Interaction the Videogame Console
Martin Smith
DeVry University
Professor James Schneider
April 17, 2012
Introduction
Interaction of videogame console in the early stages of development started with a simple enormous brown box with several switches and attached controllers. As time progressed in the industry competition surfaced and the age of new pioneers in the gaming industry began. They utilized discoveries made from past companies, or competing ones to brighten the future of technology as we see today. The videogame consoles turned milestone recoveries in the industry into leading technologies that have changed gamers’ expectations of future innovations.
History of the Videogame Consoles
The first official video game console consisted of a brown wooden box with two attached controllers known as "Brown Box" invented by Ralph H. Baer. He was also known as "The Father of Video Games" developing the video game console, so that it could be hooked up with any television set. He created six simple games for this particular console Ping-Pong, tennis, handball, volleyball, chase games and a light-gun game (Bernstein, 1991). After seeing a demonstration of the “brown box” Magnavox bought the license and in 1972, Magnavox released the first ever official home video game console the Magnavox Odyssey (Poh., 2011). Although Magnavox was first to development a home game console Atari was dominating the arcade world and decided to create a home console which featured the game of pong.
Atari decided to compete with Magnavox by creating a home version of their popular arcade game “pong”. Atari and Magnavox continued to battle in creativity of the consoles, but after the release of Atari 2600 console in 1977, Atari proved once and for all they were the dominate creators of their time. The Atari 2600 was the first videogame console to offer the removable cartridge games rather than a preprogrammed game selection and with the idea of this new technology came more competitors in the field. Companies like Nintendo, Sega, Mattel and Coleco now began creating their version of the console videogame with this cartridge technology. In the 1980’s the cartridge video game consoles rivals continued with Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Mattel and Coleco. Nintendo and Sega continued to be competitive with their leading technology, but Mattel also introduced Intellivison which prompted Atari to redesign their current model of the time. Coleco Company ran into development issues, financial problems and later disappeared from the videogame console race (Poh., 2011) .
Accomplishments in Technology
As the controller from the first “brown box” was introduced there have been a few additions along the way with controller control. Dreamcast from Sega offered a manta-ray look to the controller although controllers before the Dreamcast seemed mostly to have the same type of basic layout. A long square box with two buttons and direction key on either the left or right side depended on the manufacturer. Another addition was the turbo button first introduced in Genesis/Super Nintendo era. This button is most effective while playing games that involve unlimited ammo and with the Dreamcast and Xbox, triggers become a trademark of these of consoles and there is no harm in keeping the other fingers free to operate the face buttons. With the changes in the controller there was also the birth of the laser in the console videogames.
In the first few years of 90’s, there was a storage shift from cartridges to compact discs. A laser beam had the ability to read small imperfections in a compact disk with this technology and with the increased space capacities allowed video gaming to move from 2D graphics to 3D graphics. With this new technology in storing data for videogames there was also competition as well. Sega Genesis for the most of the early part led the industry in the early 90’s until the PlayStation in (1994). Atari
