Crash Course Games

Playstation and More Immersive Video Games (1x9)

Air date: Jun 04, 2016

So by the mid-90s the video game industry was once again booming and this attracted the attention of the Japanese electronics giant Sony. In 1994, Sony introduced their Playstation console which successfully coupled cutting edge technologies with some great games. But Nintendo and Sega weren’t just sitting around. In the 90’s we would see the introduction of the Sega Saturn and eventually the Sega Dreamcast as well as Nintendo’s immensely popular Nintendo 64. And with this new hardware came a new era of immersive games. Games were going 3D, and with the introduction of CD’s, the size of games increased dramatically allowing for much longer and complex storytelling. Local multi-player and split screen games also became popular during this time as consoles such like Nintendo 64 were now powerful enough to support these kinds of social games. And games on the PC were becoming more immersive as first person shooters began to flourish on the platform. But Sega saw many failed launches in the 90s due to poor marketing and some poor games. By the end of the 90’s the industry had lost confidence in Sega and even its revolutionary Dreamcast could not keep the company competitive in the hardware space, but it wouldn’t be long before a new player would take Sega’s place. Next week we’re going to talk about Microsoft’s X-Box.