History of Video Games 2000–2009

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A tennis duel with Wii Sports (2006)

The following is the most important data on computer and video game history from 2000 to 2009 . In 2005 Marie-Laure Ryan ranked video games as one of the most productive areas of narrative activity in digital media.

Platforms

Arcade games

Arcade games continued to appear, but played a subordinate role in Germany. They were only allowed in amusement arcades. Here, too, the trend was towards dance and music games, as well as more complex, large-scale multiplayer devices. Survival horror , party, sports and racing games were still popular .

Consoles

The PlayStation 2 , which is downwardly compatible with its predecessor, and the PlayStation itself were initially very widespread . The other 6th generation consoles were far behind .

Microsoft opened the 7th generation in 2005 with the Xbox 360 . In 2006 the Nintendo Wii and the PlayStation 3 from Sony followed . All devices differed in their hardware design or storage media and were aimed at different target groups. In the beginning, the cheaper Wii, which has a controller with motion sensors, was particularly successful . The other two consoles, on the other hand, had significantly higher computing power, the option for high-resolution game graphics in the HDTV standard as well as an optional hard drive and the option of playing DVD films or, in the case of the Playstation 3, Blu-ray discs.

In terms of handhelds, the Nintendo DS (2004/2005) offered an additional screen in the form of a touch screen , a microphone for input and online capabilities for the first time. The PlayStation Portable , which was the first to use games for handhelds on optical media, was particularly successful . The main platforms were / are:

6th generation, 2000-2005

The Sega Dreamcast

Sega's fifth home console heralded the 6th generation of consoles with its first release on November 27, 1998 in Japan. An important feature of Dreamcast was the online service at that time ( SegaNet in USA / Japan, Dreamarena in Europe), which was made possible by a built-in modem. It enabled the first large online community on a game console. Another special feature of the Sega console were the memory cards ( "Visual Memory Unit" , VMU for short) that were specially developed for the controller and had a built-in LC screen.

Despite a record launch in the USA and the game lineup, which was highly praised by critics and the trade press, Dreamcast was unable to maintain the initially high sales figures. One reason for this was the great success of the PlayStation 2 , which appeared in Japan in March 2000. The PlayStation 2 enjoyed a strong media presence, a successful advertising campaign and, in particular, was supported by third-party manufacturers with games more than the competition from Sega. Many developers, especially western ones, were skeptical about the Dreamcast due to the moderate success of the previous console Sega Saturn . The major manufacturer Electronic Arts , for example, did not publish any games for Dreamcast, which meant that the console lacked popular sports game series such as FIFA , NHL or Madden NFL . In addition, the PlayStation 2, with its built-in DVD drive and the ability to play DVD films, offered an additional incentive to buy. The Dreamcast was sold around 10.6 million times worldwide and most recently had a market share of 5.4%. Sega had been financially stricken since the Saturn era, but the situation deteriorated further, especially with the appearance of the PlayStation 2. As the Dreamcast's commercial failure became more apparent, Sega finally stopped production in early 2001 and withdrew from the home console business. Instead, they took on the role of a pure game developer and wanted to develop games for the former competition in the future. For the Dreamcast games appeared until about 2002, after which the supply dropped significantly. Occasionally, however, Dreamcast games appear to this day. Particularly noteworthy are the companies redspotgames , GOAT Store , Milestone , Warashi and G.rev , who developed and published several, sometimes very complex, Dreamcast titles even after 2002. A hobby developer community has also been developing freeware and open source programs for the console without an official license until today (see Dreamcast scene ).

Sony's Playstation 2

For Sony, however, the 6th generation of consoles turned out to be an extremely successful period. Sony was already able to achieve market leadership in the game console business with the PlayStation . On March 3, 2000, Sony's second home console, the PlayStation 2, appeared in Japan . With around 150 million units shipped, the console is considered the most successful video game system of all time. The PS2 owed this to several factors: on the one hand, Sony was able to secure the exclusive or time exclusive rights to the most influential third-party games of the time (e.g. Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy ), on the other hand, the game developers relied on the very high software sales mainly to the PlayStation 2. By the end of September 2008, 10,333 games for the console were published worldwide. Another important reason was to market the ability to play DVDs . The DVD became the market leader thanks to the PS2.

The first PlayStation retained a certain importance in the console market even after the release of its successor and was supported with new games until 2004.

