Gaming has remained a highly popular pursuit over the past few decades, but it has certainly come a long way.
In its first few years, you would only be able to play on huge arcade-style systems found in gaming clubs or bars. However, it wasn’t long before games consoles found their way into our homes.
Nowadays, most of us carry around a device in our pockets that is capable of giving us immediate access to online gaming from wherever we are.
Let’s take a quick whistle-stop tour to see exactly how far gaming has come.
Arcade Days
The big boom of gaming occurred in the 1970s when huge arcade games were released with enormous fanfare. These coin-operated machines started to spring up all over the place.
Some of the most popular games included Tetris, Space Invaders, and Pacman. In those days, computers didn’t have the same kind of microprocessors that are so common in the modern world, and their size reflected this fact.
However, technology was quickly on the march…
Home Consoles
The late 1970s game Pong plugged directly into the TV and gave people the chance to bat a virtual ping-pong ball backward and forward. While this game may seem archaic by modern standards, at the time, it represented an incredible technological revolution!
Of course, advancements came thick and fast during the 1980s and 1990s. This is when console-manufacturers such as Sega and Nintendo really started to expand their offering.
Some of the iconic consoles throughout history include the Mega Drive and PlayStation.
Gaming for All
The first gaming consoles focused heavily on Cartoonish games aimed at kids such as Mario and Donkey Kong. However, game developers quickly realized that they could target more people if they created games for adults rather than kids.
When the console wars began between Xbox and Sony, there was something of an arms race to create darker and more realistic games such as Call of Duty. Since then, each new version of these consoles has attracted a bigger and bigger fanfare – leading up to the latest releases in 2020.
Meanwhile, Nintendo spotted the gap in the market and continued offering games consoles that the whole family could enjoy. Of course, the role of the internet cannot be overstated. Online gaming has been a huge revolution.
Smartphone Gaming
The smartphone represented a huge advancement in so many different areas of life – and gaming is certainly one of them. These days, you can enjoy everything from a simple fire joker casino game to a more complicated narrative game from these pocket-sized devices.
These have also proven to generate a huge amount of revenue for the developers as well. While a lot of games are available for no upfront cost, many of the developers have created an add-on system that ultimately makes your options endless.
CONCLUSION
It’s safe to say that gaming is an area that continues to attract huge sums of money… Who knows where this will lead in the coming years?
Certainly, virtual reality seems set to be the next big gaming revolution.
