty 2 and Quake 4.
Meanwhile, Nintendo took cues from PC gaming and their
own success with the Nintendo Wii, and crafted games that capitalized on the
intuitive nature of motion control.
Beginning with PCs, a new trend in casual gaming began with games with limited
complexity that were designed for shortened or impromptu play sessions, began
to draw attention from the industry. Many were puzzle games, such as Popcap's Bejeweled and PlayFirst's Diner
Dash.
In 2008, social network games began gaining
mainstream popularity following the release of Happy
Farm in China. This influenced the
creation of many clones, one most well known being Facebook’s game Farmville. Other popular social
network games include Mob
Wars and Mafia
Wars.
In 2009, the industry took
another leap forward with cloud gaming. These services allow the graphics rendering of the video games
to be done away from the end user, and a video stream of the game to be passed
to the user. OnLive
allows the user to
communicate with their servers where the video game rendering is taking place.
On November 4,
2010, Microsoft released Kinect in North America. It uses a
sensor and dual-camera device to track the motion of the players themselves,
becoming the first motion control system capable of tracking the player in 3D
space without the need for a controller.
On January 27, 2011, the PlayStation Vita was announced and
then later released on December the 17th in Japan.
On March 25 2011 Nintendo released its new handheld: the successor
to the Nintendo DS known as the Nintendo 3DS. The
system incorporates 3D graphics using parallax barrier technology
rather than glasses.
On April 25, 2011, Nintendo released a statement
officially announcing a system to succeed the Wii. The new was officially introduced
on June 7, 2011 with the official name Wii U.
In the past 12 years the video game industry has yet
again taken massive strides in visual and technical development. With the rise
and rise of console games and along with them production budgets, but also the
increase in popularity of casual games, appealing to a larger audience to the point that nearly all modern video games
have difficulty settings that can be applicable to any gaming style.
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