Video game console
A video game console is a dedicated electronic device designed to play video games. Often the output device is a separate television. Once, video game consoles were easily distinguishable from personal computers: consoles used a standard television for display, and did not support standard PC accessories such as keyboards or modems. However, as consoles have become more powerful, the distinction has blurred: some consoles can have have full Linux OS's running with hard drives and keyboards, and Microsoft's Xbox is basically a stripped down PC running a version of Microsoft Windows.
The console market has steadily developed from simple one-off games (Pong) to fully featured general purpose games systems.
Older game consoles and their software now live on in emulators as they are no longer supported by their manufacturers; however, console makers try to prevent legitimate console and software buyers from playing games on emulators, using a special mask work copyright and a special copyright on encrypted media created by the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act and foreign counterparts, especially for the newer game consoles. The emulation of ancient video game consoles, such as the NES and SNES have gradually settled down.
Note that the "bit" names of generations were in large part created by the console makers' marketing departments and may have little to do with the actual architecture of the systems.
See Also: Nintendo, SEGA, Sony, Microsoft, Atari
This includes stand-alone game consoles, see also hand held consoles for portable devices with integrated displays.
This generation was followed by a collapse in the video game market in North America (1984).
Consoles of this era were often inaccurately called "analog" but actually used discrete logic.
The Odyssey - discrete logicList of game consoles
Future systems
Sixth generation
Fifth generation
Fourth generation
Third "8-bit" generation
Second "8-bit" generation
First generation of "8-bit" programmable systems
Dedicated (non-programmable) video game consoles
The First commercial home video game ever
