A look back at the video games industry

You'll find it difficult to visualize what folk did with their hands and minds in the days before home computers, video game consoles and other types of digital amusement. Human hands are perfectly shaped to fit control pads and mice -- or is it the other way around?

Both the computer and Nintendo game industries have drastically changed home entertainment. Now, those 2 industries are swiftly becoming one thing.

Do you know about the Magnavox Odyssey? Launched in 1972, it was actually the first publicly released games console. Although it was a couple more years prior to a bouncing-ball game called Pong prompted the world to fall completely in love with PC games and threw Atari to the pinnacle of the home games market.

In 1977, home computers debuted, and shortly, primal computers like the Commodore 64 plus the Tandy colour computer commenced competing with game consoles for the time and cash of game addicted consumers. Though some homes had both a computer and a games console, it was unusual. Money-conscious consumers were forced to choose between the flexibility of a home PC and the superior controllers and graphics of games machines.

Eventually, names such as RCA, Intellivision along with Nintendo went into the computer games market whilst Apple, IBM and a selection of clones took over desktop computing. Speed and graphical quality improved on both video game systems and personal computers over time, and new game releases would momentarily place one company in front of the others till yet another brand new improvement changed the playing field once more.

Home PCs reached notability in the late 1990s, once many houses owned 1 computer, and they have revealed zero indications of decline. Game consoles have not attained that degree of proliferation, although they continue to increase in recognition notwithstanding short-lived blips in the market.

Despite the fact that games consoles were for decades dependent on their joysticks and computers conditional upon mice or infrequent touch pads and trackballs, the 21st century arrival of the Nintendo Wii sophisticated consoles on their way to an eventual controller-less landscape. Games console manufacturers have also added net connections and the facility to browse the web to their consoles, getting rid of the necessity for a computer in homes where computers are not needed for business purposes.

In addition to Nintendo games that perceive movement and do not need controllers, the future also holds further integration between television, gaming, the Net and home computers.

Shortly, one inexpensive device connected into a high tech, fixed to a wall monitor will offer users a complete entertainment experience. In reality some televisions coming on the market in the following few years will offer nearly every gaming alternative users can imagine -- and they're ready for ones that don't even exist in the minds of their designers yet.

But don't worry. Retro will alwaysbe in, too. Pong is still free for most gaming formats -- and still selling like it's 1975.

The website playstation portable has more information.