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Pong Released
One of the first widespread and well known video games, pong is released in 1972 by Atari. It was created by Allan Alcorn. It was released as an arcade game but borrowed heavily from a game on the home console, the Magnavox Oddyssey -
Atari 2600 Released
The first massively successful home game console, the Atari 2600 was released in 1977. It brought arcade games into the home. It was the first game console to have interchangeable games and use a joystick controller. -
Video Game Crash of 1983
The video game market crashed in 1983. This was due to over saturation of the market with low quality products. The game E.T. is widely accepted to have been one of the driving forces of the crash, being a huge commercial flop. -
Nintendo Entertainment System
The video game industry was almost singlehandedly saved from the 1983 crash by the NES. It brought new life to the industry and brought video games back into homes. It featured titles such as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda -
Emergence of Online Gaming
Online gaming burst onto the scenes in the 90s and early 2000s, with titles such as Halo 2, Quake and Counterstrike. For the first time, thousands of players could play with other players from around the globe. This new era of online gaming helped to grow the emerging genre of first person shooters -
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat signified a shift in the video game industry as a whole to more adult oriented and violent games. Advancements in graphics allowed for gory fighting scenes and violent 'fatalities' which helped the game become massively popular first in arcades, and then at home when it was released for gaming consoles. It also led to video games being placed on a rating system as many thought it was too violent and it was even banned or censored in some places. -
Doom is Released
One of the first games of the now massively popular genre of first person shooters, was Doom in 1993. It was developed by id Software for MS-DOS, the precursor to Microsoft's Windows OS, but later made it onto many other platforms. It inspired numerous "clones" and led to the explosion of the FPS genre as we know it today. -
Sony Platystation Released
In 1995, Sony burst onto the gaming scene with their new Playstation console. It proved to be massively successful despite competitors such as the N64 and Sega Dreamcast. It signified a new era in gaming and featured many popular titles such as Metal Gear, Gran Turismo, and Resident Evil -
Steam
Steam, a digital video game store created by Valve, went live in 2002. It changed PC gaming forever by allowing all transactions to be done digitally. This meant no more going to the store to buy physical copies of games. Users could now download them straight onto their hard drives. -
Emergence of Mobile Gaming
Mobile gaming became mainstream after Apple's release of the App store in 2008. Millions of new smartphone users provided a new frontier of potential customers for video game developers. Free to play games with micro transactions and many advertisements soon emerged as the norm for mobile games. They allowed the game to reach millions of users without any upfront costs, but provide a steady profit at the same time.
