ragnark: God of War Ragnarök becomes Sony’s highest-rated game on PlayStation 5

The journey of video games

According to AFP, video games have come a long way since the first rudimentary arcade machines appeared in the 1970s with offerings such as “Pong”, “Pacman” and “Space Invaders”. Every generation has seen rapid technological advancement since then and the industry is now worth billions. With the release of Microsoft’s Xbox X and Sony’s PlayStation 5 just days away, here’s a look at the video game journey.

Setting up the stage

Now widely regarded as the first video game to achieve serious commercial success, Atari’s 1972 “Pong” featured two people playing a basic game of table tennis on a black screen. The graphics were simple, but it was a hit – a version of the game designed for home play sold over 100,000 units and set the tone for the multi-billion dollar game industry we know today.

Arrival of home consoles

The success of “Pong” set the stage for an explosion of arcade games in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the frenetic “Pacman” and alien shoot-em-up “Space Invaders” raking in billions from wealthy youngsters desperate for money. were looking for high score places. But it was the arrival of home consoles like the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo NES around the same time that brought video games from arcades to living rooms.

Games that became popular during this period still resonate. An early Nintendo game – the 1981 platformer “Donkey Kong” featured a character known as Jumpman, later known as Mario, one of the most famous video game heroes of all time. As the games market grew, so did the competition between hardware manufacturers, leading to the first of many “console wars” in the early 1990s between Sega and Nintendo.

PlayStation vs GameCube vs Xbox

First-person shooters like “Goldeneye” and action-adventure puzzler “Tomb Raider” revolutionized both graphics and storytelling, offering a more mature experience for an increasingly diverse audience. By the turn of the century, the stage was set for a new generation of home systems—and an all-new round of console wars, this time between the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and a new Microsoft contender, the Xbox. The PlayStation 2 won that battle and became the best-selling console of all time, according to Forbes, with 155 million units moved.

The newcomers

Sony and Microsoft are about to go head to head again with their latest offerings, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, promising never-before-seen graphics and a slew of exclusive titles as battle lines are drawn. Faced with fierce competition from PC gaming and changing habits among players, whatever expensive new console emerges victorious will really have to live up to the hype.