The first mass produced arcade video game, Computer Space, is released.
The Magnavox Odyssey developed by Ralph Baer is introduced as the world’s first home video game console.
Atari releases the first cartridge-based gaming system – the wildly successful 2600.
Nintendo revolutionizes the market with its new console – the NES. Super Mario Bros. comes packed in.
Nintendo goes to market with the Game Boy® handheld gaming device.
The Super Nintendo is released to compete with the Sega Genesis. The two companies fiercely battle throughout the early 1990s for market share.
Sony introduces the PlayStation® in the United States.
Sega introduces the Dreamcast, the first out-of-the-box, Internet-ready home console.
Sony releases the PS2, the best-selling console of all time with more than 150 million consoles sold.
Microsoft® unveils the Xbox®, its first entry into the gaming console market.
The Nintendo Wii delivers a wireless controller that detects movement in 3-D.
Apple® introduces the iPhone® and, within a year, the App Store surfaces. Users enjoy instant access to downloadable games at the touch of their screens.
Microsoft brings out Kinect™, offering players the ability to control and interact with the Xbox 360® through a natural user interface of gestures and spoken commands.
Nintendo releases the 3DS, the first portable gaming device to use a built in 3-D screen that does not require glasses.
Here is a revealing list of industry facts, courtesy of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA):
- Consumers spent $25.1 billion on video games, hardware, and accessories in 2010.
- Purchases of digital content accounted for 24 percent of game sales in 2010, generating $5.9 billion in revenue.
- Seventy-two percent of American households play computer or video games.
- The average game player is 37 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.
- The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 41 years old.
- Forty-two percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (37 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (13 percent).
- In 2011, 29 percent of Americans over the age of 50 played video games, an increase from 9 percent in 1999.
- Fifty-five percent of gamers play games on their phones or handheld devices.
- Seventy-six percent of all games sold in 2010 were rated "E" for Everyone, "T" for Teen, or "E10+" for Everyone 10+. For more information on game ratings, please see www.esrb.org.
- Parents are present when games are purchased or rented 90 percent of the time.
Source: Entertainment Software Association
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is the U.S. association exclusively dedicated to serving the business and public affairs needs of companies that publish computer and video for video game consoles, personal computers, and the Internet.
Link: http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp
Garrick Goh is a service parts engineer at Subaru of America, Inc. He’s been a gamer since he was three years old.
It’s a social thing. Even as my friends and I enter our mid-30s, we still compare notes on the fastest way around various racetracks around the world and discuss modifications to our online cars like we do our real cars. On the rare occasion that we all have simultaneous downtime, we’ll meet up at a track online. Also, it’s a fun way to relax after a hard day at the office.
It provides an escape into another realm. Not that the real world is something that needs to be escaped from, but the world of gaming helps provide new insight – a virtual recharge on perspective, if you will.
As soon as I saw the job posting for the Performance Parts Engineering Manager. I had been working in product development while modifying and racing Subaru vehicles on the weekends. It was like mixing my hobby with my job. I knew I had to work there.
Growing up in Los Angeles exposed me to some serious car culture. But Subaru was never on my radar, as the abundance of good weather caused me to gravitate toward rear-wheel drive sports cars.
However, college took me to Ithaca, New York, a traditional Subaru haven. That’s also around the time when Gran Turismo was released for the original Sony Playstation. Until then, I did not realize you could get a 276-horsepower version of a Cornell professor’s Subaru Impreza … let alone a yellow one, with a huge wing and gold wheels.
I bought my own bespoilered Subaru Impreza 2.5RS five years later. Little did I know it was to be the first of many.