Talk:History of video games

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[edit] Too much focus on consoles?

It'd seem the article completely ignores computer games on and around the second half. This is supposed to be history of video games, not history of console video games. --Shadow86 (talk) 00:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Thats true, but if you read the entire article, you can see that he/she is geared more towards consoles, not because they are better, but becasue there is more to cover at the moment on console games. PCs do have a lot of selections and come out with a good number of games, but other thatn landmark titles such as World of Warcraft, Crysis, WCIII and other games such as Half Life, there really isnt anything that the console playing gamer will recognize immeditely upon reading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.104.146.56 (talk • contribs)
Well, there's things like Games For Windows, and PC gaming hardware. Progress on nVidia's GeForce and ATI's Radeon graphics card ranges could go in. -- Sabre (talk) 20:04, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
And the flop that is DirectX 10. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 16:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Whoa, I can't agree more. For example, just try looking for Doom. It's surely one of the largest landmarks in PC-gaming history, not least because of its move beyond the painter's algorithm. There is also no mention of Half-Life as anything but the technological basis of Counterstrike. Admittedly, other genres (notably RTS's) are better covered. I agree that recent PC-gaming technology is ignored. There is, for example, no mention of the words "pixel shader".

I too wouldn't be so surprised if this were the article on History of console games, but I was redirected here from History of computer games. I feel there might be merit in separating the two, since their histories have been separate and, in my (perhaps limited) experience, their fan bases are quite separate. Just a suggestion though... Warrickball (talk) 17:49, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not think it is fair to say that computer game and console game history are not intricately related. In the United States post-crash, it is true that for over a decade the paths of action-oriented console games and strategy/simulation-oriented computer games diverged as an older hobbyist crowd embraced computers and a yougner crowd embraced NES, SNES, and Genesis, but this ignores the world-wide context. In Europe, computer game players trended younger than their U.S. counterparts, and if you look at the popular games of the 1980s on the Spectrum you will find arcade conversions, shooters, and arcade adventures more like the console games found elsewhere. In Japan, it is impossible to ignore the correlation between computer and console games because Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy would not have existed without computer RPGs like Black Onyx, Ultima, and Wizardry. Even in the United States the boundries get murky when you consider EA, a successful computer game company that grew huge in consoles, or Activision, a console company that saved itself in the face of the crash by moving to computers and later came back to consoles.
This argument really fails, however, when you look at the last decade of video game history. The FPS has gradually moved from the PC to the console with games like Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Halo, and I see no way one could discuss the history of those games without first talking about DOOM, Quake, and Half-Life. Heck, even contemporary FPS games that appear in both forums like BioShock do much better on consoles than on PCs, where traditional gaming has been on the wane in the United States as MMORPGs and other products garner more attention. The computer RPG has basically shifted to the console market as well with companies like BioWare and Bethesda that began with innovative RPG products on the PC (Baldur's Gate, Morrowind) debuting and optimizing their current RPG products on Xbox or 360 (Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Oblivion). In short, the history of computer games and other video game media are closely linked and should be discussed as a single unit. I agree totally that the current attention paid to computer gaming in this article is insufficient, but hey, no one is stopping any of you from doing some editing to change that fact. I see no sense in going to talk to complain about something you can just fix yourself. Indrian (talk) 20:32, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Advance of 3d gaming

Needs to be researched and added to the article. In 1992, Wolfenstein 3D and Ultima Underworld were full pseudo-three dimensional first person games. In 1994 System Shock 1, a fully polygonal game (with sprite-based enemies) was released, and Descent, which is widely known and remembered as "one of the first" 100% polygonal 3d games, was released. Console gaming was introduced to 3d games with Tomb Raider and Mario 64 as the two most iconic titles in 1996. 71.126.104.9 (talk) 20:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 8th generation and the Pandora console?

Which generation does the upcoming Pandora console belong to? Out of laziness you could say that the 7th generation isn't over at all, but when you look at it, 7th generation handhelds (GP2X, DS and PSP) all came out in 2004, as the Pandora is bound to come out in summer 2008, 4 years later, when a generation is easily considered to be roughly 5 years (and the Xbox 360 came out exactly 4 years and 1 week after the Xbox), and also considered its vast technical superiority (a developer has reported running the console stably at 900 MHz, which is a few times more than the PSP could, also it has a 800x480 screen which is 3 times the PSP's 480x272 screen resolution), sounds like you just can't put it in the same category as the DS, GP2X or PSP. Besides a generation doesn't have to end for another one to begin.

So, is the Pandora the first 8th generation console to (soon) be, and shall 2008 be marked as the beginning of this generation? --89.127.175.78 (talk) 11:20, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the entire concept of catagorizing hardware into arbitrary generations is meaningless in the first place..Asher196 (talk) 13:25, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes another "open source" console that has yet to come out (anybody remember the Phantom?) doesn't belong in the article. Wikipedia has clear policies on advertising, and frankly I'm surprised the entire Pandora article hasn't been put up for deletion yet. Date of release has only a small part to do with a "generation", that's usually decided by a combination of technology, chief competitor, and date. Likewise, with concrete references by gaming publications and the industry. I.E., the Dreamcast, Xbox, GameCube and PS2 are all the same generation because of those three standards. PS3, Wii, Xbox360 are the next. A yet to be released hand held with no actual market presence has nothing to offer except a brief mention in the current generation. You have to wait until it actually hits the market and establishes a presence in the market to get reviews calling it a "next gen" product. Everybody calls their own product "next generation" when they're first coming out, that's part of marketing. If it truly represents a beginning of a next generation, it'll be defined as such by reliable third party sources after it hits the market. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 19:53, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Sounds very reasonable --89.127.175.78 (talk) 19:57, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. BTW - I've called for a semi-protect on main article page because of the edit warring from the other anonymous ip's. That basically temporarily blocks all anonymous ip's from editing the page for a specific length of time. If you want to contribute to the page during that time, you have to register for an account here. And I'd strongly recommend it regardless of that, if you plan on sticking around and contributing to other articles as well. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 20:07, 15 May 2008 (UTC)