Sixth generation of video game consoles


In the history of video games, the sixth-generation era refers to the computer and video games, video game consoles, and handheld gaming devices available at the turn of the 21st century, starting on November 27, 1998. Platforms in the sixth generation include consoles from four companies: the Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft Xbox. This era began on November 27, 1998, with the Japanese release of the Dreamcast, which was joined by the PlayStation 2 on March 4, 2000, and the GameCube and Xbox on November 15, 2001. In April 2001, the Dreamcast was the first to be discontinued. The GameCube was next, in 2007, the Xbox on March 2, 2009, and the PlayStation 2 on January 4, 2013. Meanwhile, the seventh generation of consoles started on November 22, 2005 with the launch of the Xbox 360.
The major innovation of this generation was of full utilization of the internet to allow a fully online gaming experience. While the prior generation had some systems with internet connectivity, such as the Apple Pippin, these had little market penetration and thus had limited success in the area. Services such as Microsoft's Xbox Live became industry standard in this, and future, generations. Another innovation of the Xbox was the first system to utilize an internal hard disk drive to store game data. This caused many improvements to the gaming experience, including the ability to store program data that allowed for faster load times, as well as the ability to download games directly from the internet rather than to purchase physical media such as a disk or cartridge. Soon after its release other systems, like the Sony PlayStation 2, produced peripheral storage devices to allow similar capabilities, and by the next generation internal storage became industry standard.
Bit ratings for most consoles largely fell by the wayside during this era, with the notable exceptions being promotions for the Dreamcast and PS2 that advertised "128-bit graphics" at the start of the generation. The number of "bits" cited in this way in console names refers to the CPU word size, and had been used by hardware marketing departments as a "show of power" for many years. However, there is little to be gained from increasing the word size much beyond 32 or 64 bits because, once this level is reached, performance depends on more varied factors, such as processor clock speed, bandwidth, and memory size.
The sixth generation of handhelds began with the release of the Neo Geo Pocket Color by SNK in 1998 and Bandai's WonderSwan Color, launched in Japan in 1999. Nintendo maintained its dominant share of the handheld market with the release in 2001 of the Game Boy Advance, which featured many upgrades and new features over the Game Boy. The Game Boy Advance was discontinued around in early 2010. The next generation of handheld consoles began in November 2004, with the North American introduction of the Nintendo DS.
The last official Dreamcast games were released in 2002 and 2007. The last GameCube games were released in 2006 and 2007. The last Xbox games were released in 2007 and 2008. Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 was the last game for the PlayStation 2, which was released in November 2013. The last PS2 game, Final Fantasy XI: Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, was released in May 2015, marking the end of this generation.

Home systems

The Sony PlayStation 2
achieved sales dominance in this generation, becoming the best-selling console in history, with over 150 million units sold as of February 2011. The Microsoft Xbox had sold over 24 million units as of May 2006, and the Nintendo GameCube had sold 22 million units as of September 2010. The Sega Dreamcast, which arrived prior to all of the others and was discontinued in 2001, came in fourth with 9.13 million sold.
The sixth generation began to end when the Xbox was succeeded by the Xbox 360 in late 2005. GameCube hardware was still being produced when the Wii was released in late 2006, but as of June 2008 has also been ceased. PlayStation 2 sales continued to be strong into end of 2010, due to the system's large software library, continuing software support, and affordable price.
In February 2008, the PlayStation 2 outsold both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the United States. Games were still being produced for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube as of 2008, while Dreamcast games were officially discontinued in 2003. There were still a few games being produced for the Dreamcast in 2004, but they are essentially NAOMI arcade ports released only in Japan, with small print runs. The PlayStation 2 was still being produced after the launch of the Wii U in 2012, making the sixth generation the second longest generation of all time.

