history of gaming 2000's +

At the turn of the millennium Sony's Playstation 2 was released and has sold over 150 million units to this day, the initial launch of Playstation 2 was shaky at best due to manufacturing shortages and the consoles not being available on most store shelves and people having to buy online from direct sources.
Also with the announcement of the Nintendo Gamecube and Microsoft's Xbox on the way things looked bad for the Playstation 2.
But the release of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Both in 2001 shortly after the release dates of the Xbox and Gamecube, Sony used this to their benefit, because both games were announced as PS2 exclusives and release dates revealed before the release of either of the rival consoles became available, a huge chuck of the gaming populous held off on buying other consoles and just waited for these two huge titles to be available.
 

Both of these games did astoundingly well at launch and for the following years to come, GTAIII selling over 14 Million copies to this day, MGS2:SoL sold 7 million copies on PS2 within a few years of its launchand was rated the third highest game on PS2 receiving an average score of 9.6/10 from over 20 critics.

Microsoft's Xbox launch in North america and the then a Year later worldwide was a suprising success for a brand new console series, I believe the reason for this is that the Xbox hardware is superior to the PS2 and Gamecube allowing for more to be done with games and smoother split-screen play. This along with it's launch tile the insanely popular and highly rated Halo: Combat Evolved.
The console has sold over 24 million units in the 4 years it was actually available as it was discontinued in 2006 due to the release of the Xbox 360.
Halo sold over 5 million copies from launch onward, its sequel halo 2 also did remarkable well selling over 6 million copies in the US alone and around another 2 million plus in other areas worldwide, it also received the title of most popular online game having its 5 Million differnt online players putting an astonishing 500 million games under there belts, racking up a total play time of 710 million hours, an this was all done in under 3 years.
the Xbox was a rather chunky console but a fairly cool looking hunk of plastic if you ask me.

Halo sported some impressive visuals for a console release of it's era which was one of the main talking points at the games release and events beforehand.


But halo 2 only two years later was a huge leap in visuals and game-play and also sported a much larger campaign and online play.


Nintendo's Gamecube was the cheapest console of the three but surprisingly its specifications were higher than that of the PS2 and most people don't realise that. The gamecube sold units 21.74million worldwide and had some huge titles: Mario Sunshine, Luigi's mansion, Metroid Prime 1 and 2, Mario Kart Double Dash, Zelda Windwaker, Super Smash bros Melee, Mario part 4 and Resident Evil 4 there are more but thats an idea of what they had. So even though the gamecube sold the least units, it made up for that on its games sales.
For example Super Smash Bros Melee sold 7 million which is 2 million more than the first halo and only 1 million less than halo 2.
For those of you who don't know Super Smash is a 4 player fighting game where an all-star cast of Nintendo characters fight each other using their own unique styles and a array of items across stages from their many games.

Also in 2001 alongside their Gamecube, Nintendo did what they do best and released another hand held game console, this one would be known as the GameBoy Advance (GBA), it was the Successor to the GameBoy colour released years earlier, expect this one actually did full colour rather than that weird half colour thing most GBC games did. It was a monumental success selling around 81.5 million units worldwide, and sporting titles such as Mario bros, Warioland, MarioKart, Fire Emblem, Pokemon and even DOOM.

2004 saw the release of Nintendo's DS hand held console it was apparent they had no intent of allowing anyone else into the handheld market without a fight.
with its dual screen play and lower touch screen the DS was innovative and a huge success with gamers with the original console selling over 150 million units to this day, on top of this it has also had multiple iterations and re-works such as the DS lite, Micro, XL, DSI, DSI XL, and the new 3DS and 3DS XL.

Sony entered the hand held market in 2005 with their launch of the PSP or Playstation Portable, it was fairly successful amounting to around 70 million sales worldwide and having a PSP slim remake.
Sony went in the opposite direction to Nintendo with their console, avoiding gimmicks such as touch screen play and dual screens etc.. instead they made the PSP a powerhouse for its size, it sported games that played with graphical quality that competed with the current consoles that were out at the time.
gotta hand it to Sony the PSP was a Cool looking sleek console in comparison to the rather square and hefty DS.

In 2006 we saw the release of the XBOX 360, which brings us to our current gaming Generation, Along with PS3 an Nintendo WII a year later in 07, all three consoles have been a huge success in their own rights, Sony for the invention of Blu-Ray which is amazing and the future of gaming and movies, the WII for having the first properly working and successful motion control system thats actually fun and enjoyable and Xbox for having some of the best exclusive titles we've seen in the last 6 years, such as the Gears of War trilogy, Halo 3/ODST/Reach, Left 4 Dead, the Mass Effect Trilogy and Bioshock before Sony paid a huge cash sum to get it on their console an boy was it a bad port when it did happen.