Talk:History of video game consoles

Edit fixes

@Indrian and PresN: Please do whatever shredding and the like you need to, I've been trying to parse from multiple duplicated unsourced content to get to this one (And still have more duplicated content to worry about elsewhere). You two seem to have the better handle on the early year/1st gen stuff, and the goal here on this article is to touch enough about it and direct readers to summary style articles for the specifics on each gen (or for the Early History). --Masem (t) 17:47, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• Yup, I appreciate all your effort to consolidate all this and get rid of some unnecessary redundancy. I am leaving all that organizational stuff to you and just pruning here and there where a wrong fact sneaks in or where trying to summarize inadvertently creates a distortion. Indrian (talk) 17:51, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Sales table (first generation)

A few sales figures of the table which documents the sales of some first-generation consoles seem a bit strange to me. According to its article, the Odyssey sold at 350,000 times or more depending on the source, not 100,000. The Home Pong number (150,000) seem to refer only to the number of manufactured consoles of the first model (see "Pong#Home version"), not to the sales of the whole series (there were 21 models in the Home Pong series according to the Russian-language Wikipedia article, 8 of them marketed by Atari and 13 by Sears). The only source I found for the sales of the Home Pong series I found was this: https://www.oldest.org/entertainment/video-game-consoles/. I don't know if it's reliable, it states that it sold 35 million units (35,000 million is obviously a typo). That sounds like a lot, but since there were so many models and Pong was such a famous game, it may be possible.-- Maxeto0910 (talk) 07:02, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

The 350,000 for Odyssey at least seems sourced to Baer + people close to it, so that's fine. I would not at all trust 35M for the Atari Pong consoles, they were only at 400,000 VCS for first year of shipping 30M would be insane. --Masem (t) 14:26, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

and given that site has "101 million" for the Odyssey?? yeah, no. --Masem (t) 14:28, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

101 million units for the Odyssey is obviously either a typo or an awkward error. Even if the site means the sales of the whole Odyssey series, 101 million units can't be real.

I recommend to note in the first-generation table and in the "console sales" section that the Home Pong and Coleco Telstar sales only refer to the first model of their series each.-- Maxeto0910 (talk) 15:45, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

While the above numbers are not good substitutes, there are a lot of problems with that chart, which may be doing more harm than good in the way it is misleading. First, yes the Odyssey most likely sold about 350,000 units, those Baer numbers appear to check out against other sources. However, Magnavox also offered a full range of dedicated consoles in this period that sold north of 1 million units combined, which is not reflected here. Second, those Home Pong numbers are just Atari's alleged 1975 sales through Sears, which may be inflated as other sources peg them at 75,000. Either way, the correct number is not 35 million, as that's more than everybody sold between 1975 and 1978 combined, but Atari sold at least 2 million dedicated systems, maybe more. Those Coleco Telstar numbers are again only first-year sales (which were technically actually just under one million). Coleco was the market leader throughout most of this period and sold at least 3 million units of its various systems. Finally, those Nintendo figures are inflated due to a long-standing error in Game Over, where Sheff says the Color TV 6 and 15 sold 1 million each, when it was actually 1 million in total. He makes the same mistake for the next two systems in the line, giving 500,000 each instead of total. So Nintendo sales are half what are reported here.

So where can you find some of these numbers? Well, a good chunk of them, as well as some sales figures from other leading companies like APF can be found in this book. Its frightfully expensive, though you may be able to get some figures up through judicious use of the Google Books preview. The correct Nintendo figures are found in Gorges's well-researched History of Nintendo Vol. 1.

Now if you can't find all those numbers for this article, that is totally fine, but in that case I personally feel the chart should be removed. This feels like a case where providing a little correct information is more misleading than providing no information at all. The finer nuances of what we know about sales figures can still be discussed in prose without a chart. Indrian (talk) 15:56, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

9th Generation

When the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 potentially come out this holiday season 2020 will they be the 9th generation possibly Jared L 9999 (talk) 16:28, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Jared L 9999, WP:NOTFORUM. This is not a comment section. GeraldWL 16:04, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Oculus Quest/Quest 2

If Virtual Boy belongs in this article, how come the Oculus Quest/Oculus Quest 2 don't get put in the article? -- ProfessionalCost (talk) 03:23, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Virtual Boy was a completely standalone system, whereas the Quest this is an optional way to run it; it is less of a console in that and more a console "controller"/"output device". --Masem (t) 03:37, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

While that would be true of other VR headsets, that's not true for the Oculus Quest. The Oculus Quest is a complete standalone unit that has its own unique game library (it has a larger game library than Virtual Boy - List of Oculus Quest games). The games run on the device itself. -- ProfessionalCost (talk) 03:46, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, the other problem is that the Oculus is not routinely considered a console, but cataloged with the other VR headsets. The Virtual Boy at the time was grouped as a "handheld" system. --Masem (t) 04:11, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Central discussion if to add 9th gen

