NES

Console Wars: The Modern Day

Well folks, we finally made it to the modern day console war that has been sprawling since 2013. A very up and down generation with failures, issues, a kid forcefully destroying their console because their father told them to do so, as well as filming it, this generation was a hurricane of emotions that made Hurricane Katrina look like a low pressure shower because the neighborhood has the fire hydrants on full blast in the middle of a heatwave. That’s probably a New York reference no one is going to understand except New Yorkers. Every company had a decline of some kind during this generation and had their moment of rising out of the ashes.

But first, let’s talk about the elephants in the room from this generation, and they’re called Microconsoles.

Yeah, they’re wastes of money and time. Now some of them were okay from what I know, like the Nvidia Shield console and the OnLive, which I remember wanting so bad as a kid when they were being advertised on TV, but everything else was pretty meh from what I know. Also, let’s laugh at the Ouya for being the disappointment of the decade, and the worst console ever, especially when the Virtual Boy was better than that thing. Anywho, since I’ve got minimal knowledge of microconsoles, I’ll let Scott the Woz talk about them instead:

Now let’s talk about actual consoles that matter, starting with the Wii U.

And now I have no idea where to begin for Nintendo’s biggest modern day blunder in the Wii U. This system was a massive accident on Nintendo’s end for the naming of the system and the marketing of it. I’ve never seen a company dump in their underwear so hard that everyone witnessed it with their own eyes. Just insert the Jonas J. Jamerson laughing meme here about how that went. Either way, the system was surprisingly good from what people said, it’s just the marketing that completely crippled the system badly. It’s easily a very misunderstood system for what it was trying to attempt to go for, and you have to applaud Nintendo at least for trying like they always do, especially since if you think about it, they’re the only dedicated video game company in the console market, while Sony is an entertainment company, and Microsoft is a software company. It was a good console for what it was, but man was it a nightmare and a half and discontinued only 4 years and two months after being released. Also Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is the worst game of the decade next to WWE 2K20. The Wii U was pretty much discontinued very quickly after the Switch was released, and didn’t really do good at all.

The Xbox One was next and holy crap it was a nightmare the moment it was revealed. It looked like a VCR/DVD combo you’d use if your CRT TV didn’t have AV inputs, and you had to use it to play. Not only that, the original needed the Kinect to work. The Xbox One needed this Hal 9000 camera on their Xbox for it to actually work. Yikes aroony. So Xbox shot themselves in the foot with the Red Rings of Death and now they pulled a Sega and sawed off shotgun blasted their entire foot off by making this stupid decision. Not only that, the Xbox had a plethora of issues that just seemed like the Xbox was just ready to crumble to the point of backing out of the console race. But never underestimate Microsoft, because they bounced back hard with the Xbox One S and Xbox One X. Sales started to rise more since they finally right their wrongs, and although it did come in last place, the Xbox did really good this console generation despite its hefty blunders in the beginning.

The PS4 is next to talk about and it obviously had its early blunders, but Sony is always ready to bounce back, and bounce back hard. It’s safe to say that after the Xbox One was having blunder after blunder, the PS4 took advantage and soon became the most popular system that everyone purchased. It got so popular that Call of Duty decided to side with Sony and DLC came early for the PS4. The PS4 Slim and PS4 Pro would come out later on and started becoming the preferred systems to own outside of the original, with the slim having more storage and looking less aesthetically pleasing, and then the PS4 Pro with a lot of power, but looked like a big ass cheeseburger. Today most people have the slim or the pro, and unfortunately I ain’t one of them because my mom was too cheap to let me have a more modern version, which I’m sure everyone has had that issue in the past before young and old. Not only that, the first party titles were out and ready to swing for the fences still, and I think it’s safe to say with the unbridled amount of exclusives that existed on this console, it was a heavyweight that was gonna be hard to topple.

Unless you were Nintendo.

Nintendo wasn’t gonna go out of the generation in a whimper, as Nintendo was getting ready to make their Hail Mary attempt to get them back on the damn throne they once sat in, and man is it becoming the most satisfying touchdown that they ever made, because three years ago on March 3rd, 2017, they released their best console to date, the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo deserves this praise when I say that they win the award for comeback of the decade. I remember when that video dropped of the Switch on YouTube, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Nintendo making something like this, and I immediately knew, I wanted this as my Christmas present for 2017 or at least 2018, and man am I glad that I made that choice because hot DAMN is it a great system. There’s nothing better than playing console quality games while lying down in bed and chillaxing in a game of Splatoon or having some Smash Ultimate fun or playing some of the old NES and SNES titles, or playing DOOM, this system is just absolutely loaded with games both from the past and present. And I’ll be honest, I want Nintendo to milk the Switch cow so dry that I see dust coming out of the udders, that’s how damn good the system is. Now since the release of the system, the library of games erupted since launch, with decent indie titles, some shovelware and a gargantuan amount of first and third party titles, the Switch Lite was released which is basically a handheld dedicated version of the Switch, a more updated version of the original Switch was released with far superior battery life compared to the original (which I should probably invest into before the Switch Pro comes out), and the rumors of a Switch Pro is still rumbling even though those rumors have been shut down by Nintendo, but damn it I wanna keep dreaming.

