Like humanity itself, video games have come an awfully long way in a relatively short amount of time. What started as little more than a few dots on a screen has grown into one of the most lucrative industries around, withvideo games now generating hundreds of billions of dollarseach and every year. A lot of this growth was spearheaded by the rise in popularity of home consoles, which continue to push the boundaries of what many had thought possible even today.
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Each new console generation has brought with it another huge leap in performance, allowing for increasingly complex and better-looking games. Most have been fiercely contended, particularly during the nineties and early two-thousands. These days, the console wars are fought mainly through acquisitions, with Microsoft and Sony preferring to buy up successful studios rather than having to come up with original ideas of their own. However, there are still plenty of strong feelings among fandoms when it comes to PlayStation vs Xbox and some of the equally memorable showdowns of days gone by.
A variety of factors will be taken into account when ranking each generation’s consoles, including total sales, the features that a console offered, and the quality of its game library.
1The First Generation of Home Consoles
The very firstcommercially available home consolewas the Magnavox Odyssey, which was only capable of displaying three square dots and a vertical line on the screen. It came bundled with overlays that players stuck to the front of their televisions, as well as dice, poker chips, and an assortment of other board game-like accessories.
Also released around this time were the Coleco Telstar and Atari’s Home Pong console. As the name suggests, the latter allowed players to enjoy a somewhat basic version ofPongwithout having to go to the arcade, while the former offered up a few different sports-themedPongclones. All three were pretty basic but marked the beginning of an incredible century-spanning journey that shows no signs of ending anytime soon.
2The Second Generation of Home Consoles
The Nintendo Entertainment System is often credited as being the console that brought gaming out of the arcades and into people’s homes, but it was far from the only one. In fact,it was the Atari 2600 that really got the ball rolling, selling around 30 million units between its initial release in 1977 and its eventual discontinuation around a decade and a half later.
By today’s standards, the 2600 was incredibly basic, but at the time, being able to playgames likePac-ManandSpace Invadersfrom the comfort of one’s own home was a real game-changer. The Odyssey 2, Intellivision, and ColecoVision did provide some competition for the 2600, but nowhere near enough to ever really threaten Atari’s position at the top of the pile. Of course, that would all change fairly soon.
3The Third Generation of Home Consoles
The third generation of video game consoles began withthe great video game crash of 1983, which, in short, was brought about by the market becoming oversaturated with substandard releases. Then came the Nintendo Entertainment System (or Famicom, in its native Japan): a game-changing piece of hardware that almost single-handedly dragged the industry back from the ledge, with a little help from an overall-wearing plumber by the name of Mario.
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The Sega Master System did help too, yet it lacked a true system seller. Granted, it would eventually get its own eight-bit version ofSonic the Hedgehogshortly after the game’s Genesis release, but by that point, many gamers had already moved on. Due in part to the company’s role in the aforementioned crash, Atari fared considerably worse than Sega, with its 7800 selling fewer than one million units throughoutthe console’s short life cycle.
4The Fourth Generation of Home Consoles
Following the sharp decline of Atari, the fourth generation of home consoles became a two-horse race, with the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo both vying for the top spot. The race was actually a lot closer than a lot of people like to think, with the Genesis finding success in several key markets thanks both to Sega’s aggressive marketing andthe Genesis' stellar lineup of games. However, it just wasn’t quite enough.
The SNES introduced the world to some ofthe best JRPGs ever made, helping to solidify the genre’s popularity in North America with the likes ofChrono TriggerandFinal Fantasy 6. It also served as the home of some of the best 2D installments of many of Nintendo’s biggest franchises, includingSuper Metroid,Super Mario World, andThe Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past; for which the Genesis just didn’t have an answer.
5The Fifth Generation of Home Consoles
The rivalry between Sega and Nintendo during the late eighties and early nineties was a fierce one, with the two companies pushing each other to all-new heights. Then, in 1994, a new challenger emerged from the shadows.Sony’s disc-based consoleallowed developers to store considerably more data than they could on cartridges, which led to a huge jump in quality right across the board and levels of detail that players could only have dreamt of up to that point.
Thoughthe N64 had some fantastic platformersand a handful of truly top-drawer first and second-party titles, the decision to stick with cartridges meant that many third-party titles never made it to the console, and those that did often had missing features or heavily compressed assets. By contrast, Sega’s decision to rush the Saturn out of the door and abandon all of its Genesis add-ons led to the company losing the confidence of many big third-party developers, which would ultimately seal the fate of both the Saturn and its successor.
6The Sixth Generation of Home Consoles
The sixth generation of home consoles featured four ofthe best video game consoles ever made, yet there can only really be one winner here. For all of its innovative features (which included online multiplayer and motion controls, to name but a few) and its excellent selection of games, the Dreamcast just wasn’t enough to make up for Sega’s many past mistakes. Likewise, though also quite brilliant in certain areas, the GameCube’s somewhat limited library led to it being Nintendo’s worst-selling home console up to this point in time.
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The sixth generation also saw the emergence of another new challenger, which came in the form of tech-giant Microsoft. The strong selection ofconsole-exclusive titles for the original Xboxand the system’s solid online connectivity helped it to sell a surprising amount of units in a relatively short space of time, but this was nothing when compared to the PlayStation 2. Sony’s little black box decimated the competition, with its fantastic library of games and its ability to play DVDs helping it to ship more than 155 million units, which was almost three times as many as the other three consoles combined.
7The Seventh Generation of Home Consoles
Releasing just four years on from the original Xbox, the Xbox 360 was the first of the seventh-generation consoles to hit shelves and was quick out of the blocks thanks to its excellent online services andits solid selection of games. Granted, the PS3 did eventually catch up and even overtook the 360 toward the end of the generation, but things were a lot closer than they were the last time around. Sony’s sixth-gen lead of more than 130 million units was cut to just a few million and would likely have been overturned entirely had the 360 just been able to crack the Japanese market.
It helped thatthe PS3 was incredibly expensive at launchand didn’t really have too many real system sellers right away. Things did eventually start to pick up in the years that followed, but the fact that two of the three best-selling PS3 games were released in the same year as the PS4 is a clear indicator of the console’s teething pains. Although it did manage to edge out the 360, the PS3 sold significantly fewer units than both of its predecessors and was comfortably beaten out by the Wii, which managed to appeal to both gamers and non-gamers alike thanks to its innovative (though, in the eyes of some, gimmicky) motion controls.
8The Eighth Generation of Home Consoles
Unlike the PS3, Sony’s eighth-gen console flew out of the traps. As a result, the PS4 sold more than twenty million units in its first year alone; a record that still stands to this day. These strong sales would continue throughout the console’s life cycle thanks to a fantastic selection of first-party exclusives, which would ultimately lead tothe PS4 outselling Microsoft’s Xbox One by around two to one worldwide. However, just like last time, it wasn’t just Microsoft that Sony had to worry about.
After the death of the Wii U, The Nintendo Switch was released in 2017; some three years on from the launch of the PS4 and around the same time as Sony and Microsoft’s mid-generation refresh. Interestingly, the Switch actually sold fewer units in its first year than the PS4 did due to supply shortages, but as soon as availability improved, the Switch began to sell like hotcakes. Its hybrid nature made it incredibly popular among people with busy lifestyles, while its many great first-party offerings are arguably just as enticing as any ofthe big PS4 exclusives.
