128-bit era
The 128-bit era is the current video game era, which features the Nintendo GameCube, Sony Playstation 2, and Microsoft Xbox. The Sega Dreamcast was the first console of the era and turned out to be Sega's fourth and final video game console, discontinued in late 2001. This was due to Sega being unable to fully recover from past failures. This era also saw Microsoft's first console, Nintendo's fourth and Sony's second.Nintendo continues to dominate the Handheld console market by releasing two new versions of the Game Boy, the highly upgraded Game Boy Advance in 2001 and the GameBoy Advance SP in 2003. An additional Nintendo handheld called the Nintendo DS will soon be released.
Bit ratings for consoles largely fell by the wayside after the 16-bit era, with the notable exception of the Nintendo 64. The reason for this is twofold: The bit ratings had signified the possible color depth of the console. The also-misnomered "32/64-bit era" consoles effectively maxed out the number of colors that can be distinguished by the human eye, at least on standard televisions. Second, the capabilities of 32-bit hardware were significant enough to be the backbone of consoles to this day. Thefore the 128-bit era marked the end of the corrolation between bits and graphical power in consoles, when a potential consumer could predict graphical power of a console by examining the bit rating alone.
Many critics call this a dark era of video games. Many games of this era were panned by critics. The 128-bit era features topics of debate, such as video game criticisms. This is also an era when NES and SNES ROMs became easier to find (see Emulation). It also a time when several video games or video game series that were once confined to Japan come to North America, notably Fire Emblem and Nintendo Wars. The enhanced remake idea, which was devised by the Mario franchise (with Super Mario All-Stars) during the 16-bit era and "anthology collections", were popularized during this era.
The era to follow this one is the 256-bit era, set to begin in late 2005 when the three current hardware game companies will release their next-generation consoles.
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2 Video game franchises established during the 128-bit era 3 See Also |
Consoles of the 128-bit era
Video game franchises established during the 128-bit era
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