Dreamcast

Sega's Dreamcast is the first console of the generation and had several features to show an advantage from the competition, including Internet gaming as an optional feature through its built-in modem, and a web browser.
The console is credited with restoring Sega's reputation, which had been damaged by the earlier failures of the Sega Saturn, Sega 32X, Genesis Nomad and Sega CD. Despite this, the Dreamcast was discontinued prematurely due to numerous factors. The impending and much-hyped PlayStation 2 slowed Dreamcast sales, mostly due to the fact that the PlayStation 2 had a built-in DVD player and a huge number of PS1 owners looking to upgrade to the new, backwards-compatible console. In addition, Sega's short-lived support/success of its post-Mega Drive products the Mega-CD, 32X and Saturn had left developers and customers skeptical, with some holding out to see whether the Dreamcast or PlayStation 2 would come out on top.
Sega's decision to implement a GD-ROM for storage medium did save costs but it did not compare well against the PS2's much touted DVD capabilities. Sega was either unable or unwilling to spend the advertising money necessary to compete with Sony, who themselves took massive losses on the PlayStation 2 to gain market share. With the announcements of the Xbox and GameCube in late 2000, Sega's console was considered by some to be outdated only two years after its release. The previous losses from the Saturn, 32X, and Sega/Mega-CD, stagnation of sales due to the PlayStation 2, and impending competition from Microsoft and Nintendo caused Sega's revenue to shrink and announce their intention on killing the system in early 2001, dropping the system entirely and leaving the console market in early 2004 in Japan and much earlier in other countries. Sega also announced it would shut down SegaNet, an online gaming community that supported online-capable Dreamcast titles. Due to user outcry over the decision, Sega delayed the service's closure by an additional 6 months. Since the Dreamcast discontinued, Sega transitioned to software developing/publishing only.

PlayStation 2

The brand Sony had established with the original PlayStation was a major factor in the PlayStation 2's dominance, both in terms of securing a consumer base and attracting third party developers, with the gradual increase in one reinforcing the other. The PlayStation 2 was also able to play DVDs and was backwards-compatible with PlayStation games, which many say helped the former's sales. Sony Computer Entertainment secured licensing for key games such as Final Fantasy X, Grand Theft Auto III, and , enabling the PS2 to outperform its competitors' launches. The console ended up becoming the top-selling console of this generation, while its competing consoles, the Xbox and the GameCube, went on to be modestly successful consoles.

GameCube

Nintendo struggled with conflicting brand images, particularly the family-friendly one developed during the 1990s. Its arsenal of franchises and history in the industry, though earning it a loyal fan base, failed to give it an advantage against the Xbox and PlayStation 2 which captured audiences seeking 'Mature' titles of which Nintendo had fewer. Nintendo also made little headway into online gaming, instead emphasizing Game Boy Advance connectivity. As a result, the Nintendo GameCube failed to match the sales of its predecessor, the Nintendo 64, but the console wasn't a financial failure. Nintendo did however rejuvenate its relationship with many developers, often working in close collaboration with them to produce games based upon its franchises, in contrast to the past where it was frequently seen as bullying developers in the late 1980s, back when the Nintendo Entertainment System was out on the market. As a result, the Nintendo GameCube had more first and second party releases than its competitors, whose most successful titles were mainly products of third-party developers.

Xbox

Although the Xbox had the formidable financial backing of Microsoft, it was unable to significantly threaten the dominance of the PlayStation 2 as market leader. However, the Xbox attracted a large fanbase and strong third-party support in the United States and Europe and became a recognizable brand amongst the mainstream. The Xbox Live online service with its centralized model proved particularly successful, prompting Sony to boost the online capabilities of the PlayStation 2. Xbox Live also gave the Xbox an edge over the GameCube, which had a near-total lack of online games. The flagship of Xbox Live was the game Halo 2, which was the best selling Xbox game with over 8 million copies sold worldwide. However, the Xbox failed to gain a following in Japan, with reasons cited including lack of brand recognition, lack of commitment to the console from Japanese publishers and developers, failure of Microsoft staff to fully understand important cultural differences, and ethnocentric preferences of the Japanese public for native products.

Comparison

Worldwide sales standings

ConsoleUnits sold
PlayStation 2155 million
Xbox24 million
GameCube22 million
Dreamcast9.13 million

Other consoles

These consoles were created for the mass market, like the 4 consoles listed above. These, however, are less notable, never saw a worldwide release, and/or have sold particularly poorly, and are therefore listed as 'Other'.

