1. History of gaming
by Ellis stock.

2. 1970
• Although the first computer games appeared in the
1950s,they were based around vector
displays, not analog video. It was not until 1972
that Magnavox released the first home video game
console which could be connected to a TV set-the
Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph H. Baer.
The Odyssey was initially only moderately
successful, and it was not until Atari's arcade
game Pong popularized video games, that the
public began to take more notice of the emerging
industry. By the autumn of 1975
Magnavox, bowing to the popularity of
Pong, cancelled the Odyssey and released a
scaled down version that played only Pong and
hockey, the Odyssey 100

3. 1980
• Throughout the early 1980s, other companies
released video game consoles of their own. Many
of the video game systems were technically
superior to the Atari 2600, and marketed as
improvements over the Atari 2600. However, Atari
dominated the console market in the early 1980 In
1983, the video game business suffered a much
more severe crash. A flood of consoles, low quality
video games by smaller companies (especially for
the 2600), industry leader Atari hyping games
such as E.T. and an 2600 Pac-man that were
poorly received, and a growing number of home
computer users caused consumers and retailers to
lose faith and interest in video game consoles

4. 1990
• Sega and Nintendo would be discontinued in 1996.
• Nintendo released games like Donkey Kong
Country that could display a wide range of tones
(something common in fifth-generation games) by
limiting the number of hues onscreen, and games
like Star Fox that used an extra chip inside of the
cartridge to display polygon graphics.

5. 2000
• Sony's PlayStation 2 was released in North America
on October 26, 2000 as the follow-up to its highly
successful PlayStation, and was also the first home
game console to be able to play DVDs. As was
done with the original PlayStation in 2000, Sony
redesigned the console in 2004 into a smaller
version.

6. 2001
• Microsoft's Xbox, released on November 15, 2001 in North
America, was the company's first video game console. The
first console to employ a hard drive right out of the box to
save games, and had similar hardware specifications to a
low-end desktop computer at the time of its release. Though
criticized for its bulky size, which was easily twice that of the
competition, as well as for the awkwardness of the original
controller that shipped with it, it eventually gained popularity
due in part to the success of the Halo franchise. The Xbox
was the first console to include an Ethernet port and offered
high speed online gaming through the Xbox LIVE service.

7. 2005
• Microsoft kicked off the seventh generation with the
release of the Xbox 360 released on November
22, 2005 in the United States. It featured market
leading processing power until the Sony PlayStation
3 release, one year later. While the original Xbox
360 "Core" did not include an internal HDD, most
Xbox 360 models since have included at least the
option to have one.