In the history of video games, the sixth generation era (sometimes referred to as the 128-bit era; see "Bits and system power" below) refers to computers and video games, game consoles video games and video game games available at the turn of the 21st century from 1998 to 2005. The sixth generation platform includes Sega Dreamcast, Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft Xbox. This era began on November 27, 1998 with the release of Japan Dreamcast, and it joined PlayStation 2 in March 2000 and GameCube and Xbox in 2001. The Dreamcast was discontinued in 2001, GameCube in 2007, Xbox in 2009 and PlayStation 2 in the year 2013. The seventh generation of consoles began in November 2005 with the launch of the Xbox 360.
The bit ratings for most consoles mostly fell by the wayside during this era, with notable exceptions being Dreamcast and PS2 promotions that advertise 128-bit graphics in the early generations. The number of "bits" quoted in the console name refers to the size of the word CPU and has been used by hardware marketers as a "power show" for years. However, there is little that can be gained from increasing the word size far beyond 32 or 64 bits because once this level is achieved, performance depends on more varied factors, such as processor clock speed, bandwidth, and memory size.
The last official Dreamcast game was released in 2002 (North America and Europe) and 2007 (Japan). Game GameCube was last released in 2006 (Japan) and 2007 (North America and Europe). The last Xbox games were released in 2007 (Japan) and 2008 (Europe and North America). Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 is the last game released for PlayStation 2.
Video Sixth generation of video game consoles
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Sony PlayStation 2 achieved sales dominance in this generation, becoming the best-selling console in history, with more than 150 million units sold per February 2011. Microsoft Xbox has sold over 24 million units in May 2006, and Nintendo GameCube has sold 22 million units per September 2010. Sega Dreamcast, which arrived before all the others and discontinued in 2001, occupies fourth position with sales of 9.13 million.
The sixth generation began to end when Xbox was replaced by Xbox 360 by the end of 2005. GameCube hardware was still produced when the Wii was released in late 2006, but in June 2008 has also stopped. The PlayStation 2 sales continue to be strong until the end of 2010, due to its large system software libraries, ongoing software support, and affordable pricing.
In February 2008, the PlayStation 2 surpassed both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the United States. Games were still produced for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube in 2008, while the Dreamcast game was officially discontinued in 2003. There are still some games produced for Dreamcast in 2004, but basically the NAOMI arcade port was released only in Japan, small. The PlayStation 2 is still being produced after the launch of the Wii U, making the sixth generation of the second longest generation of all time.
Dreamcast
Sega's Dreamcast is a first generation console and has several features to showcase the benefits of the competition, including Internet gaming as an optional feature through the built-in modem, and a web browser.
The console is credited with restoring the reputation of Sega, which has been damaged by previous failures of Sega Saturn, Sega 32X, Genesis Nomad and Sega CD. Nevertheless, the Dreamcast was terminated prematurely due to many factors. PlayStation 2 will slow down the sales of Dreamcast, especially since the PlayStation 2 has an in-built DVD player and a large number of PS1 owners who want to upgrade to a new compatible console backwards. In addition, the short-lived Sega support/success of its post-Mega Drive, Mega-CD, 32X and Saturn products has made developers and customers skeptical, with some persisting to see whether Dreamcast or PlayStation 2 will come out as top.
Sega's decision to implement GD-ROM (though publicly advertised as a CD-ROM) for storage media is cost-saving but not comparable to that of the much-touted PS2 DVD. Sega is unable or unwilling to spend the advertising money necessary to compete with Sony, which is taking huge losses on the PlayStation 2 to gain market share. With the announcement of Xbox and GameCube at the end of 2000, Sega console was considered by some to be outdated only two years after it was released. Previous losses from Saturn, 32X and Sega/Mega-CD, sales stagnation due to the PlayStation 2, and forthcoming competition from Microsoft and Nintendo caused Sega's revenue to shrink and announced their intent to kill the system in early 2001, dropping the system completely and leaving console market in early 2004 in Japan and much earlier in other countries. Sega also announced it would turn off SegaNet, an online gaming community that supports Dreamcast titles that can go online. Because users were surprised by the decision, Sega delayed service closure by an additional 6 months.
