From Pixels to TV – A Journey Since 1972
These days, we’re used to seeing our consoles as machines capable of handling multiple tasks—though they still don’t make us coffee. We can listen to music, play movies, and browse the internet. But if we look back, these machines had just one purpose: running video games on our living room TVs.
1972 marked the birth of the first home console in the world: the Magnavox Odyssey. Inside its transistor-filled, resistor-and-capacitor-packed guts lay the heart of what consoles would become. Magnavox’s machine introduced the cartridge as the medium for games, and in total, 28 titles were released for it.
The Odyssey was fairly successful, but the real explosion came with Atari’s 2600. The American company dominated households in the late '70s and early '80s with its machine, which had built-in games and also used cartridges.
The Odyssey and Atari 2600 defined what a console should be, but they quickly fell behind technologically.
Nintendo, which until then had focused on other ventures, took notice of these machines that kept people glued to their TVs. That’s how they burst into the industry with their own console—the Famicom, or as we know it, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
The cartridge was always the star of these machines—fast and offering instant access to the game stored inside. Major consoles kept using this format, and it seemed far from becoming obsolete.
The Compact Disc Era
But all good things come to an end, and the cartridge’s downfall was inevitable. It had two big flaws: high production costs and limited storage space. Soon, the Compact Disc (CD) arrived to retire the old cartridges.
The first to take the risk of adding a CD drive was NEC with their PC Engine (aka TurboGrafx-16). It was an 8-bit system but had a 16-bit video chip. Games mostly loaded via HuCards, but an add-on turned it into the first CD-based console—which helped it sell big in Japan, especially thanks to certain adult-themed games (we know how our Japanese friends are).
Sega, already in the market with the Mega Drive, was eager to expand its 16-bit machine’s capabilities. After some secret development, they released the Mega CD, the first major add-on for a console. It boosted the Mega Drive’s features—though not as dramatically as hoped. It could (barely) play real videos and promised more for games, but in reality, few titles delivered.
Meanwhile, Nintendo wasn’t sitting idle. They commissioned Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo—but they also made the same deal with Philips, leading Sony to back out. This seemingly small conflict became a turning point for the industry.
Nintendo, seeing CD-based add-ons weren’t taking off, scrapped their own project. Philips got to use Nintendo’s biggest licenses (Super Mario and Zelda) for their CD-i—a multimedia hybrid that was more of a disaster than a console. (Miyamoto still has nightmares about those games.) Sony, on the other hand, hit the jackpot: they blew everything away with the PlayStation.
Other consoles tried to jump on the CD bandwagon in the early '90s—Panasonic’s 3DO, Atari’s Jaguar, and Philips’ CD-i—but none really succeeded. Meanwhile, the PlayStation launched like a star and never looked back.
Sony dominated the next generation, facing off against veterans Sega and Nintendo, who started making baffling mistakes. Sega built a powerful console (Saturn) but made its architecture a nightmare for developers. Nintendo, with the N64, stubbornly stuck with cartridges, losing most of the third-party support they had with the SNES.
CDs ruled the '90s, allowing consoles to do things cartridges never could. Consoles weren’t just for gaming anymore—they could play high-quality music and even movies (via Video-CD).
The DVD Revolution
The next step in optical media was the DVD. Nearly identical in appearance to CDs but with vastly more storage, it was a no-brainer for Sony’s PlayStation 2.
The leap wasn’t as dramatic as the 16-bit to 32-bit shift, but Sony marketed the PS2 as a multimedia powerhouse—capable of playing high-quality movies. This move took consoles out of the "game room" and into the living room, a brilliant strategy.
Nintendo finally embraced optical media with the GameCube, but they used their own proprietary mini-discs (GameCube Optical Discs). Sega, with its last console, the Dreamcast, went with GD-ROMs (similar to CDs but with double the capacity). Both companies oddly limited their consoles’ multimedia potential.
But this generation had a surprise: Microsoft entered the fray with the Xbox. The first true multimedia console, it was a great DVD player out of the box and could even function as a media center (with some unofficial tweaks). It was also the first console with built-in Ethernet and launched Xbox Live, paving the way for modern online gaming.
Blu-ray & Streaming
Now we reach the next generation: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. Let’s set aside Nintendo’s Wii—it ignored everything but gaming, sticking to its business model.
This generation will be remembered for online gaming’s rise (thanks to PSN and Xbox Live) and digital stores offering movies and music, not just games.
The PS3 bet on Blu-ray, a high-capacity HD format that slowly took over video rentals and stores. Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 stuck with DVD (and briefly flirted with HD-DVD, which lost to Blu-ray). Instead, Microsoft focused on streaming, partnering with TV providers to offer services like Canal+ and Imagenio directly through the console.
The Future: Cloud & All-in-One Entertainment
The trend now is cloud-based content, HD streaming, and TV integration—likely the pillars of the next generation.
Consoles were born to entertain, starting with just games. Then came CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays, expanding into movies and music. Now, a console isn’t just for gaming—it’s the one device controlling all your home entertainment, right from your couch.
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