The mid-point of the 1990s brings us to the third and final generation covered in this book: Generation Three, the 3D generation. This generation saw the rise of several technologies that have been with us ever since: advanced 3D graphics, optical discs, and a Microsoft Windows suited to more than just spreadsheets. It saw the collapse of the “sick man of the videogame industry,” Sega, and the final console to bear their name. It also saw the introduction of two new console contenders who rapidly rose to prominence: Sony and Microsoft. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this generation experienced the first major wave of internet adoption across America, a decisive cultural and sociological phenomenon that radically altered the videogame industry and its culture in ways we are still feeling today.
Both the beginning and end of this generation are dramatic. In 1995, Nintendo and Sega were firmly entrenched, seemingly impervious to upstart contenders. They had easily kept their competitors at bay, including the wave of CD-ROM consoles introduced in the early 1990s, which included Philips’ CD-i (1991), Commodore’s CDTV (1991), and Panasonic’s 3DO Interactive Multiplayer (1993). The systems they introduced this generation, the Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast, were both quite capable machines with exciting possibilities for both gamers and developers.
The real threat to the status quo came from two sources: Sony and Microsoft. Although the console market had long been dominated by 2D games—especially platform games like Super Mario Bros., overhead-perspective action adventures like The Legend of Zelda, and beat-’em-up games like Street Fighter II, Sony gambled that the future was in fully 3D games similar to Frederick Raynal’s Alone in the Dark (1992) and id Software’s Doom (1993). Compared to their 2D contemporaries, these games may have looked crude and blocky, but they were also much more immersive. These weren’t games you so much looked at as through, perceiving the action in a way that felt more realistic than even the best 2D artists could match.
Since the introduction of the Atari 2600 in 1977 (see Chapter 1.3), one of the major factors distinguishing gaming consoles from computers was cartridge-based storage. These plastic devices were usually read-only, meaning that users couldn’t easily modify or copy their contents. The advantages were clear: less piracy and greater control, especially once Nintendo developed and patented its lockout technology, which prevented rival manufacturers from flooding the market with their own games (although they certainly tried). They were also substantially faster—there was no waiting around for a game to load. What nine-year-old kid would be content sitting around for five minutes watching a loading screen? Even though cartridges were much more expensive to produce than floppy disks or cassette tapes, these advantages were too strong to ignore.
CD-ROM technology, however, was something different. At the time, most floppy disks could store up to 1.44 MB. Games were shipped on as many as a dozen different disks, which users would either install to a hard drive (a process that could take hours), or, worse, swap out the disks during gameplay—an aggravation, to be sure. By contrast, a CD-ROM could hold hundreds of megabytes without issue—and were cheaper to boot! While loading times were still an issue, these optical discs were much more difficult for consumers to copy illegally than floppies had been, at least for a time. Still, Sony shrewdly developed its own copy protection measures for its console, a step that Sega did not take with most of its CD-based systems.
Sony’s gamble on 3D graphics and optical storage paid off. The PlayStation’s 3D graphics made Sega’s Saturn system look primitive by comparison, since it required far more effort and resources to do what the PlayStation did by default. By the time Sega was able to launch the more 3D-capable Dreamcast, they had lost too much momentum to catch up, caught between the high profile releases of Sony’s first two consoles. Nintendo was quicker to adopt powerful 3D graphics, but stubbornly stuck to cartridges with its Nintendo 64. Thus, neither company realized the advantage of embracing both 3D and optical storage the way Sony did—a failure that the upstart company leveraged to the fullest possible advantage, ensuring that their PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles would dominate the competition.
In the computer world, the DOS era was coming to an end. The previous generation had witnessed the rise of the GUI, or graphical-user interface—the mouse, windows, and icon-driven interface we are so familiar with today. Much of this technology had been developed by Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research Institute and Alan Kay of Xerox PARC, but it was commercialized by Apple, whose introduction of the Macintosh in 1985 was a huge leap forward for home computing. Later machines from Commodore and Atari further popularized the GUI by offering lower-cost computers, but, despite all of their advances, could not seriously compete against the ubiquity of machines running Microsoft’s DOS.
When Microsoft finally began getting serious about GUIs in the early 1990s, it was hardly revolutionary. The early versions of Windows were basically just extensions to DOS rather than a full operating system. It wasn’t until the development of Windows 95 that PC owners could at last make the transition to a fully integrated product. Windows 95 was finally able to replace DOS as the dominant operating system, introducing countless millions of computer users to the user friendliness of GUI-based computing. Microsoft also developed the first version of DirectX around the same time, a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that made life much easier for game developers targeting the platform. While the bulk of today’s high-profile gaming attention is still focused on the console market (and increasingly smartphones and tablets), the Windows platform continues to enjoy broad and diverse support as competing systems continue to come and go.
In 2001, the Xbox became the first major American console since Atari’s ill-fated Jaguar in 1993 to seriously challenge the Japanese dominance of the market. Spearheaded by a superb new franchise, Halo, Microsoft’s Xbox brought back much-needed diversity to the industry—and also provided an attractive option for many Windows game developers. As its title suggests, the Xbox was based on DirectX, making it easier than ever for developers to make the transition from computer to console development.