History of computer games: 2000's

Sony’s Playstation being the largest sold console on the planet at the time, Nintendo somehow holding it’s own with the N64, the Sega Saturn was failing across Europe and American but Sega had a trick up their sleeves. The Sega Dreamcast released in 1998 entered into new territories. The console came with a built in modem for online gaming. although a seemingly obivous move with most of gaming now centred on mutliplayer the Dreamcast is still held in high regard for being the first console to actively get players into online play.




The Playstation 2 is the second video game console released by Sony in 2000. The PS2 was pretty much an instant classic right from the get-go, selling over 900 000 units in the first week alone.  Many analytics predicted a three way struggle between the PS2, Microsoft's Xbox, and Nintendo's Gamecube but with so many good titles coming out during the holiday season, Sony dominated them both in sales. Unlike Sega with their Dreamcast, Sony did not emphasize too much on online gaming. It wasn't' until the Xbox was released that Sony realized that online was the future of gaming and then started to release the network adaptor and many first party titles that could be played online. SOCOM: Navy Seals was among the list of new games that could be played online.

Nintendo was again playing catch up with the Gamecube a year after the PS2’s launch. This was their first disc based console even though the discs were half the size of a regular disc. Nintendo were suffering from a lack of third party developers, and the only really popular games were still the old classics such as Mario and Zelda.

The Playstation 2 and Gamecube were leading the console market quite comfortably, the Dreamcast had seemed to fade into the shadows, however, on the horizon came a new contender for the title of best console. The Xbox had the formidable financial backing of Microsoft, it was unable to significantly threaten the dominance of the PlayStation 2 as market leader; however, the Xbox attracted a large fanbase and strong third-party support in the United States and Europe and became a recognizable brand amongst the mainstream. The Xbox Live online service with its centralized model proved particularly successful, prompting Sony to boost the online capabilities of the PlayStation 2. Xbox Live also gave the Xbox an edge over the GameCube, which had a near total lack of online games.



Microsoft's Xbox 360 gained an early lead in terms of market share, largely due to its established Xbox Live online gaming system, and its early launch date, which was one year before its rivals. Sales in North America and Europe have continued to be strong, even after the release of the Wii and PlayStation 3. Like its predecessor, the Xbox 360 received a muted reception in Japan, attributed to the lack of content aimed at Japanese gamers.

The Playstation 3 was released a year later in 2006. The main selling point to the Playstation being all the new and interesting tech that came with it. Blue-ray players and built in Wifi gave the Playstation a good starting push into the market.



Originally called the “Revolution” but later known as the Nintendo Wii was released shortly after the Playstation. Disregarding the standardised controllers that the Xbox and Playstation sported was a huge change and became the making of the Wii. The way gamers interacted with games was being changed dramatically with Nintendo's wholesale embrace of motion control as a standard method of interaction. Emphasis on gameplay turned comparatively simple games into unlikely runaway hits, including the bundled game, Wii Sports and Wii Fit.