Nintendo GameCube in indigo

On September 14, 2001, Nintendo's 6th home console in Japan, the Nintendo GameCube , was finally released . It was Nintendo's goal to regain the market leader position after the big loss of market share in the 5th generation with the Nintendo 64 , but the hoped-for success of the GameCube did not materialize. On the contrary: With around 21.72 million units, significantly fewer units of the console were sold than the predecessor. The reasons for this were varied, on the one hand the company was in a restructuring phase in which the then President Hiroshi Yamauchi handed over his office to the relatively young Satoru Iwata in 2002 after 53 years , on the other hand Nintendo suffered from the image in society, only children addressing them with their console, which put many older video gamers off buying the console. The main reasons for the console's failure can be seen as the too strong competition, especially from the PlayStation 2, and the weak support of the console from third-party manufacturers, although Nintendo increasingly tried to attract third-party developers to its side with exclusive contracts and financial injections.

The Xbox

Even Microsoft , known for its operating system Windows , dared with the first self-developed home console, the Xbox , in 2001 the step into the video games industry. While Microsoft had quite good sales figures in the western video game market, the Xbox never caught on in the Japanese and Asian markets. Despite the size of this market, the Xbox was only sold about 469,000 times in Japan, according to the market research institute Media Create, which makes up less than 2% of the units sold worldwide. Microsoft presented Xbox Live, an online service for its console in November 2002 , which is still used today with the Xbox 360 , but with extensive extensions. Although Microsoft secured a relatively stable position in the market, from 2001 to 2005 (life cycle, ending with the release of the Xbox 360) a total loss of 3,641,000,000 dollars was made with the games division.

7th generation

The Xbox 360 with controller and remote control

The next generation of consoles was heralded in November / December 2005 with the worldwide release of Microsoft's Xbox 360 , while Microsoft's competitors Nintendo and Sony were only able to follow suit with their new hardware in the following year. When it was released, the Xbox 360 was the first game console to offer HD resolution, but it still only used a DVD drive internally. Both Microsoft and later Sony, however, had high hopes of being able to enforce their supported DVD successor formats with the distribution of their consoles, as this would have given both companies a financial advantage through sales in the film industry, as Microsoft and Sony respectively Would get a share of the profits of any format. Microsoft therefore developed an optional, externally connected HD DVD drive through which the Xbox 360 could also be used as a playback device for HD DVD films. However, there were no game publications that required an HD DVD drive. Microsoft's competitor Sony , on the other hand, relied on the Blu-ray Disc format, which it helped to develop, right from the start and built a corresponding drive directly into every PlayStation 3 . After the Blu-Ray format finally caught on, Microsoft finally stopped its support for the HD DVD. The Xbox 360 celebrates moderate to good results depending on the region. According to the Japanese magazine Famitsu , 853,108 units had been sold by the end of 2008, significantly lower than the sales figures of the competition. However, in contrast to the Xbox, the sales figures could be doubled, and the trend is rising. Europe is the second strongest market for the Xbox 360, where the console was sold around 9,000,000 times by the end of 2008. In the USA, the home market for consoles, Microsoft was able to achieve the greatest successes. According to the market research institute NPD Group, the Xbox 360 had an installed hardware base of 12,449,000 consoles by the end of November 2008. Due to the high software sales in the western markets of Europe and the USA, the console also received increased game support from 3rd party developers.

Wii console in white

The Japanese company Nintendo released their newest console, the Wii , worldwide in November / December 2006. In contrast to its competitors Sony and Microsoft , Nintendo placed less emphasis on distinct hardware specifications (the Wii is also the only home console of its generation that does not offer HD ), but instead focused more on the console's controller , which deviates from the usual pad design and Control by movement allowed. One reason for this decision is, on the one hand, that Nintendo wanted to keep production costs below the sales price (in contrast to Sony and Microsoft), and on the other hand, if there were three consoles that were too similar, a possible market saturation would have taken place and there was the risk of another To bring a console onto the market that does not meet the expectations of success, as happened with the previous consoles Nintendo 64 and GameCube . Nintendo has successfully implemented this strategy with the help of a strong and sophisticated advertising campaign and so the Wii is currently the market leader among consoles. According to Nintendo's last quarterly report, 34,550,000 units were shipped worldwide by the end of September 2008, 6,910,000 of which were sold in Japan, 15,190,000 in America and 12,450,000 in the rest of the world.

