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"Console wars" is a term used to refer to periods of intense competition for market share between video game console manufacturers. The winners of these "wars" may be debated based on different standards: market penetration and financial success, or the fierce loyalty and numbers of the fans of the system's games. The term itself does not strictly denote a clear winner in each case, though. Console wars generally do decide if a manufacturer continues in or abandons the industry.
Due to different manufacturers releasing consoles at different times, the wars described below are not exact definitions and do not necessarily have firm beginning and ending dates. Also, these wars had different years and combatants on different continents, since traditionally the four main markets—Europe, Japan, Australia and North America—have been treated as separate entities, with machines and games released at different times or even completely different games being released. This situation is not quite so apparent today; however, it is still there, particularly with regards to Japan vìs-a-vìs the other three markets.
In the mid-1980s, home computers from various manufacturers were used primarily for gaming purposes by consumers worldwide (in the absence of comparable consoles following the video game crash) and are included here as well.
In North America, the devotees of each system are referred to as fans or by linking to the platform name, as in PS2 owners. In the United Kingdom the term fanboy originated during the 1980s during console wars between many home computer systems, particularly the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. However, the two terms have been used by people of the other countries. For example, the term fanboy is used quite often on US-based Video Game message boards. By any name, fanboys will tend to lock themselves into buying and using one console, one brand, or one company's line of console over the others. Recently, such fanboys have more often than not aggressively denounced competing consoles, and are usually hostile to fans of competing consoles.
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The general concept of the console wars is to prove the fact that one console is better than the other.
This phenomenon is unusual in the world of consumables; there are, for example, hardly any "stereo system wars", where people care about what kind of stereo system others purchase. The only explanation usually put forth as to why there are console wars amongst gamers is based on the idea that the more popular a console is, the more games will eventually be developed for it. This is the positive network effect and is the underlying reason for a related phenomenon, the computer operating system OS Wars.
What makes these "fan wars" even more fierce is that often, the major controversies and debates occur before any of the systems are even released, based on what historically have often been dubious specifications released by the manufacturers.
In North America in the late 1970s and early 1980s (peaking between 1980 and 1984) an early sales battle between three companies which bears quite a resemblance to later console wars developed. The pyrrhic outcome and virtual bankruptcy of all the major combatants set the stage for Japanese dominance of video game console manufacturing by eliminating competition and discouraging American and European investment. When Nintendo brought console gaming back to North America in 1985, the discredited market segment held no American-based competition.
The Atari Video Computer System (VCS) was introduced in 1977 at a price point of US$199, after two years of research and $100 million in investment. Its name was changed to the Atari 2600 in 1982 when Atari introduced the "next generation" Atari 5200. By 1980, sales were doubling annually and three million homes had Atari consoles.
Seeing this success, toy company Mattel began work in 1978 on its own console, the Intellivision, which debuted in 1980 with a price tag of $299 and a pack-in game, Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack. The system was an immediate success. Though not the first system to challenge Atari (systems from Fairchild Semiconductor, Bally, and Magnavox were already on the market), it was the first to pose a serious threat to Atari's dominance. A series of Intellivision TV ads featuring Women In Bikini's mercilessly attacked the Atari VCS's lesser capabilities with side-by-side game comparisons. Nevertheless, Atari held exclusive rights to most of the popular arcade game conversions of the day, and used this key segment to support its older hardware in the market.
This game advantage and the difference in price between the machines meant that each year Atari sold more units than Intellivision, lengthening its lead despite inferior graphics. This need for price parity has influenced every console war in the quarter century since Atari and Intellivision faced off.
The ColecoVision was introduced by Coleco in 1982 and sold 500,000 units its first year, further dividing the marketplace. It was priced similarly to the Intellivision and had slightly greater technical power, and Coleco licensed several major arcade games for its system as well.
This "first console war" ended with the video game crash of 1983, when huge oversupplies of games and competition from personal computers caused game prices to drop precipitously.[1]
Although these wars are grouped under one category here, there were many different minor wars between Home computer brands that ran from the mid 80s until the mid 90s. All of the computers involved had many upgraded versions released over their lifetimes, which usually included increased RAM and improved CPUs, but rarely a reduction in size due to their integrated keyboards. These wars mainly took place in the United Kingdom, which during the late 80s was the centre of the world computer game industry, having been unaffected by the crash that took place in Japan and the US. This period is also renowned for being the time of the 'bedroom programmer', and many companies formed by such people have lasted until the current day.