Bits and system power

Bit ratings for consoles largely fell by the wayside after the fifth generation era. The number of "bits" cited in console names referred to the CPU word size, but there was little to be gained from increasing the word size much beyond 32 bits; performance depended on other factors, such as central processing unit speed, graphics processing unit speed, channel capacity, data storage size, and memory speed, latency, and size.
The importance of the number of bits in the modern console gaming market has thus decreased due to the use of components that process data in varying word sizes. Previously, console manufacturers advertised the "n-bit talk" to over-emphasize the hardware capabilities of their system. The Dreamcast and the PlayStation 2 were the last systems to use the term "128-bit" in their marketing to describe their capability.
It is not easy to compare the relative "power" of the different systems. Having a larger CPU word size does not necessarily make one console more powerful than another. Likewise, the operating frequency of a system's CPU is not an accurate measure of performance either, except between systems of the same or similar architecture.
The Microsoft Xbox uses a 32-bit CISC x86 architecture CPU, with an instruction set equal to that of the Coppermine core Mobile Celeron, though it has less cache than the PC equivalent. It has 64 MB RAM and runs at 733 MHz. Because the Pentium 3 introduced SSE, the Xbox also had 128-bit SIMD capabilities. Its NV2A GPU, which is very similar to the GeForce 3 Series of desktop GPUs, makes it the only console in its time with traditional vertex and pixel shaders.
The Nintendo GameCube's IBM Gekko PowerPC CPU runs at 485 MHz, while its "Flipper" graphics processor is comparable to the original ATI Radeon, and it has 43 MB of non-unified memory. The GameCube supports Dolby Pro Logic II.
The PlayStation 2's CPU has a 64-bit core with a 32-bit FPU
coupled to two 128 bit Vector Units, The hybrid R5900 CPU is based on MIPS architecture. The PS2 also has an internal 10 Channel DMA Bus which is fully 128 bits wide. Paths between the Emotion Engine, RAM and the Graphics synthesizer are also 128 bits wide. The PS2's unique hardware arrangement with no less than 10 processing units were difficult to come to grips with. Many developers struggled initially with programming the hardware. The PS2's Graphics Synthesizer has fast dedicated video memory, though it is limited in the amount of data it can hold, The 10 Channel 128 bit wide DMA bus could pump data to GS Memory as fast as the screen could update. Consequently, with the main memory being limited to 32MB, many of the PS2's games have reduced textures compared with versions for other consoles. It also does not have a hardware dedicated transform and lighting unit like the ones found in the Xbox and GameCube GPUs.
However the PS2's design allows a remarkable degree of flexibility and choice. For example, Program control and general arithmetic could be handled by the CPU, while the Vector Units 0 and 1, could provide parallel processing of physics, clipping and transform and lighting to the scene. The Vector units were noted to be so versatile that Shadow of The Colossus used one of the vector units to do full Pixel shading for the fur of the Collossi.
The Dreamcast has a 64-bit double-precision superscalar SuperH-4 RISC Central processing unit core with a 32-bit integer unit using 16-bit fixed-length instructions, a 64-bit data bus allowing a variable width of either 8, 16, 32 or 64-bits, and a 128-bit floating-point bus. The PowerVR 2DC CLX2 chipset uses a unique method of rendering a 3D scene called Tile Based Deferred Rendering : while storing polygons in triangle strip format in memory, the display is split into tiles associated with a list of visibly overlapping triangles onto which, using a process similar to ray tracing, rays are cast and a pixel is rendered from the triangle closest to the camera. After calculating the depths associated with each polygon for one tile row in 1 cycle, the whole tile is flushed to video memory before passing on to render the next tile. Once all information has been collated for the current frame, the tiles are rendered in turn to produce the final image.

