What a Console Is
A game console is a computer built for one main job: playing games, usually on a television. Unlike a personal computer, it generally has no keyboard, runs no general-purpose programs by default, and is sold as a fixed set of hardware. Everyone who owns a given console has essentially the same machine, which lets developers design games with exact knowledge of what the hardware can do. That predictability is one reason consoles became a major part of the games business.
The First Home Machines
The earliest home game machines, from the early 1970s, were hard-wired. Their circuits were built to produce a specific game, such as a simple bat-and-ball contest, and switches or dials might offer small variations. One system released in 1972 and sold in the United States is widely cited as an early example of a commercial home machine for television games. Because the games were built into the electronics, a player who tired of them had nothing else to play.
Manufacturers soon produced many similar machines, and the market became crowded with products that differed little from each other. A more flexible approach was needed, and it came from using a general-purpose chip.
The Cartridge Idea
Once microprocessors became cheap in the mid-1970s, a console could be built around a small processor that ran whatever program it was given. If the program lived on a removable module, the same machine could play different games. That module was the cartridge.
A typical cartridge contained a circuit board with memory chips holding the game’s program and data, and a set of metal contacts at one end. When the player pushed it into a slot, the contacts connected the memory to the console’s circuits. Several features made this appealing:
- Instant start. The memory on the cartridge was read-only, so the game was available as soon as the power came on, with no loading time.
- Durability. A cartridge was a solid object, tougher than tape or a floppy disk in a child’s hands.
- Simple swapping. Anyone could change games without technical knowledge.
- Control. Because the cartridge format was specific to one console, the manufacturer could keep tight control over who made games for it.
One early console with interchangeable cartridges came out in the mid-1970s. A better-known system followed in 1977 and became hugely popular, with a long list of titles that continued to be released for years. Its hardware was quite limited, and programmers spent a lot of effort working around those limits, a problem tied to the development of sound chips and pixel graphics.
How the Games Fit
Cartridges held a few kilobytes at first, tiny by modern standards. Programs for such systems were often written in assembly language and carefully optimized. In some designs, the console had no memory to store a full picture of the screen, so the program had to supply the display data in step with the television’s scanning beam, which demanded precise timing. Later systems added dedicated graphics hardware that handled sprites and background tiles, giving programmers more breathing room.
Some cartridges later included extra chips to expand a console’s abilities, such as additional processing or a battery-backed memory that saved a player’s progress. This allowed a console to stay on the market longer, because new games could add features that the original hardware lacked.
A Crowded Market and a Downturn
During the early 1980s, many companies made both consoles and games. Sales grew rapidly, then fell sharply in North America around 1983. People who study this period usually point to several causes working together: too many consoles, too many weak or rushed games, confusion among buyers, and competition from home computers. There is no single agreed explanation, and the exact importance of each factor is debated.
The downturn changed how the industry worked. A console maker that arrived afterward, a Japanese company, introduced a system in Japan in 1983 and in other markets a couple of years later. It took a stricter approach to licensing, requiring outside publishers to follow its rules. Many observers believe this helped to rebuild retailer and consumer confidence, though it also gave the platform owner considerable power over which games appeared.
Different Parts of the World
The picture varied by region. In Japan, the console business grew strongly through the 1980s. In Europe, home computers were more popular than consoles for much of the decade, and cassette-based games played a bigger role, as the story of bedroom programmers shows. In the United States, both existed side by side.
The End of the Cartridge Era
Cartridges began to lose ground in the 1990s. Optical discs offered far more storage at a lower cost per copy, which suited games with long recordings of music and video. Disc-based consoles became common in the middle of that decade, although some cartridge systems remained successful for a time because of their fast loading and resistance to damage. Later portable consoles kept using cartridge-like cards for years, and some modern handheld devices still use small plug-in game cards.
Today, downloads have reduced the role of physical media further. Yet the basic idea from the cartridge era survives: a fixed, standardized machine, a library of software, and a business built on the relationship between the two. Many older cartridges are now preserved through careful copying, which allows emulation software to run them, but the original hardware has its own appeal for collectors.