Tennis for Two The first known concept for an electronic game was a device called the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device patented in the United States by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann in 1948

The success of Metal Gear Solid (1998) for the PlayStation led to its creator/director Hideo Kojima to be included in the list of "Top 10 people to shape the world". With this much success, Metal Gear Solid was named as part of variety of top game lists, later becoming a high-selling series among Sony's platforms.

At one point, the machine stopped working because it was overstuffed with coins, and when Bushnell learned about this, he decided to sell it himself instead, a departure from Atari’s business model, which was to create the games and then license them to other companies for manufacturing and distribution.

Through parts obtained from their employer, Ampex Corporation, Bushnell and Dabney constructed a custom dedicated system that played Spacewar! called Computer Space and then entered into a deal with a small coin-op company called Nutting Associates to create a production run of 1,500 units.

The game became more complex as Russell’s friends continued to modify it, with the most important additions being accurate gravity effects centered around a sun and a hyperspace function that would teleport the ship to a random part of the screen. DEC decided to distribute Spacewar! as a demo program with each PDP computer it sold, exposing university students across the country to the game.

CD-ROM drives were first seen in this generation, as add-ons for the PC Engine in 1988 and the Mega Drive in 1991. Basic 3D graphics entered the mainstream with flat-shaded polygons enabled by additional processors in game cartridges like Virtua Racing and Star Fox.

the pinball industry began in 1931 when David Gottlieb created the Baffle Ball machine, which was the second pinball machine but the first to be successfully mass produced. The pinball market really took off in the 1950s during the post-World War II American economic boom.

The Wii is Nintendo's smallest home console to date; it measures 44 mm (1.73 in) wide, 157 mm (6.18 in) tall and 215.4 mm (8.48 in) deep in its vertical orientation, the near-equivalent of three DVD cases stacked together. The included stand measures 55.4 mm (2.18 in) wide, 44 mm (1.73 in) tall and 225.6 mm (8.88 in) deep, The system weighs 1.2 kg (2.7 lb), which makes it the lightest of the three major seventh generation consoles.

The use of vector graphics allowed designers to animate many more objects on the screen at the same time at a sharper resolution than raster graphics allowed at the time as well as create better-defined shapes and even wire frame 3D models. Vector graphics were pioneered by Larry Rosenthal, who wrote his master’s thesis on Spacewar! and created a vector graphics system that would allow the game to be accurately modeled in the arcade.

The shape of the protagonist came to Iwatani in a pizzeria when he removed the first slice from a pizza and was struck by the resulting circle with a missing slice that looked like a mouth. Both protagonist and game were named Puck-Man in reference to the shape, but for the U.S. release, Namco was afraid vandals might change the "P" to an "F" and gave the game the title it is more widely recognized by today, Pac-Man.

By the end of 1992, Sony and Nintendo reached a deal whereby the "Sony Play Station" would still have a port for SNES games, but Nintendo would own the rights and receive the bulk of the profits from the games, and the SNES would continue to use the Sony-designed audio chip. However, Sony decided in early 1993 to begin reworking the "Play Station" concept to target a new generation of hardware and software. As part of this process the SNES cartridge port was dropped and the space between the names was removed.

Many analysts predicted a close three-way matchup between the PS2 and competitors Microsoft's Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube (GameCube being the cheapest of the three consoles and had an open market of games); however, the release of several blockbuster games during the 2001 holiday season maintained sales momentum and held off the PS2's rivals.

Sony officially unveiled the PlayStation 3 to the public on May 16, 2005, during the E3 2005 conference. A functional version of the system was not present there nor at the Tokyo Game Show in September 2005, although demonstrations (such as Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots were held at both events on devkits and comparable PC hardware. Video footage based on the predicted PlayStation 3 specifications was also shown (e.g. Mobile Suit Gundam).

Despite the console's considerable computing power and its formidable multimedia capabilities, sales have consistently lagged behind its main competitor, the Nintendo DS. After the release of a remodeled, slimmer, and lighter version of the PlayStation Portable, appropriately titled Slim and Lite, in early September 2007, sales quadrupled in the United Kingdom the following week and increased by nearly 200% in North America for the month of October.

Rather than being confined to a small selection of games included in the box, consumers could now amass libraries of game cartridges. Retailing for $19.95 each, the cartridges included sports games, board games, educational games, and a couple of primitive shooting games. The system was not particularly successful, but the concept quickly caught on with electronics companies.

In the new consoles, the gamepad took over joysticks, paddles, and keypads as the default game controller included with the system. The gamepad design of an 8 direction Directional-pad (or D-pad for short) with 2 or more action buttons became the standard.

Space Invaders introduced the high score, providing a new social dimension to the video game as players tried to top each others' performances (Space Invaders did not, however, allow the player to enter his initials next to his score; this practice began with the 1979 Exidy game Star Fire). A slow seller at first in Japan, the game eventually sold over 100,000 units and caused a phenomenon as small stores switched to housing rows of Space Invader cabinets

At launch, the Xbox 360 was available in two configurations: the "Xbox 360 Pro" package, priced at US$399, and the "Xbox 360 Core", priced at US$299. The original shipment of the Premium version included a cut-down version of the Media Remote, but this was removed from later shipments. The Elite package was launched later at US$479, and the "Xbox 360 Arcade" replaced the "Xbox 360 Core" in October 2007 at US$279.