In the UK, the Atari vs. Intellivision war never reached the major scope and impact that it did in North America. Instead, the Spectrum vs. Commodore wars of the mid 1980s were the true originator of the console wars. This was due to the start of single format computer game magazines and the far greater entry into mainstream youth culture of these computers than the previous consoles. The Commodore 64 was generally far more technically advanced than the Spectrum, but it usually sold for double the price.
A parallel micro war raged in the UK, between the preserved games oriented Spectrum & C64 micros with the educationally marketed and more expensive Acorn (BBC micro) and Apple offerings. On unit sales a war the more competitively priced Spectrum won, and Apple lost. Though Acorn's BBC machines failed to win the early 80's sales war their tie in with the BBC’s "The Computer Programme" and the associated Government Computer literacy / Computer for schools programs ensured steady sales post the bursting of the home micro bubble. A fair proportion of the 1.5m[2] 8-bit BBC micros were in daily use, in UK schools, into the 90’s.
This fight for market dominance was portrayed in the BBC 4 drama Micro Men”.
The Amiga vs. Atari ST wars took place in the late 1980s. In Britain and France where ST was relatively stronger compared to other areas the war lasted well into the early 1990s. Eventually Amiga clearly outsold ST even in Britain. The Amiga had the better graphics and sound, and an in-built double-sided floppy disk drive. The ST was cheaper and had built-in MIDI ports. Many early games were developed for the ST and simply ported to the Amiga, using the same code and graphics but remaking the music and sound.
In what is known as the "8-bit era", the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) came out on top in North America and Japan (where it was known as the Nintendo Famicom), partially due to its earlier release, but mostly because Nintendo banned developers from releasing their games on other systems if their games were released on the NES.[3] This put a damper on third party support for the Master System and the rest of Nintendo's competition. In Europe and Brazil, the Master System did much better than in any other territory.
Nintendo of Japan continued to repair Famicom systems until October 31, 2007, attributing the decision to discontinue support to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts.[4][5][6]
In the handheld wars, Nintendo's Game Boy came out well on top and far outlived the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx, becoming one of the most successful consoles of all time. The Game Boy's victory is generally attributed to its greater battery life, cheaper price tag, and wider third party support over the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx, despite the Game Gear and Lynx's having color screens. However, Nintendo continued to research into improving the screen and first released the Game Boy Pocket, with a true black-and-white screen. Later, Nintendo created the Game Boy Color, with near-total backward compatibility.
The Game Boy had many ports of games from popular Nintendo franchises. It was also launched with the extraordinarily popular puzzle game Tetris as a pack-in.
Many other companies attempted to get in on the handheld market and they could also be added into this category. These included the Neo Geo Pocket and the WonderSwan (though the latter was in Japan only).
The "16-bit era" is mostly known for the rivalry between the Mega Drive/Genesis (known as the Sega Genesis in North America due to trademark reasons) and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (known as the Super Famicom in Japan). The Sega Mega Drive came out about two and a half years earlier than the SNES; however, its first few years were not very successful and it was not until the release of Sonic the Hedgehog that it started to sell well.[13] A Sony focus group found that teenage boys would not admit to owning a Super NES rather than a Genesis.[14] Neither console could maintain a definitive lead in market share for several years.
