A Brief History of Home Gaming
Video games have a very successful industry, which in recent years has been generating more money than the movie. The video game industry represented a value of $27 billion globally by 2005.
The industry is composed of different products using different platforms:
* Consoles
* PC (Personal Computer)
* Online
* Wireless or portable (PDA, cell phone or handheld console)
Some of the most important companies in the sector include Sega, Ubisoft, Microsoft Games, Konami, SquareEnix, Crystal Dynamics, Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Sony, Activision, Capcom, Nintendo, Red star line games, Rockstar, Core Design, and so on. These companies are engaged in production of hardware consoles, the marketing of them or to the development of video games.
The video game industry has experienced in recent years high growth rates, owing to the development of increased computer processing power, more realistic images and the close relationship between film and video games, which consumers (preferably preteens) easily recognize the titles and branding.
The market for video games for PCs is declining, displaced for the consoles. The PC platform was very popular in the nineties with the first multimedia PC with CD-ROM. In addition to PC games offered in their beginning a very strong stimulus for the whole sector and the executives office that had the PC as a primary tool.
Since the mid-1980s consoles are the main platform that moves the game industry thanks origionaly to Nintendo, by introducing its Nintendo Entertainment System or NES games revived after the famous "CRASH" of the early 80s (specifically 1983) where video games it seemed, had no future.
In 1990 the PC offered an alternative in terms of games, with the emergence of genres such as "adventure game" games "strategy" and the most popular (PC) of the 90s new genre.
The market for PC games will only be maintained primarily for these reasons:
1. It is in that there is more versatility, one example is that when Valve made available to players the need to create maps and even games, it has been able to create a huge community and create games such games as Counter - Strike or the Day Of Defeat.
2. Some PC games are uncomfortable to play with a joystick or control console, such as the ETR, that is the strategy game in real time, such as Age of Empires (series) or the Command & Conquer
3. The flexibility of hardware to be able to include in the PC video cards of varying power according to the economic capacity of the user or the yield desired results in obtaining higher-quality graphics and generation of 3D objects that the limited consoles.
The PC was the platform's output of video games and still remain large sales that only come out today for PC (the massive RPG online games) like "World of Warcraft" strategy games and flash games. But the platform is "less" important in terms of sales and profits for companies.
Currently the gaming industry is powered through the Nintendo platforms (Wii, Nintendo DS), Sony (Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PSP) and Microsoft (Xbox 360).
The business is not on the sale of consoles, but in software sales, although the high rates of piracy are affecting the business. The console manufacturers sell their machines at cost or loss and rely on the sales of games, hence the importance of the games.
Such is the case of Sega, which stopped producing consoles in early 2001. Although some producers of software (such as Electronic Arts) have the resources to build a version of a game for all consoles, many will choose only one. In the war of consoles, the Atari Jaguar was the first victim of Atari, who could not compete with the giants Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
One way in which it seeks to control piracy (copyright) is dividing the world into six geographical sectors and encoding software and consoles, in this way, for example, games manufactured in Japan could not run on American consoles.
Microsoft joined the game in 2001 introduced the Xbox console.
Major consoles on the market
* PlayStation 2 from Sony (Japan)
* Xbox 360, Microsoft
* Sony PlayStation 3
* Nintendo Wii
* Sony PlayStation Portable
* Nintendo DS
* Xbox and Gamecube disappeared from the market after their companies (Nintendo and Microsoft) "moved files" to be sold on Wii and Xbox 360. Precisely because unlike the veteran PlayStation 2 and its successor, the PlayStation 3, and 2 years ago is still very present in the market.
In its early days the laptop market was dominated by Nintendo and its device "Game Boy" in 1989. But this success has brought new competitors in this segment. Japan's Sony launched in March 2004 its portable video game console "PSP (PlayStation Portable) that uses a new disc format (UMD), which triples the capacity of traditional CD-ROM.
For its part, the Finnish Nokia entered the market in October 2004 with the launch of its phone-portable console "N-Gage." Nintendo is not left behind and in 2003 introduced its latest console, "Game Boy Advance SP," then launched their latest revolutionary portable due to its touchscreen, the "Nintendo DS" in 2004. In 2005, launches the third and final redesign of Game Boy Advance and the last of the historic range Game Boy, Game Boy Micro.
The great growth opportunities in the industry in the entertainment industry come from the Internet. In November 1999, Electronic Arts paid U.S. $ 81 million to sign a 5-year alliance with America Online Inc.
Electronic Arts (EA) will provide online games and interactive entertainment to subscribers of AOL. EA has partnered with America Online (AOL) because they are the leading ISP and has the largest subscriber base.
In addition, the partnership with Electronic Arts gives an immediate advantage in the highly competitive entertainment market. What comes in the next few years is on the cell phone video games and PDAs.
In addition, Nintendo has a web browser for Nintendo DS, as well as for Wii, which can download video games, namely weather, news, etc.
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