PlayStation 2
The Sony brand has been established with the original PlayStation is a major factor in the dominance of the PlayStation 2, both in terms of securing the consumer base and attracting third party developers, with gradual improvement in one reinforce the other. PlayStation 2 can also play DVDs and is compatible with PlayStation games, which many say helps sales of players. Sony Computer Entertainment licensed for major games like Final Fantasy X, Grand Theft Auto III and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, PS2 to surpass the launch of its competitors. The console eventually became the best-selling console of this generation, while the competing console, Xbox and Gamecube, then became a highly successful console.
GameCube
Nintendo is struggling with conflicting brand image, especially the family-friendly ones developed during the 1990s. Its franchise warehouse and history in the industry, despite earning it a loyal fan base, failed to provide an advantage over Xbox and PlayStation 2 that captured the audience searching for a 'Mature' title where Nintendo has fewer. Nintendo has also made little headway in online games (releasing a few online games, the most popular being Phantasy Star Online, which is actually the port of the Dreamcast game) instead of emphasizing Game Boy Advance connectivity. As a result, Nintendo GameCube failed to match the sales of its predecessor, the Nintendo 64, but the console was not a financial failure. Nintendo does rejuvenate its relationship with many developers, often working in close cooperation with them to produce games based on franchises, in contrast to in the past where it was often seen as bullying developers in the late 1980s, back when the Nintendo Entertainment System was out on the market. As a result, Nintendo GameCube has more first and second party releases than its competitors, most of which are successful titles mainly products from third-party developers.
Xbox
Although the Xbox has strong financial support from Microsoft, it can not significantly threaten the dominance of the PlayStation 2 as a market leader; However, the Xbox attracts a huge fan base and strong third party support in the United States and Europe and is a well-known brand among mainstream. Xbox Live's online service with a centralized model proved to be very successful, prompting Sony to upgrade its PlayStation 2 online capabilities. Xbox Live also gave Xbox an edge over the GameCube, which hardly has an online game. The flagship of Xbox Live is the Halo 2 game, which is the best-selling Xbox game with over 8 million copies sold worldwide.
Comparison
Worldwide sales standings
Other consoles
- The mass market
This console is built for mass market, like 4 consoles listed above. This, however, is less important, has never seen a worldwide release, and/or has sold very badly, and is therefore listed as 'Other'.
Maps Sixth generation of video game consoles
Bits and system power
The bit rate for the console mostly falls on the edge after the era of the fifth generation (32/64-bit). The number of "bits" cited in the console name refers to the size of the word CPU, but little can be gained from increasing the word size far beyond 32 bits; performance depends on other factors, such as the speed of the central processing unit, the speed of the graphics processing unit, the channel capacity, the size of data storage, and the speed of memory, latency, and size.
The importance of the number of bits in the modern game console market has decreased due to the use of components that process data in different word sizes. Previously, console manufacturers advertised " n -bit talk" to overemphasize their system's hardware capabilities. Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 are the last systems that use the term "128-bit" in their marketing to describe their capabilities.
It is not easy to compare the relative "strengths" of different systems. Having a larger word size CPU does not always make one console stronger than the other. Likewise, the operating frequency (clock rate, measured in Hertz terms) of the CPU system is not an accurate measure of performance, except between the same or similar architectural systems).
Microsoft Xbox uses a 32-bit (general-purpose) CISC x86 CPU, with the same instruction set as the Coppermine Mobile Celeron core, although it has less cache (128 kB) than an equivalent PC. It has 64 MB of RAM (shared) and runs at 733 MHz. Because the Pentium 3 introduces SSE, the Xbox also has 128-bit SIMD capabilities. Its NV2A GPU, which is very similar to GeForce 3 Series from GPU desktop, makes it the only console of its time with traditional vertices and pixel shaders.