Handheld systems

During the sixth generation era, the handheld game console market expanded with the introduction of new devices from many different manufacturers. Nintendo maintained its dominant share of the handheld market with the release in 2001 of the Game Boy Advance, which featured many upgrades and new features over the Game Boy. Two redesigns of this system followed, the Game Boy Advance SP in 2003 and the Game Boy Micro in 2005. Also introduced were the Neo Geo Pocket Color by SNK in 1998 and Bandai's WonderSwan Color, launched in Japan in 1999. South Korean company Game Park introduced its GP32 handheld in 2001, and with it came the dawn of open source handheld consoles. The Game Boy Advance line of handhelds has sold 81.51 million units worldwide as of September 30, 2010.
A major new addition to the market was the trend for corporations to include 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's N-Gage, which was released in 2003 and doubled primarily as a mobile phone. It went through a redesign in 2004 and was renamed the N-Gage QD. A second handheld, the Zodiac from Tapwave, was released in 2004; based on the Palm OS, it offered specialized gaming-oriented video and sound capabilities, but it had an unwieldy development kit due to the underlying Palm OS foundation.
A fairly uncommon handheld of the 6th generation was the vtech V.SMILE Pocket. A handheld version of their V.SMILE home console.
With more and more PDAs arriving during the previous generation, the difference between consumer electronics and traditional computing began to blur and cheap console technology grew as a result. It was said of PDAs that they were "the computers of handheld gaming" because of their multi-purpose capabilities and the increasingly powerful computer hardware that resided within them. This capability existed to move gaming beyond the last generation's 16-bit limitations; however, PDAs were still geared towards the typical businessman, and lacked new, affordable software franchises to compete with dedicated handheld gaming consoles.

Handheld comparison


NameGame Boy Advance / Advance SP / MicroN-Gage / QDTapwave Zodiac
ManufacturerNintendoNokiaTapwave
Console

Pictured left to right: Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, Game Boy Micro

Pictured top to bottom: N-Gage, N-Gage QD
Release datesGame Boy Advance:
Game Boy Advance SP:
Game Boy Micro: 		N-Gage: October 7, 2003
N-Gage QD: May 26, 2004		Zodiac:
Discontinued2006July 26, 2005
Logo
Launch pricesGBA:
GBA SP:
GB Micro:
N-Gage QD:
Zodiac 2:
OSSymbian S60Palm OS
CPU16.8 MHz, 32-bit, ARM7TDMI with embedded memory104 MHz, 32-bit, RISC based on ARM9 series200 MHz, 32-bit, Motorola i.MX1 ARM9 processor
Memory32 kilobyte + 96 kilobyte VRAM, 256 kilobyte WRAM 16 megabyte RAM, 16 megabyte ROM
AudioStereo audio, with:
  • 8-bit DAC, capable of either streaming wave data or outputting wave samples processed and mixed in software
  • Two square wave voices
  • One programmable WS voice
  • One white noise generator
  • Optional sampling through the WS channel
    		• Stereo audio, with:
  • Support for Standard MIDI, SP MIDI and AMR audio
    		• 16-bit PCM stereo
    Interface
  • D-pad
  • Four face buttons
  • Two shoulder buttons
  • D-pad
  • Numbered keypad
  • Music player, Radio and Menu hotkeys
  • Dial and hang up buttons
  • Four other face buttons
  • Microphone
  • Analog stick
  • "Home" button
  • Five other face buttons
  • Two shoulder buttons
  • Bluetooth button
  • Touchscreen
    • DimensionsGBA: 144.5 × 24.5 × 82 mm GBA SP: 84 × 82 × 24.4 mm
    GB Micro: 50 × 101 × 17.2 mm     		N-Gage QD: ' ' '
    N-Gage QD: ' ' '    		 ' ' '
    WeightGBA:
    GBA SP:
    GB Micro:     		N-Gage:
    N-Gage QD'''
    Online serviceN-Gage Arena
    Backward compatibilityGame Boy, Game Boy Color N/AN/A
    Resolutions240 × 160176 × 208480 × 320
    I/O
    Storage3.4 MB internal storage, MMCSD card expansion
    Battery lifeGBA: 15 hours
    GBA SP: 10 hours continuous play with light on, 18 hours with light off
    GB Micro: 5 hours with top brightness and sound, 8 hours with both features on default    		N-Gage: 2 hours continuous play
    N-Gage QD: 4 hours continuous play    		4 hours continuous play, 6 hours of continuous audio player
    Units sold Worldwide: 81.51 million

    Japan: 16.96 million

    Americas: 41.64 million

    Other: 22.91 million    		Worldwide: 3 million Worldwide: 200,000


    Note: First year of release is the first year of the system's worldwide availability.

