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128-bit era

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The 128-bit era is the sixth generation of video game consoles and 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 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 Nintendo's fourth console, Sony's second, and Microsoft's first.

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. The Nintendo DS is planned for release in November 2004.

This era has also seen many handheld consoles from other manufacturers. These are Sony's first handheld game console, the PSP, to be launched in late 2004 to early 2005; the Gizmondo from Tiger Telematics, to be launched by the end of 2004; and the PalmOS-based Zodiac from Tapwave, released in 2004. However, as these are arriving at the end of the current generation, it is unlikely that major changes in the market will be clear before the next generation begins in late 2005 to early 2006.

The 128-bit era features topics of debate, such as video game criticisms, and the video game controversy is been believed to be reaching its peak. This is also an era when NES and SNES ROM images 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 128-bit era is currently drawing to a close, with the PlayStation 2 seeming to be the leader in sales for this era. The Seventh generation era of consoles will follow this era and is set to begin in late 2005 when the three current hardware game companies will release their next-generation consoles.

Table of contents
1 Notes on era naming
2 Consoles of the 128-bit era
3 Video game franchises established during the 128-bit era
4 See Also

Notes on era naming

Bit ratings for consoles largely fell by the wayside after the 16-bit era, with the notable exception of the Nintendo 64. The number of "bits" cited in console names referred to the CPU word size, but there was little to be gained from increasing the word size much beyond 32 or 64 bits - performance depended on more varied factors, such as processor clock speed, bandwidth and memory size. The current era is often referred to as the "128 bit era" which was encouraged by video game manufactures and media, and is misleading. The Dreamcast, known as the first of the 128-bit consoles, has a 64-bit GPU, CPU, and data bus, although the geometry sub-processor GPU can perform internal math on 128-bit words. This system is in fact more or less identical to the N64, known as part of the 64-bit generation. The PS2's CPU is known as the "128-bit emotion engine" but has a 64-bit core; the Graphics Synthesizer has a 2560-bit DRAM bus.

Consoles of the 128-bit era

Video game franchises established during the 128-bit era

See Also


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