In early 1991, Sega announced the Mega-CD for release in Japan in late 1991 and in North America (as the Sega CD) in 1992. While this add-on did contain a faster CPU, more memory and some enhanced graphics capabilities over the Mega Drive itself, the main focus of the device was to expand the size of games: cartridges of the day typically contained 8 to 16 megabits of data, while a CD-ROM would hold 640 megabytes (5120 megabits). While it became known for several games, including Sonic CD and Night Trap, the expansion only sold 6 million units worldwide.[15]
At June 1994's Consumer Electronics Show, Sega presented the 32X as the "poor man's entry into 'next generation' games."[16] Although some blame Sega of America for developing this failure,[15] the 32X was originally conceived as an entirely new console by Sega of Japan.[17] Sega of America R&D head Joe Miller convinced Sega of Japan to strengthen the console and convert it into an add-on to the existing Genesis, but they would not make it a competitor to the forthcoming Sega Saturn. Although this add-on contained two 32-bit CPU chips and a 3D graphics processor, it failed to attract either developers or consumers as the superior Saturn had already been announced for release the next year. Originally released at US$159, Sega dropped the price to $99 in only a few months and ultimately cleared the remaining inventory at $19.95;[17] at least 600,000 units were sold.[18]
Also, NEC and Hudson Software entered the market with their PC Engine/Turbografx-16, another 16 bit system that was made to challenge Nintendo and Sega. Hudson, attempting to reach the same level of popularity as the SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis, invented their own mascot to stand beside Mario and Sonic named Bonk the Caveman. While NEC did not have as big a splash in the market as Nintendo and Sega, they still sold more copies than expected for an all-new hardware system. The PC Engine/Turbografx-16 made things even harder for Sega in Japan. The Mega Drive remained a distant third in Japan behind Nintendo's Super Famicom and NEC's PC Engine throughout the 16-bit era.[19]
In the "32-bit era," the Sega Saturn was released first and despite success in Japanese markets, it ultimately lacked in sufficient third party support. Sega's decision to use dual processors has been roundly criticized, and some believe the second CPU was added as a knee-jerk reaction to the PlayStation's specifications. It has been said that only Sega's first-party developers were ever able to utilize the second CPU effectively. The Sega Saturn was the more difficult console to program for with some titles being dropped during the development process (STI's Sonic X-treme for example), and therefore the 3-D graphics on its third party games often lacked the luster of the PlayStation or Nintendo 64 (N64), a severe disadvantage at the dawn of 3-D games on home consoles.
Sega was also hurt by the plan to have a surprise four month early US launch of their console.[26] This head start failed for several reasons. One of the major reasons being there were few software titles ready. The Sega Saturn was also US$100 more expensive than the PlayStation at its launch, and only available at four retailers.
Sony took an early advantage by initiating an expensive ad campaign and appealing to an older demographic who had grown up playing video games. The PlayStation was positioned as a necessity alongside the TV and VCR. The securing of this demographic is widely credited as the key to the system's success. Sega and particularly Nintendo's offerings were characterized as appealing more to children (both companies, for instance, featured mascots that appeared in Saturday morning cartoons). With Sony's greater hardware sales came greater third party support; ultimately the PlayStation won the era virtually unopposed. Sony carried this momentum over into the release of the PlayStation 2. The Saturn was discontinued in 1998, as Sega again tried to gain a head start over Sony with the Dreamcast.
Although this era is known as the "32-bit era," the 64-bit Nintendo 64 was released later than the other two consoles with which it was originally meant to compete directly. By the time of its release, Sony had already established their dominance and the Saturn was struggling to keep momentum. Its use of cartridge media rather than compact discs alienated developers and publishers due to the space limits and the relatively high cost involved (compare US$3.50 for an N64 cartridge to 35¢ for a PS1 disc), though the Nintendo 64 had much faster load times because of its cartridge media. Still, Nintendo managed to carve out a profitable niche in this era selling over 30 million consoles.
This era began with the launch of the Dreamcast in November 1998 in Japan and September 1999 in the U.S. The impending and much-hyped PlayStation 2 competed with the Sega Dreamcast before it was even released, which combined with Sega's damaged reputation from the Sega Saturn and Sega 32X's under performances, limited its adoption despite initial success. The release of the anticipated PlayStation 2 in March 2000 in Japan, and October 2000 in the U.S. meant that the Dreamcast no longer enjoyed its status as the sole next-generation console. The brand Sony had established with the original PlayStation was a major factor in their victory, both in terms of securing a consumer base and attracting third party developers; the gradual increase in one tending to reinforce the other. The PlayStation 2 was able to play DVDs and was backwards-compatible with PlayStation games, which many say helped the former's sales. Any user considering buying a DVD player or PlayStation could view the PlayStation 2 as a cost-effective alternative, and the system effectively had a back catalog available before it even went on sale. The Dreamcast competed with the PS2 for several months, however Sega's financial troubles eventually began to show themselves, and the Dreamcast was discontinued by the time the console war properly began. From then on Sega was officially out of the competition when it announced that they were no longer making consoles.