    Other handhelds

    Sales

    Trends

    Market convergence

    Major publishers, such as Activision, Electronic Arts, and Ubisoft adopted a cross-platform strategy, releasing versions of their games for PC, all major consoles, and in some cases, handhelds as well. The sixth generation was the first to help console and computer software grow closer together as well as outperform the arcade market in features, graphics and business. The Dreamcast, which had an official Windows CE Development Kit to help porting games from PCs to Dreamcast, and the Xbox, which was made from off-the-shelf PC parts and hosted many PC ports, factored into this also.

    Controversial games

    While the sixth generation was not the first to have its share of controversial games, this generation was noted to have extensive criticism by public figures of "objectionable" content in gaming such as sex, crime, violence, profanity, drug use, and social propaganda as well as topics of debate such as religion, politics and economics.
    The sixth generation was also notable because it saw the continuation of lawmakers taking actions against the video game industry. The most famous were Rockstar Games' Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto games facing lawsuits over alleged racial slurs and influencing minors to commit crimes, while ' was briefly given an adult rating and removed from most stores over the availability of an abandoned sex mini-game using the Hot Coffee mod.
    The sixth generation also coincided with the September 11 attacks in New York City and the Pentagon, which had a huge impact on the entertainment industry, including the video game industry; in the subsequent market climate, multiple games were edited in response to the sensitivity surrounding the event. Prior to its release,     ' depicted a submersible mobile fortress hijacked by terrorists destroying a good portion of Manhattan in view of the twin towers. Similarly, several undisclosed modifications were made in Grand Theft Auto III, such as a change to the police cars' color scheme and altered cover art ; Rockstar Games estimates that the changes amounted to 1% in changed content. The Dreamcast game Propeller Arena was never officially released, possibly due to a certain level which was visually very similar to the September 11 attacks.

    Emulation and retro gaming

    Because of the increased computing power of video game consoles and the widespread usage of emulators, the sixth generation saw the rise of console emulation and retro gaming on a vast scale. Many games for older systems were updated with superior graphics or sound and re-released for current consoles. Commonly emulated games included those released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Mega Drive/Genesis, the PlayStation, and the Nintendo 64.
    Also during this generation, the computing power of handheld consoles became capable of supporting games made for some of the earliest gaming consoles and several companies released remakes of classic games for the handhelds. Nintendo introduced a line of NES and SNES games for its Game Boy Advance handheld, including remakes such as Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls and Nintendo's . Also, an increasing number of third-party developers, including Midway Games, Capcom, Namco, Atari, and Sega, released anthology collections of some of their old games. Additionally, many video games and video game series that were originally confined to Japan were released in North America and Europe for the first time.

    Rise of online gaming

    , which in previous generations had been almost an exclusive domain of PC games, became more prominent in video game consoles during this generation. The Dreamcast initiated this change with its built in modem, internet browsing software, and ability to play certain games online. The PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube also offered online gaming, though their approaches and commitment to it varied greatly. The Xbox offered an integrated service called Xbox Live that cost $50 per year and was only compatible with a broadband internet connection. Its ability to connect gamers for online multi-player matches was a considerable factor in allowing the Xbox to gain a foothold in the western market, especially in the first-person shooter genre. The PlayStation 2 left its online gaming service up to each individual game publisher, and though it was free to use, it was not always an ideal experience, especially with games published by small developers. The series was one of the most popular online competitive games for the PS2. The GameCube did not offer online play for any of its first-party titles, with only Sega's Phantasy Star Online series and Homeland making official use of the console's online capabilities. In addition, online capability was not out-of-the-box; an adapter was needed to hook the GameCube to the internet.

    Mergers

    Many game publishing companies with a long established history merged with their competitors: Microsoft bought second-party developer Rare in 2002; Square merged with Enix to form Square Enix in 2003 and then later bought Taito; Sega merged with Sammy to form Sega Sammy Holdings in 2004; Konami bought a majority share of Hudson Soft; Namco merged with Bandai to form Bandai Namco Holdings in 2006.

    Software

    Milestone titles