I was born on November 24 2006, five days after the launch of the Nintendo Wii in America, seven days after the PS3 launched, a year and two days after the Xbox 360 launched, and seven months after my birth, the iPhone 1 came out. Now, 17 years later, we have consoles capable of more than what was even imaginable years ago, and phones that are not only more powerful but also thinner and slicker in design.
In 2012, Nintendo evolved from the Wii to the Wii U. It may not have lit the world on fire sales-wise, but it had some solid power behind it and did have some incredible titles such as “Breath Of The Wild”, “Splatoon”, “Pikmin 3”, and “Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze”. However, its lack of sales drew from one monumental flaw: the advertising. For the first few years, numerous people thought it was just a Wii accessory and thus was not needed. After a while, the Wii U’s advertising was just confusing and fairly cringey to many, focusing on lackluster comedy skits.
In 2013, Sony released the PlayStation 4, the newest successor in the PlayStation line. It had 1080p 60 fps support and had phenomenal titles like “Gran Turismo” and “God Of War”. Its reveal came after a fairly bad reveal for the Xbox One, and Sony took advantage of that by clearly showing that the PS4 could easily do what the Xbox One could not, including playing rental games and working offline.
A few days after the PS4 launched in 2013, Microsoft launched the Xbox One to fairly mediocre acclaim. The console was decently powerful but was bulky, needed internet even to play single-player games, and had messy DRM (digital rights management) systems for renting games. However, it did have some good titles like “Forza” and “Gears Of War”.
In 2017, Nintendo launched the Nintendo Switch, and it blew up. Not only was it revolutionary by being an HD handheld that also could dock to a TV, but it aimed for a more mature audience rather than children. It launched with “The Legend Of Zelda Breath Of The Wild”, which was the first open-world Zelda title, and it did numbers for the Switch’s sales.
2020 was the launch of the Xbox Series S and X, and compared to the One, it had a monumental launch. Out of the box, it supported all Xbox One games and offered free upgrades for some of them. It supported 120fps and 4k video output and was the most powerful console in the world at launch. It featured some absolute graphical showcases like “Halo Infinite” and “Forza Horizon 5”, which look absolutely gorgeous.
A few days after the Series X launched, Sony released the PlayStation 5, which is Sony’s new generation console. Like the Xbox, it supports 4k 120 fps output and full backwards compatibility with the previous generation. Featuring games like “Ratchet and Clank”, “Horizon”, and “God Of War Ragnarok”, it blew up in sales, overshadowing the Xbox Series X even though it was the more powerful system, simply because of its phenomenal library of titles.
In 17 short years, technology has rapidly advanced to levels nobody thought of in the past, which is an incredible feat.