The IBM Gekko PowerPC motherboard from Nintendo GameCube runs at 485 MHz, while its "Flipper" graphics processor is comparable to the original ATI Radeon, and has a non-unified 43-MB memory (24 MB of 1T-SRAM, 3 MB embedded 1T- SRAM, and 16 MB DRAM). GameCube supports Dolby Pro Logic II.
The PlayStation 2 CPU (known as "128-bit Emotion Engine") has a 64-bit core with a 32-bit FPU paired with two 128 bit Vector Units, the R5900 hybrid CPU is based on the MIPS architecture, The PS2 also has a DMA Bus 10 Channel internal that is completely 128 bit wide, Paths between Emotion Engine, RAM and Graphics synthesizer (GS) are also 128 bit wide. Unique PS2 hardware settings with no less than 10 processing units are difficult to overcome. Many developers struggle initially with hardware programming. PS2's Graphics Synthesizer (GS) has a special fast video memory, although limited in the amount of data it can hold, a 10-channel wide DMA 10 D channel bus can pump data to GS Memory as soon as the screen can be updated. Consequently, With main memory limited to 32mb, many PS2 games have reduced the texture compared to other console versions. It also does not have a dedicated hardware transform and lighting unit as found on Xbox and GameCube GPUs. However, the PS2 design allows for exceptional levels of flexibility and choice. For example, Program control and general arithmetic can be handled by the CPU, while Vector Units 0 and 1, can provide parallel processing of physics, clipping and transformation and lighting to the scene. The Vector Unit is so versatile that the Shadow of the Colossus uses one of the vector units to perform a full Pixel shadow for Collossi feathers.
The Dreamcast features a 64-bit superscalar double SuperH-4 RISC Central processing core unit with a 32-bit integer unit using 16-bit fixed-length instruction, 64-bit data bus that allows either 8, 16, 32 or 64-bit variable widths, and a 128-bit floating-point bus. The PowerVR 2DC CLX2 Chipset uses a unique method of 3D scene rendering called Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR): while storing polygons in triangular strip format in memory, the screen is split into tiles associated with an overlapping triangle list to which, using a process similar to tracking rays, rays cast and pixels rendered from the nearest triangle to the camera. After calculating the depth associated with each polygon for one row of tiles in 1 cycle, all the tiles will be flushed to the video memory before continuing to render the next tile. After all the information has been collected for the current frame, the tiles are given alternately to produce the final image.
Handheld system
During the era of the sixth generation, the handheld gaming console market expanded with the introduction of new devices from many different manufacturers. Nintendo retained the dominant share of the handheld market with the release in 2001 of Game Boy Advance, which featured many upgrades and new features in Game Boy. Two redesign systems were followed, Game Boy Advance SP in 2003 and Game Boy Micro in 2005. Also introduced was Neo Geo Pocket Color by SNK in 1998 and Bandai's WonderSwan Color, launched in Japan in 1999. South Korean Game Company Park introduced the GP32 handheld in 2001, and with it came the dawn of an open source handheld console. The Game Boy Advance line of handhelds has sold 81.51 million units worldwide on September 30, 2010.
A new addition to the market is the company's tendency to incorporate a large number of "non-gaming" features into their handheld consoles, including cell phones, MP3 players, portable movie players, and PDA-like features. The handheld that started this trend was Nokia N-Gage, which was released in 2003 and duplicated primarily as a mobile phone. It went through a redesign in 2004 and renamed ND Gage QD. The second handheld, Zodiac from Tapwave, was released in 2004; based on Palm OS, it offers game-oriented video and sound capabilities, but has a heavy development kit because of the underlying Palm OS foundation.
A fairly rare handheld of the 6th generation is vtech V.SMILE Pocket. Handheld version of their V.SMILE home console.
