| History Of Video Games (sixth Generation Era) |
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VIDEO GAME CONSOLES PlayStation 2 dominated sales, with over 100 million units shipped to retailers Xbox was a distant second, with 22 million units [http://www.microsoft.com/msft/ar05/downloads/MS_2005_AR.doc , according to the latest available official figures, and Nintendo was third with 20.61 million GameCubes sold [http://www.nintendo.com/corp/report/3Q06EarningsRelease.pdf]. The Sega Dreamcast is thought to have sold roughly 10 million consoles despite its shorter lifetime. Number of bits Bit ratings for consoles largely fell by the wayside after the 32-bit Era . The number of “bits” cited in console names referred to the CPU Word Size , but there was little to be gained from increasing the word size much beyond 32-bits; performance depended on other factors, such as Processor speed, Graphics Processor speed, Bandwidth , and Memory size. The Sega Dreamcast , the first of the “ 128-bit ” consoles, has a Dual-issue 32-bit CPU core, 64-bit GPU , and 64-bit data bus although the geometry sub-processor GPU can perform internal math on 128-bit words. One of the PlayStation 2 's many processors is known as the “128-bit Emotion Engine ” but has a dual-issue 64-bit core; the graphics synthesizer has a 2560-bit DRAM bus. The Nintendo GameCube is more powerful than the PS2, with only a single 64-bit CPU core. The Microsoft Xbox , the most powerful of the sixth-generation era consoles, uses a 32-bit CPU and 256-bit GPU, a configuration that is becoming standard in many desktop computers. The importance of the number of Bit s in the modern console gaming market has thus decreased due to the use of components that process data in varying word sizes. It is also important to note that most game companies sell on “''n''-bit talk” to over-emphasize the hardware capabilities of their system. The Sega Dreamcast and the PlayStation 2 were the last systems to use the term “128-bit” in their Marketing to describe their capability. VIDEO GAME HANDHELDS During the sixth generation era, the Handheld Game Console market exploded, with the introduction of new devices from many different manufacturers. Nintendo maintained their large market share of the handheld market with the release in 2001 of the highly upgraded Game Boy called the Game Boy Advance . Two redesigns of this system followed. The first, the Game Boy Advance SP in 2003 and the second, the Game Boy Micro in 2005 . Also introduced was the Neo Geo Pocket Color in 1998 and Bandai 's WonderSwan Color launched in Japan in 1999 . Notably, Korean company GamePark introduced their GP32 handheld in 2001, and with it came the dawn of open-source handheld consoles. A major new addition to the market was the trend for corporations to include a large number of "non-gaming" features into their handhelds. Everything from Cell Phone s, MP3 Players , portable Movie players, to PDA -like features began to pop up on a regular basis during this generation. The first of these was Nokia 's N-Gage , which was released in 2003 and doubled primarily as a mobile phone. It subsequently went through a redesign in 2004 and was renamed the N-Gage QD . A second handheld, the Zodiac from Tapwave was released in 2004 and was based on the PalmOS ; it added numerous features typically found in PDAs. With more and more PDAs arriving during the previous generation, the difference between consumer electronics and traditional computing began to blur and cheap console technology grew from that blur. It was said of PDAs that they are "the computers of handheld gaming" because of their multi-purpose capabilities and the increasingly powerful computer hardware that resided within them—the capability existed to move gaming beyond the last generation's 16-bit limitations. However, PDAs were still geared towards the typical buisnessman, and lacked new, affordable software franchises to compete with dedicated handheld gaming consoles. With more and more handhelds arriving towards the end of this generation, it gets harder to locate exactly where the sixth generation ends and where the new Seventh Generation begins. It is believed that the seventh generation began in late 2004 with the introduction of Nintendo 's DS and Sony 's PlayStation Portable . VIDEO GAMES Four-horse race Major developers such as Electronic Arts and Activision for the most part released games covering the PC , Xbox , PlayStation 2 , Dreamcast , and GameCube . Controversies See Also: Video game controversy The sixth generation era was believed by some to be a dark age for video game players in terms of controversy. This era became the most controversial, with extensive criticism of "objectionable" content such as sex, crime, violence, profanity, drug use, and social propaganda as well as topics of debate such as religion, politics, feminism, and economics. However, many people will note that controversies are hardly unique to the sixth generation, and go back at least as far as the early '90s with '' Wolfenstein 3D '', '' Doom '', '' Mortal Kombat '', and '' Night Trap ''. The earliest occurrences of such public outcry dated, in fact, as far back as the '70s, with the games '' Death Race '' and '' Custer's Revenge ''. The sixth generation was notable because it spurred lawmakers into taking action against the video game industry. The most famous was the '' was briefly given an adult rating and banned from stores over the availability of an abandoned sex mini-game using the Hot Coffee Mod . The sixth generation also covered the '', which prior to its release depicted the destruction of the Statue Of Liberty and a good portion of Manhattan . Similarly, several undisclosed modifications were made in ''Grand Theft Auto III'', most notably the change of the police cars' colour scheme (the old scheme resembled that of NYPD 's older blue and white design). Emulation and retro gaming See Also: Console emulator Due to the increased usage of Emulator s and the increasing ease of finding ROM Image s of previous Video Game Console s, most notably the Nintendo Entertainment System , the Super Nintendo Entertainment System , the Sega Master System , and the Sega Genesis , the sixth generation of consoles coincided with the rise of console emulation. It was also a time when an increasing number of ''. Also, an increasing number of Third-party Developer s released Anthology collection games such as Midway Games , Capcom , Namco , Atari , and Sega , even though Atari and Sega both released new, enhanced versions of their retro titles. Additionally, this is also a time when certain video games or video game series that were originally confined to Japan came to North America and Europe . SIXTH GENERATION CONSOLES Video Game Consoles released during the sixth generation era include: |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Sega_Dreamcast" class="copylinks">Sega Dreamcast <br>''1998 - Present: Japan 1999 - 2002: US, Europe'' |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Nintendo_GameCube" class="copylinks">Nintendo GameCube <br>''2001 - Present'' |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Xbox" class="copylinks">Microsoft Xbox <br>''2001 - 2005'' |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Neo_Geo_Pocket_Color" class="copylinks">Neo Geo Pocket Color <br>''1998 &ndash 2003'' |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/WonderSwan_Color" class="copylinks">Bandai WonderSwan Color <br>''2000 &ndash 2003'' |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Game_Boy_Advance" class="copylinks">Nintendo Game Boy Advance <br>''2001 &ndash 2003'' |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/GP32" class="copylinks">GP32 <br />''2001–2005'' |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Game_Boy_Advance_SP" class="copylinks">Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP <br>''2003 &ndash Present'' |
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Image:Nokia N-Gagejpg
| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/N-Gage" class="copylinks">Nokia N-Gage <br>''2003 &ndash 2004'' |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/N-Gage" class="copylinks">Nokia N-Gage QD <br>''2004'' |
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| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Game_Boy_Micro" class="copylinks">Game Boy Micro <br>''2005 &ndash Present'' |
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