The Playstation 3

The multimedia group Sony launched the PlayStation 3, the successor to the most successful home console of all time, on the market in November / December 2006, and a few months later, on March 23, 2007, the system also appeared in Europe. An important goal of Sony was to spread the HD format Blu-ray Disc with the Playstation 3 in this generation of consoles . They had already followed the same strategy with their predecessor systems, PlayStation and PlayStation 2 , where Sony had spread the formats CD (PS) and DVD (PS2). One problem that this strategy now brought with it were the high production costs that were incurred with the installation of the Blu-ray technology and since Sony did not want to subsidize the console, the starting price of € 499 to € 599 (starting prices for Europe) was correspondingly high . The high sales price is one reason for the moderate sales start of the Playstation 3 in contrast to the competition and, above all, in contrast to its successful previous generations. By the end of September 2008 only 13,230,000 units had been delivered worldwide. It is also worth mentioning that Sony, like competitor Nintendo, had motion sensors built into their controller, even if this does not offer all the possibilities of the Wiimote due to the technology used .

Handheld consoles

PlayStation Portable / PSP (above) and Nintendo DS

The newer generation of handhelds offers more performance than the old generation, which could only display 2D graphics (in color). One of the current handhelds is the Nintendo DS , which has become a worldwide bestseller thanks to its innovative input options (integrated microphone, two screens, one of which is a touchscreen), although the PlayStation Portable from Sony is graphically much more powerful. Nintendo's latest version is the Nintendo 3DS , which is the first handheld console to offer games in 3D.

Pc

As before, PCs were in direct competition with consoles. Special gaming PCs with higher quality individual elements were more expensive and were used at LAN parties and in e-sports . More and more games were played on notebooks , organizers, cell phones and other mobile devices.

Popular genres of the time

Wii controller for the Guitar Hero 3 music game

Ego shooters , which the general public disparagingly called " killer games " after running amok , are widespread. Other popular genres were or are: third-person shooters , role-playing games, strategy games, fun games, music / dance games, racing games and simulations.

Retro games via emulator , compilation or as a mobile game were / are also popular .

Online games

Massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and especially role-playing games ( MMORPGs ) for hundreds of players appeared as early as the 1990s, but the big breakthrough only came in the late 1990s with Ultima Online and EverQuest . The first German-language MMORPG, Die 4. Revelation , appeared in 2001. Flash games, forum games and games in online communities such as Second Life (2003) are also popular.

Important companies

Nintendo and Sony still dominate the console market; Sega left him in 2002, and Microsoft was added in 2001/2002.

The currently most important large software publishers are for the most part those already known in the 1990s. A new addition was Square Enix (merged in 2003) and Activision Blizzard (Fusion 2008). There were still many bankruptcies and takeovers. In the course of the global financial crisis from 2007 onwards, there were also increased layoffs of staff and cancellations of games or even series (e.g. Microsoft Flight Simulator ). Despite this, the industry posted record results overall in 2008.

Marketing and Impact

An important aspect in this generation of consoles is the marketing strategy of the three groups and the resulting effects on the fan base , industry and society.

Nintendo

European "Touch! Generations" logo

Probably the most important role in this area is assumed by Nintendo . Since the release of their handheld Nintendo DS , the marketing strategy has changed significantly under the then new managing director Satoru Iwata . According to the company, it set itself the goal of significantly expanding its target group, specifically people who have never played video games and casual gamers. Iwata explained the strategy at E3 2005 by saying that they wanted to try with specially adapted titles, at that time he spoke of so-called non-games , to encourage new customer groups to play. Nowadays the term non-game is less common, so-called casual games are used much more often. Under the brand name Touch! Generations have tried games like Dr. To bring Kawashima's brain jogging , Nintendogs and the like to the man through what they say is intuitive, easy-to-learn controls, what they tried to bring closer to customers with the new touch-screen technology of the Nintendo DS. This marketing strategy was pursued because it was generally assumed that controls or games that were too complex would scare off many people and that games could best be brought closer to people using this principle. Nintendo also adopted this strategy for its home console Wii and is still following it. In contrast to previous generations, attention was also paid to investing larger amounts of money in advertising, for which the company has been criticized several times in the past. Ultimately, this strategy turned out to be a stroke of luck and the two systems are market leaders in both the handheld and home console segments.

One consequence of this marketing was the behavior of 3rd party publishers, who, inspired by the great success of games like Dr. Kawashima's brain jogging and Nintendogs also tried to market similar games on the Nintendo DS and later also Wii, but with rather moderate success compared to Nintendo's games. This behavior met and continues to meet with great criticism, especially in the community of so-called core gamers, as the assumption arose that game manufacturers would only market such games in the future. However, these games do not appeal to core gamers as a target group and therefore do not meet their expectations.