Now, it’s obvious that the Wii U and the Xbox One aren’t very clear winners of this generation. The Wii U was a massive flop regardless of the games that came on the system that eventually came to the Switch, and the Xbox One, while powering through every issue they had, unfortunately didn’t do too well enough for a good comeback, because the real competition was once again, Nintendo vs Sony. Yeah obviously the PlayStation vs Xbox war kept going on and I won’t discredit the Xbox One for its large library of exclusives, but let’s be honest, Sony with the PS4 was DOMINATING the entire generation, currently accumulating nearly 110 million units in the near 7 years of being out on the market and it was pretty much everyone’s preferred system to own with all of the blunders Xbox had and the failure of the Wii U, alongside the fact that there is VR support for the PS4. But Nintendo launched a massive salvo back at Sony and reminded them who the old king of gaming was and they swung back hard with the games and the sales, and in three years, they’ve amassed 54+ million sales, which in three years, is astonishingly impressive for the big red machine. This battle has yet to come to an end as all systems are still a go, but the day that the generation officially ends, we will know the winner by then.

And after all of these generations of consoles, there’s been another massive elephant in the room I have yet to address at all, and it’ll be the current last stop of this train.

The PC

To Be Continued…

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Console Wars: The Crash and The Rise

1983 was pretty much like the great depression for gaming. When the video game crash happened, a lot of consoles suffered from this, as now all appeal had been lost. Not only that, the rise of home computers, like the Apple Macintosh and the legendary Commodore 64 were on the rise for this period between 1983 and 1985. To put into perspective as to how bad this crash was, the Vectrex and Atari 5200 were discontinued in 1984, and by the time the NES came to America in 1985, the video game industry went from 3.2 billion dollars, to 100 million. That is a 97 percent decline in two years, and that was a drop that could’ve ended the video gaming industry.

The Third Generation was pretty much a Renaissance period of gaming, as at this point, it was all or nothing, and the company that was the spearhead of this generation, was Nintendo. Nintendo released the Family Computer in 1983 in Japan, otherwise known as the Famicom and it was a success in the Japanese market, along with the release of the disk system they would release alongside the Famicom not long after in 1986, but it wasn’t until October of 1985 where it was released to America, and it was a resounding success.

Sega made their debut in the console market with the SG-1000 in 1983, and while it was the beginning of the blue brand, it didn’t sell too well due to the fact that the Famicom was more popular than the system, and was eventually discontinued in 1985 and was never released to the American market. They did bounce back however with the release of the Sega Master System in October of 1985, however, this comeback was… shit. It didn’t sell too well at all in Japan or America due to the fact that now, the NES and Famicom were dominating the market and they pretty much had the weight of the whole gaming industry on their shoulders trying to revive it, and although Sega did have a helping hand, it was one of those “too little too late” moments and was soon discontinued in America in 1992. However, the system did do well in Europe selling several million units and discontinuing in 1996. And last but not least, Brazil. Now you’d think that the lifespan of the PS2 was ridiculous, from 2000 to 2013, get this: the Master System has yet to be discontinued in Brazil. You read that right, you don’t need to rub your eyes or clean your glasses, the Master System is still being made in Brazil to this day, which means that the Master System has a life of 30 years, making it the longest-running console that is being sold today. I legit can’t imagine being someone from Brazil who owns this in the modern-day, but technically this means that the Third Generation of gaming, although ending in 2003 with the end of the Famicom, is still technically in existence since the Master System has yet to be discontinued. Jesus that’s a long time and then some.

And the last console to talk about is the Atari 7800. Has anyone noticed that the Atari consoles actually went up in 2600s? That’s an interesting little Easter Egg I just found out. But there’s really not much to say about it as there are no sales numbers to the system and how it did. It was released in 1986 but discontinued on New Year’s Day, 1992. It’s both an enigmatic system, but also a forgotten one, and the 2600 was still going on during this generation and pretty much became the Commodore 64 of the console bunch. Cheap, underpowered, but still fun to use even with the consoles that were out at this time.

There’s almost no question about it that Nintendo were the winners of the Third Generation of the Console Wars. They pretty much saved the entire gaming industry from what could’ve been the end had Nintendo never came into America with the NES, but they pretty much made gaming cool again, especially when they started releasing their famous magazine “Nintendo Power” in 1988.

But in 1987, a new challenger had approached that had graphical capabilities that surpassed the NES and the Sega Master System, and it began a gaming revolution that lasted for the entirety of the 90s.

Enter: The Bit Wars

Console Wars: The Modern Day

Console Wars: The Crash and The Rise

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