Just stumbled over this nice overview of almost every gaming console in existence, organized in a chronological order: The Evolution of Gaming Consoles

It does get preachy near the end, and the newest console's specs are borderline advertising, but the general idea is kind of nice and you can still learn a lot of things. I, for example, wouldn't have known that the Playsation was released in 1994! My guess would have been a lot later.

Damn! They almost made it through the list without using the stupid 'generation' paradigm, making it a recommendable list (if questionable with regards to some technical statements) up until that point. And then they spoil it in the last steps


That's because that number refers to the Japanese launch. It appeared in mid/late 1995 in the rest of the world.

I never got that whole 'generation' thing: Is there really that much of a difference between the Playstation 2 and 3? Or now 4? The span of a generation (if you even want to define them in the first place) should be a lot longer… But than it's a quick and easy way to know that your hardware is 'dated'.

Still it's nice to have all(?) consoles in one big overview. Just cut it after 2005 or so, and it is a really fine diagram.



Well my guess would have been at leat 1996, if not even 1997. 1994 seems like such a long time, hey it's turning 20 next year!

Well, you know how it goes: The release of a new system usually isn't all that important as it takes some time to really get a lot of mindshare. That only happens when a critical mass of owners is reached and when a decent number of really great games has been released. This usually does not happen over night.