Game History: The 2000s

The 2000s were a decade of evolution; after the innovations of the previous decades developers and companies sought to distinguish themselves from each other and evolve to meet the changing lifestyles and technologies of the modern age.

The decade began with Sega pulling out of the console wars; The Dreamcast wasn’t as much of a success as they had hoped (The Saturn didn’t inspire much confidence and hey! The Playstation two was going to be released soon) and they ultimately decided that it was time to go back to just creating software, ceasing production of the Dreamcast in 2001. The Playstation 2 had a 294-MHz processor, the ability to play DVD films and also the Playstation one’s range of games. Third party games like Final Fantasy X and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City helped make it the best-selling game console in history. Microsoft then released the Xbox -  three days before Microsoft released the game cube - who’s built in hard drive and Internet Ethernet port made it as much like a computer as a game console. Xbox came with the first well received first-person-shooter, the Launch title Halo: Combat evolved This made the Xbox a serious competitor in the console wars and established them as a gaming household name. Meanwhile Nintendo released the GameCube (A personal favourite console) which, without the ability to play DVDs and it’s focus on the game play it was outsold by the Xbox and the Playstation 2. In 2002 Xbox live was launched and the previous decade’s shift to online gaming became commercially viable and downloadable content via a broadband connection was a huge success.

The console wars between Nintendo and Sega were pretty serious business. No seriously, they’re even making an anime about it.

In 2005 and 2006, the Xbox 360, Wii and the Playstation 3 were released and we enter an even more familiar, modern age of generation seven games consoles where internet connectivity and 3D graphics became the accepted norm. This is a time of movement sensitive gaming things like the Wii, and the Playstation Move made gaming through movement possible and enjoyable. And as games became more costly to make, crossplatforming became a thing; rather than cut out an area of the market, a game would be released on all consoles (made easier by the use of 3D modelling and textures as well as music, text and voice clips which made programming easier as reusable objects) in an attempt to maximise the amount of people who would buy the game.

Alongside these consoles, handhelds were really taking off; after the introduction of Game Boys as a serious hand-held console, Nintendo lead the way with handhelds with very little serious competition, Nintendo released the Game Boy advanced (The first Game Boy I had a proper go at playing) to succeed the Game Boy colour and the Game boy Advanced SP (First one I owned) in it’s hinged design as a redesigned version that included a back-lit screen for ease of use.

With Sony planning a handheld, Nintendo decided to take a sideways step rather than improve on the existing games console; The Nintendo DS was the first console I was desperate to buy (Something about a game where you could buy and care for dogs) and it drastically changed the ways in which games were played with it’s two screens and touch screen. This console brought Nintendo into internet gaming as well, with the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection (I could never get it to work on mine though) and with it’s redesigns of the  DS Lite it is immensely popular. The Playstation Portable from Sony was outsold by Nintendo’s handheld, however with it’s high-quality graphics and film and music playback features it is a viable Rival to Nintendo’s console.

For more casual gamers, mobile gaming took off in this period as PC gaming declined in status due to the fact that consoles (Even phones could produce PS-level graphics at this state) graphics and effects began to match those found on the computer.

However, this leap towards realism was not entirely smooth sailing and much controversy arose around it’s increasingly realistic portrayals of violence and sex, coming not only from outside the industry; parents and watchdogs becoming increasingly worried that such scenes would instil similar natures into people playing the game, but also from those inside the industry (And the culture surrounding it) who claim that overly sexualised scenes are causing shifts in the way the culture is viewed – and not in a terribly positive way. Though a large part of the problem stems from a belief that video games are firmly in the ‘children’s toys’ camp, which is by no means true and honestly if you look back at it the history of games; from scientists demonstrating what they can do with their machines for university guests, through technology students seeing how far they can push their hardware all the way to developers today, telling stories on an epic scale it’s never been just for kids.

Now, pressures surrounding the mounting costs of producing blockbuster games (Pacman cost around $100,000 but nowadays it costs around $15million to create an average PS3 title) and the instability that many game companies finances face – a particularly bad Christmas season of sales can put a company firmly into bankruptcy all at once – mean that the video game industry isn’t exactly in a brighter place than it was in it’s infancy, or during it’s boom and bust periods, but it is still an interesting and innovative area, constantly changing and growing in unexpected areas.