Video game technology has progressed rapidly over the past 30 years; with the equally rapid develop of the necessary electronic components. Microprocessor based video gaming as we know it began, many consider, with the Atari 2600 console of the late 1970s. This machine used video graphics, viewable via a standard television set, and utilised cartridge technology for software distribution. Atari were to dominate the growing video game industry through the early 1980s.
Nowadays we are used to so much more complex technology, but still our trusted television sets. The largest most recent phenomenon was possibly the Nintendo Wii, realised in 2006 the Nintendo Wii belongs to the 7th generation of games consoles that includes the Sony Playstation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360. It has a wireless controller that captures your movements and relates these to the game you are playing. Powered by an IBM ‘Broadway’ processer and an ‘ATi’ Hollywood graphics processor, the electronic components are all hidden inside the Wii.
The Wii was different because it took gaming back to being something graphically quite basic, but physically interactive. Until this point it seemed games were becoming a serious graphic design competition. The revelation that the movement you make as a person can be received by the computer and translated to a movement made by your avatar on screen is amazing; as a child I would have thought it magic and not questioned it. More to the point it is something that as a child I could not have understood, and the mere fact I am writing this now as it’s an everyday phenomenon in an estimated 5 million UK households is astounding.