Please see WT:VG#The dreaded 9th Gen discussion... to discuss if we should consider going forward with calling out the 9th generation of video game consoles. --Masem (t) 01:00, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Wording

Wikipedia itself has been noted for creating its own version of console generation definitions that differ from other academic sources, which has been adopted by other sources but without having any true rationale behind it. Whose definition is adopted? Wikipedia's or the academic sources? I'll assume it's Wikipedia's but I need clarity. Enjoyer of World^{(bother me...)} 04:56, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I believe what this is saying, is that some Wikipedia user(s) invented the numbering scheme it uses, rather than using actual academic sources, and because it's Wikipedia this numbering has propagated elsewhere. The linked PDF goes into more detail. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:28, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Nintendo Switch is a 9th gen console.

You just have to check the sales table in the article to be aware of all the inconsistencies. Wii U and 3DS were consoles of the 8th generation. Switch replaced both of them, and so, it became the first console of the 9th generation of game consoles. It is right now competing with PS5 and Series S/X, and it will continue for many years. Nintendo Switch was launched 5 years after the 8th generation started, and PS5 and Series X, 8 years after that. As you say in the article, 5 years is the standard period of time between generations.

On the other hand, sales figures haven't been updated.

Persisting on this basic mistake since it was decided that Switch was a 8th generation console, will eventually make harder to do all the changes that are required in order to have a proper article about History of video game consoles — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alcabcucu (talk • contribs)

Says who? What reliable sources say that Switch is a "9th generation"? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 12:20, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Generations are based on which consoles are considered to be in market competition with each other, not based on technical step-ups, as per many academic and industry sources. --Masem (t) 13:30, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Japanese and British PC game platforms

History of computer games redirects to History of video games, which covers these PC games in the "Second wave of home computers" section. History of computer game platforms is a red-link. The NEC PC98 and NEC PC88 are basically game consoles. Same with the MSX, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, etc. Lots of major games on these consoles like Metal Gear, Vampire Killer, Snatcher, the Taito games like Chack'n Pop, lots of weird RPGs, visual novels, and strategy games (and hentai games) on these platforms. Not to mention the Codemasters games, Argonaut Software, Rareware, and the rich British gaming industry from the 80s and early 90s. So maybe this history should talk about PC game platforms a bit. Or we should make a parallel article for that. Andre🚐 00:06, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Those are all home computers, not consoles, we have long treated them seperately. We do need a improvement in the early uses of home computers for gaming, for certain, but we try to make extinctions there. Masem (t) 00:15, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

It makes sense to have treated them separately, but then maybe there should be a separate article, though I don't know what it should be called. The one I suggested, any thoughts? Andre🚐 00:24, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

we do need an article like History of home computer video games, but remember that many of these computers were not created with the intent of playing video games only. We can likely have a section of pre IBM PC computers that were routine targets for games, but we have to be careful there. Masem (t) 00:29, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

All true. No argument here. Andre🚐 00:32, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Generations?

Who has come up with these generations? What determines when a new generation starts? —Kri (talk) 23:36, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Merge from Home video game console generations

The topics seem to almost completely overlap, if not completely. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:53, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this issue is something I created. I know back in Sept 2021 I was doing a bunch of reorganization of the vg console articles, and there was something I was intending to do with "History of..." that I cannot remember (in part, I suddenly got a new job), but I know I had discussed plans for it somewhere, so there was an intention to replace the content of "History of..." with something else. At this immediate time I cannot remember where that discussion was and I cannot find it, but I will look for it in the next few days to figure out what I was planning. A trace memory in the back of my head is that as this is "History of video game consoles" (not "History of home video game consoles") that I was going to rewrite this section to be more generic by decades and lose the generation organization, as things like handhelds, microconsoles, and the like are not part of the home video game console generations. Masem (t) 13:29, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Here was the plan I had made [1], with History of... coming from a more business/broad impacts side, rather than by generations. Masem (t) 15:18, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest, after thinking about this, that the following be done as a short term solution

1) Verify what content is in "History of..." that's not in the generations article. Move that content to somewhere that makes sense

2) Redirect "History of..." to the generations article...

3) ... Until me or someone else can write a good placehold History of ... article that is, again, not bounded by the console generations but instead more broad history strokes, where handhelds (in general) came up, etc. Masem (t) 05:48, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Comment There is an interesting conceptual topic around what a 'console generation' is, and how eras are differentiated, but this may be better engaged as a section under a broader 'history' article. The enormous scope of the articles really makes me think this is something that requires a closer look before having a concrete view... ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 08:01, 14 December 2023 (UTC)