With more and more PDAs arriving over the previous generation, the difference between consumer electronics and traditional computing is blurred and cheap console technology is growing as a result. It says about PDAs that they are "handheld game computers" because of their multi-purpose capabilities and the increasingly powerful computer hardware that lives in them. This ability exists to move games beyond the 16-bit limitations of the last generation; However, the PDA is still directed at a typical entrepreneur, and does not have an affordable new software franchise to compete with special handheld game consoles.
Hand comparison
Note: The first year of release is the first year of system availability worldwide.
Other handheld
Sales
Trends
Market convergence
Major publishers such as Activision, Electronic Arts, and Ubisoft adopt cross platform strategies, releasing their game versions for PCs, all major consoles, and in some cases, handhelds. The sixth generation is the first to help consoles and computer software grow closer together and outperform the arcade market in features, graphics and business. The Dreamcast, which has the official Windows CE Development Kit to help move games from PC to Dreamcast, and Xbox, made from off-the-shelf PC parts and host many PC ports, is taken into account in this regard as well.
Controversial game
While the sixth generation is not the first to have part of the controversial game, this generation is noted to have widespread criticism by public figures of "inappropriate" content in games such as sex, crime, violence, indecent words, drug use, and propaganda social. as well as topics of debate such as religion, politics and economics.
The sixth generation is also notorious for seeing the continuation of lawmakers taking action on the video game industry. The most famous are the Rockstar ' Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City i>) faces lawsuits for alleged racial insults and affects minors for crimes, while Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is briefly granted adult rank and removed from most stores due to the availability of mini sex abandoned -game using Hot Coffee mod.
The sixth generation also coincided with the September 11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, which had a major impact on the entertainment industry, including the video game industry; in subsequent market climates, some games were edited in response to the sensitivity around the event. Before its launch, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty depicts a belligerent castle hijacked by terrorists who destroyed most of Manhattan in view of the twin towers (this can be found in the "Metal Gear Solid Document 2" making feature). Similarly, some undisclosed modifications were made at Grand Theft Auto III , such as changes to police car color schemes' (old schemes resembling older blue and white NYPD designs) and modified cover art (European Release displaying original artwork); Rockstar Games estimates that a 1% change in content is changed. The Game Propeller Arena Dreamcast Game was never officially released, probably because of a certain level that is visually very similar to the September 11 attacks.
Retro emulation and games
Due to the increasing strength of video game computing and the widespread use of emulators, the sixth generation saw the emergence of massive console emissions and retro games. Many games for older systems are updated with superior graphics or sound and re-released for the current console. Commonly emulated games include those released for Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Mega Drive/Genesis, PlayStation (PS2 can play original PS1 games), and Nintendo 64.
Also during this generation, the power of handheld computing consoles became capable of supporting games made for some of the earliest gaming consoles and some companies released classic game remakes for handhelds. Nintendo introduces the NES and SNES game lineup for Game Boy Advance devices, including remakes like Final Fantasy I & amp; II: Dawn of Souls and Nintendo's Metroid: Zero Mission . Also, an increasing number of third-party developers, including Midway Games, Capcom, Namco, Atari, and Sega, released a collection of anthologies from some of their old games. In addition, many video games and video game series originally limited to Japan were released in North America and Europe for the first time.
The rise of online games
Online games, which in previous generations have become the exclusive domain of PC games, are becoming more prominent in the video game console over this generation. Dreamcast embarked on this change with modems, internet browsing software, and the ability to play certain online games. PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube also offer online games, although their approach and commitment vary widely. Xbox offers an integrated service called Xbox Live that costs $ 50 per year and is only compatible with broadband internet connections. Its ability to connect gamers to multiplayer online games is a big enough factor in allowing Xbox to gain a foothold in the western market, especially in the first-person shooter genre. PlayStation 2 leaves its online game service to individual game publishers, and although it's free to use, it's not always an ideal experience, especially with games published by small developers. Serial SOCOM is one of the most popular online competitive games for PS2. GameCube does not offer online games for one of its first party titles, with only the Sega Phantasy Star Online series Merger
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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