The industry as a whole, however, has made record profits in recent years, largely due to the huge success of the DS and Wii. According to the market research institute NPD Group, the years 2007 and 2008 were by far the best-selling years in the country's history. In 2007 around 18 billion dollars in sales were achieved, in 2008 an estimated 22 billion dollars.

Due to the great success of Nintendo's Touch! Generation series, video games became more popular even among people who did not play before, and so acceptance by society also increased noticeably. In 2008, video games were officially recognized as a culture in Germany.

Sony / Microsoft

In this generation, Sony concentrates primarily on the marketing of the multimedia capabilities of the PSP and PlayStation 3 , trying to spread the storage media UMD and Blu-ray Disc with both systems , but the expected success of the UMD failed to materialize; however, the Blu-Ray format can enjoy ever increasing sales figures. So Sony is currently hardly putting any more emphasis on promoting UMD, in contrast to Blu-Ray. Before the release of the Playstation 3, Sony's home console was also called a computer and was advertised under the aspect of a "multimedia console" ("Since the PS3 is a computer [...]"), however, this was partially rejected by the fan base, as one feared that the console might lose its advantages over a PC (e.g. no installation, no hardware upgrades). Sony also received a lot of criticism because of its Playstation 3 advertising. It was criticized that the television commercials hardly showed any connection with the console, this can be traced back to the bizarre way of displaying the advertising, the message of which is not immediately understandable. Another important marketing aspect, which competitor Microsoft also uses, is the presentation of the hardware strength of the Playstation 3, with particular emphasis on the graphics of the console and the ability to play it in HD. This aspect is intended to appeal to middle-aged customers who are particularly interested in technology. However, the PlayStation 3 sells relatively poorly due to several factors, an important point is the high selling price of the console, which is currently not compatible with the mass market and therefore difficult to market, which is why Sony is trying with several software bundles, new colors for the console and games compatible with the mass market to win new customers, but also with moderate success.

Data carrier / costs

Common data carriers are the DVD and in some cases the CD-ROM . Consoles and handhelds use different storage media such as optical, digital or electronic data carriers , depending on the manufacturer . In addition, games are increasingly being bought, downloaded or played directly online from the Internet. New games usually cost around 50 euros; however, prices often fall after a short time. Handheld games are usually a little cheaper. There are also more and more free games such as freeware or free software .

Chronicle / most important games of the decade

Logo from The Sims (2000)

Important and successful games were among others (all games are also part of successful series):

Successful series and franchises continued to be Pokémon , Sonic and Final Fantasy , as well as The Legend of Zelda , Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and others.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marie-Laure Ryan, Narrative and Digitality: Learning to Think With the Medium, in: A Companion to Narrative Theory , edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, 2005, ISBN 978-1-4051-1476-9 , pp. 515-528.
  2. ↑ gamersmark.com A Fond Farewell: So Long Dreamcas t
  3. ↑ gametunnel.com 6th generation: Hardware sales figures ( Memento from October 18, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Latimes.com Sega to Quit Production of Dreamcast Console, Develop Games for Rivals
  5. ↑ ft.com Sony sets 150m sales target for PS3
  6. ↑ Scei.co.jp: Cumulative Software Titles ( Memento from September 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ PCWelt.de: DVD boom thanks to Playstation 2. Accessed on April 22, 2020 .
  8. ↑ nintendo.co.jp Consolidated Results for the Nine Months Ended Dec. 06 and 07
  9. ↑ heise.de Nintendo's boss resigns
  10. ↑ xbox.com #Xbox Continues to Deliver ( Memento from March 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ realmedia.com "As the first HD console to market, the Xbox 360 has (...)" ( Memento from February 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ arstechnica.com Microsoft announces HD DVD on Xbox 360
  13. ↑ nintendo.co.jp Consolidated Results for the Six Months Ended September 2007 and 2008 (PDF; 118 kB)
  14. ↑ golem.de Playstation 3 is becoming even more interesting as a Blu-ray player
  15. ↑ consolewars.de Does Sony win with the PS3
  16. ↑ computerandvideogames.com tenant: High PS3 price is killing Sony
  17. ↑ Scei.co.jp: PLAYSTATION®3 Worldwide Hardware Unit Sales ( Memento from February 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ↑ ign.com E3 2006: In-Depth with the PS3 Controller
  19. ↑ gamasutra.com NPD: Behind the Numbers, November 2008
  20. ↑ spiegel.de Computer games are culture
  21. ↑ consolewars.de PS3 as a modular system?