Moving Image........Computer Games History.....

this lecture was on that i had singled out as being on that i thought, "yeah, thats going to be a really good lecture. get a good incite in to cinema, the history of TV and possibly even computer games....this is could be a gem." didnt turn out that way...and man i was dissapointed.

the best thing about this lecture was the small part on computer games...and thats something i'd like to think i know something about.

now....lets go over the main players in the computer games industry....old and new.

Atari

During the 70's and up to the mid 80's, Atari was the recognized leader in all area's of videogames. Starting out and establishing the Video Arcade industry, Atari set the stage for the 10 billion dollar industry with the release of PONG.

In later years Atari would enter the home with Home Pong and would ignite a fever never before seen with the release of its VCS (Video Computer System) and the release of a home version of Space Invaders for the VCS.

Atari reached their peak in the early 80’s with the introduction of Space Invaders, giving the company pre-tax profits of almost 200 million dollars.

Nintendo

The Nintendo Entertainment System was released in America and Europe in 1985, after some limited success in Japan as the Famicom. Over the next few years, its user base would grow exponentially until the NES surpassed the Atari VCS/2600 peak set in 1982. As of 1990, there were over 19 million NES systems in the United States alone.

In addition to the tremendous success of the system, its games had a great deal prosperity. For example, Super Mario Bros. 3 released in 1989 grossed over $500 million just in America. In the field of entertainment, only the movie E.T. has made more revenue. Super Mario Bros. 3 would sell more than 7 million copies in America and 4 million in Japan, which is more copies than any other game in history. Sheff wrote, "By record-industry standards, 'SMB3' went platinum eleven times. Michael Jackson is one of the few artists to have accomplished this feat."

1990, the money earned from Nintendo's NES and its games allowed Nintendo to usurp Toyota as Japan's most successful company. In the entertainment business, Nintendo netted as much as all of the American movie studios combined, and more than the three television networks had in the previous two years. In the five short years since the system was released, the NES could be found in more than a third of the household in America and Japan.

This monopoly gave Nintendo significant control over the market during the early days of console gaming, which they utilized in many malicious schemes. Despite all of this, they are still one of the most popular and well-known companies in the world.

Sega

Founded in 1951 by American David Rosen, who moved permanently to Japan after WWII, Sega (originally dubbed Rosen Enterprises) started out as an art export company. By the late 1950's Rosen had moved on to importing instant photo booths and coin-op games from the United States.

Rosen Enterprises continued to expand. In 1965 the company purchased a jukebox manufacturing company, which was then merged into Rosen Enterprises. Upon completion of the merger, the company was renamed to Sega, which was a contraction of "Service Games." Sega soon began producing their own coin-op games and competed directly against American imports. In 1970, Sega was bought by Gulf & Western.

Throughout the late 70's and early 80's, Sega produced arcade games and software for early home videogame consoles. Sega wasn't exactly an industry powerhouse yet,, but they had scored a few hits with games like Turbo (which was packaged with the ColecoVision's driving controller), Frogger, and Zaxxon.

Sega released a string of arcade hits in the mid-80's, strengthening its position in the U.S. market especially. Games like Out Run (1986), After Burner (1987), and Shinobi (1987) not only raked in cash for future arcade development, but also gave Sega a recognized stable of successful games that could be ported to Sega produced home consoles e.g. Dreamcast, Mega Drive and the Master System.

Sony

fter the release of the SNES in 1991, Nintendo started thinking of developing a CD-ROM version of their console because of the medium's advantages and in order to compete with rivals (Sega and NEC) who were all heading down this path. They got together with Sony, which eventually came up with the Playstation: A CD-ROM extension that sat beneath the SNES console and allowed 680MB CD games to be played. After Nintendo realized that Sony had a cleverly-worded agreement that allowed them to license all SNES CD-based games, the two companies abandoned the deal.

Not wanting to trash all their hard work on the Playstation, Sony continued developing it on their own. The new 32-bit standalone Playstation was built from the ground up and was not an extension of the one developed for Nintendo's SNES. In fact, so much work had been put into it that the end result in 1994 was completely different than the initial concept drawn up in 1991. The PS had the advantage (over the Saturn) of an extremely easy development environment, which attracted many third-party games developers. It also sold for £100 cheaper than the Saturn in the UK, which attracted consumers.

The Playstation was released in 1994 and enjoyed great success, mainly because of the company's strong financial back enabling it to market the PS widely and its ability to get hundreds of developers to license games for the console. Playstation sales figures were concrete proof that Sega and Nintendo had to be on their guards and start worrying about their latest and most dangerous competitor.
The Playstation retailed for £299 and has sold over 50 million units worldwide. Its library contains almost 1000 games! In 1999, Sony released an updated version of the PS dubbed the PSOne that was both cheaper and smaller. PS2 was on the horizon at this point, spelling the end for the PSOne.

...think thats enough for this blog...