The Xbox, despite the formidable financial backing of Microsoft failed to significantly threaten the PlayStation 2's place as market leader, but has attracted a sizable fanbase in the United States and Europe and has become a recognizable brand amongst the mainstream. In Japan, its sales were far poorer.[citation needed] A niche fanbase exists, particularly as the online services for the console, Xbox Live, offers more to users than the PS2's non-centralized online system and the Nintendo GameCube's near total lack of online games, albeit at a price to the Xbox owners in the form of subsciption fees.
Nintendo struggled with their own brand image, particularly the family-friendly one cultivated during the 1990s. The Nintendo GameCube's low price point kept it competitive against the Xbox and PlayStation 2.
All three consoles have had major shortages both at their launches and directly afterwards, with the Xbox 360's continuing for months after release and Wii's still continuing after two holiday seasons; the PlayStation 3 saw high demand for its first week of release, but it did not continue, being in stock at most major retailers shortly after release.
This new generation for the first time has all of the major consoles focusing on online integration and wireless controllers. Initially only the Wii was 100% backward compatible with its previous counterpart, the Nintendo GameCube, while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 only offered partial support. The firmware update that first came with Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction allowed all PS3 revisions to have the entire PS1/PS2 library in playable condition. The PS3's built-in Emotion Engine PS2 emulation solution used on previous North American consoles has been taken out of the European release and is achieved through less-perfect but cheaper software emulation of the Emotion Engine CPU (but still needed the PS2's Graphics Synthesizer GPU); however, the 40 GB PS3 SKU has taken out PS2 backward compatibility altogether, to help lower prices. The Xbox 360 uses software emulation for backward compatibility via game-specific patches automatically downloaded from Xbox Live or downloaded and burned to a CD or DVD from the Xbox website.[29] Some titles are now available for download via Xbox live, completely eliminating the need for the original Xbox disc. The Wii remains fully backward compatible with the Nintendo GameCube, also offering the Virtual Console service, which provides the ability to emulate various older gaming platforms (NES, SNES, N64, Arcade, Commodore 64, NEOGEO, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System and TurboGrafx 16); each game can be purchased on the Wii Shop Channel and saved to the console's internal memory or an SD card.
Based on figures from Famitsu/Enterbrain, as of 17 December 2009:[32]
Based on figures from GfK Chart-Track, as of 3 January 2009:[34]
Based on figures from the NPD Group, as of 1 November 2008:[35]
Although Nintendo and Sony originally denied competing with each other with their handheld products, it was widely believed that a new handheld war had begun with the releases of the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable (PSP) in late 2004 and early 2005, respectively (the Nintendo DS Lite, a smaller and sleeker version of the Nintendo DS, was released in late 2006). As of the 2006 E3 press conference, however, Nintendo attacked Sony's handheld console, announcing that the Nintendo DS had been outselling the PSP. This could be taken as recognition of a new handheld war.
The Nintendo DS's power is comparable to that of Nintendo 64. It is notable in its use of two screens, one of them being a touch screen. It also sports a microphone input. It has shown considerable early success, particularly in branching out from the usual core demographic of video game players due to the intuitiveness of the touch screen control system. The DS is the less expensive of the two systems, and has longer battery life. The DS is backward compatible with Game Boy Advance games, but not with games for prior Game Boy systems. The GBA slot is also used for DS Option Paks.
Sony's PSP is more powerful than the Nintendo DS, with graphical power comparable to being in between the original PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. It is advertised as a portable multimedia system, as well as a handheld console (much in the same way as the PS2). Numerous movies have been released on the PSP's UMD format, and the system can play video and audio from the Memory Stick PRO DUO port. The PSP also supports a large high-resolution display, an analog stick, as well as standard controller buttons. Other features include the ability to make internet phone calls using Skype,[36] and a Global Positioning System.[37]
Both the DS and PSP support Wi-Fi networking, and have free online systems. The PSP has had online games since its launch in December 2004 in Japan, and the DS has had online games since mid-November 2005. Nintendo has also worked with McDonald's and Hilton Hotels to set up Wi-Fi access points across the USA, Europe and Australia.
Based on figures from Famitsu/Enterbrain, as of 28 December 2008:[32][33]
Based on figures from GfK Chart-Track, as of 3 January 2009:[34]
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