Week 4: 2000s onward

The new decade/millenium begun with people playing on their playstations and their N64s having great fun with the relatively new 3D graphics. Games such as Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time being the leading games on their respective consoles. I personally don't know much about the PC since I didn't bother with it too much.
Then it happened, the brand new PS2 was released showing brand new graphics, characters and environments looking more realistic than ever. Games also became a lot longer due to the DVDRs holding more data than the standard PS1 discs. Its processor was alot better too which allowed more objects to be shown at once, longer fields of view and for it to handle more animations.

2001 was a big year for gaming as Sega pulled out of the console wars saying that no more games would be produced for the Dreamcast. In the time that the Dreamcast was released, it released games that looked better than those on the PS2 and Gamecube and also had steady online play, majorly through Phantasy Star Online.
Nintendo shower out their successor to the N64 with the Gamecube. It did lack in power compared to the XBox and the PS2 but it was the cheapest and continued many of the series that Nintendo fans had come to love. On the handheld front, the Gameboy Advance was released featuring smaller carts, better graphics and faster games than the gameboy colour.
Microsoft, growing rapidly in the computing industry, released its own efforts into the console market with the XBox. Because the XBox was produced by microsoft, it was able to have many of the components a PC does making it the most powerful machine on the market at the time. It had the greatest capabilities of all three consoles and also had an easily accessable online gaming community.

Games progressed alot since the release of these consoles with all of the launch games playing and looking inferior to those released at the end of their lives. Resident Evil 4, easily one of the best looking (and best game full stop) on the cube came out towards the end of its life and pushed the system to its limit.

That may have been a year ago but those consoles set the base for the new upgrades. The Playstation 3 and the XBox360 following tradition and going for larger hard-drives, better looking games and faster/quicker loading games. The Nintendo Wii venturing off the path after having been around for so long and making games accessable to everyone. Games that are cheap, easy and fun to play, a more pick up and play style rather than spending an hour or so trying to learn a game. I'm probably a bit biased because I have a Wii but it really is more fun than playing just better looking games.
This approach works well for Nintendo as selling a good console cheap, and games that cost less to make, they are making a lot of profit. It is also cheaper for developers as they can re-use gamecube developer kits therefore not wasting time having to learn anything new. Sony on the other hand, have had rumours that they might be pulling out of the console market. With the newer games looking as good as they do, they take a lot longer to make and alot more money to produce. Because the games are costing so much to produce, they need to be sold at a higher price to even come close to breaking even. Paired with the high price of the console and the higher price of the games mean that Sony are losing business and money.

So as far as gaming goes, it is apparent to see that it is much easier to sell family friendly games that look a lil bit worse but are more fun than it is to spend millions into games that look good but wont have much of an audience.