The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International. It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-selling single computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 12.5 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595. Preceded by the VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes(65,536 bytes) of RAM. With support for multicolor sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware.
The history of video games began in the 1950s and 1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframes. Spacewar! was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student hobbyists in 1962 as one of the first such games on a video display. The first consumer video game hardware was released in the early 1970s. The first home video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, and the first arcade video games were Computer Space and Pong. After its home console conversions, numerous companies sprang up to capture Pong's success in both the arcade and the home by cloning the game, causing a series of boom and bust cycles due to oversaturation and lack of innovation.
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.
The video game crash of 1983 was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality. Waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers also played a role. Home video game revenue peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985. The crash abruptly ended what is retrospectively considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. To a lesser extent, the arcade video game market also weakened as the golden age of arcade video games came to an end.
The TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A are home computers released by Texas Instruments in 1979 and 1981, respectively. The TI-99 series competed against home computers such as the Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 400/800, and VIC-20.
The video game industry is the tertiary and quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the development, marketing, distribution, monetization and consumer feedback of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide.
Full-motion video (FMV) is a video game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files to display action in the game. While many games feature FMVs as a way to present information during cutscenes, games that are primarily presented through FMVs are referred to as full-motion video games or interactive movies.
A home video game console is a video game console that is designed to be connected to a display device, such as a television, and an external power source as to play video games. Home consoles are generally less powerful and customizable than personal computers, designed to have advanced graphics abilities but limited memory and storage space to keep the units affordable. While initial consoles were dedicated units with only a few games fixed into the electronic circuits of the system, most consoles since support the use of swappable game media, either through game cartridges, optical discs, or through digital distribution to internal storage.
Video game development is the process of creating a video game. It is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface, and writing. Each of those may be made up of more specialized skills; art includes 3D modeling of objects, character modeling, animation, visual effects, and so on. Development is supported by project management, production, and quality assurance. Teams can be many hundreds of people, a small group, or even a single person.
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry.
Kingsoft GmbH was a German video game company based in Aachen. The company was founded in 1982 by Fritz Schäfer out of his parents' house in Mulartshütte (Roetgen) to sell his chess simulation game Boss, which he developed the year before. Kingsoft expanded into third-party publishing in 1983, starting with Galaxy by Henrik Wening. Most of their games were released for computers developed by Commodore International, predominantly the Commodore 64, Commodore 16 and later Amiga, and were usually based on other company's titles for different platforms. Kingsoft moved to Aachen in 1987 and established a distribution service before ceasing publishing in favour of distribution in 1993. The company was acquired in March 1995 by Electronic Arts, who retired the Kingsoft name later that year.
The United Kingdom has the largest video game sector in Europe. By revenue, the UK had the second largest video game market in Europe in 2022 after Germany, and the sixth largest globally. By sales, it is Europe's largest market, having overtaken Germany in 2022. The UK video game market was worth £7.16 billion in 2021, a 2% increase over the previous year.
The video game industry in Australia is worth $4.21 billion annually as of 2022, inclusive of traditional retail and digital sales. A report in 2022 by Austrade estimated that 3,228 Australians worked in the video game industry. In the fiscal year 2016–17, revenue from Australian game developers was approximately $118.5 million, 80 percent of which was from overseas sales.
The Cottage is an adventure video game that was initially made available in 1978 for the DEC-10 mainframe computer Oden in Stockholm, and later published by Scandinavian PC Systems for IBM PCs in 1986 in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and English. It was the first publicly available Swedish adventure game and one of the first commercial Swedish video games.
Fatshark AB is a Swedish video game development studio based in Stockholm. The studio is located in Stockholm. Fatshark acted as a subcontractor for several AAA titles for PC and consoles, and the studio also develops its own games. In January 2021, Tencent acquired majority control of the studio.
Brothers Tim and Chris Stamper are British entrepreneurs who founded the video game companies Ultimate Play the Game and Rare. They first worked together on arcade conversion kits, which were licensed to companies, but later became developers for the ZX Spectrum home computer in the early 1980s. Chris programmed the games, while Tim designed the graphics. They found success as Ultimate with games including Jetpac and Knight Lore. After reverse engineering the Nintendo Entertainment System and deciding to shift their focus to console development, the brothers founded Rare in the mid-1980s. They became Nintendo's first major Western developer, for whom they developed licensed games and ports. Over the next two decades, Rare enjoyed a close relationship with Nintendo and developed multiple major titles for the company, including Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye 007. Microsoft acquired Rare in 2002, and the brothers left the company in 2007. After spending several years out of the public eye, the brothers are currently planning new ventures.
Stadia was a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Google. Known in development as Project Stream, the service debuted through a closed beta in October 2018, and publicly launched in November 2019. The service was to compete with Sony's PlayStation Plus cloud streaming, Nvidia's GeForce Now, Amazon's Luna, and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming. Stadia initially received a mixed reception from reviewers, with most criticism directed at its limited library of games and lack of promised features. Google had initially intended to develop in-house games in addition to hosting games produced by third parties, but abandoned this plan in February 2021, shutting down its studios. The service continued to sell third party games, and Google offered the game-streaming technology as a white-label product. Google announced in September 2022 that it would be shutting down Stadia; the service went offline permanently on January 18, 2023, at 11:59 pm PST.
Poland is a major video game market and home to one of the largest video game industries in the world. In 2022, Poland became the world’s fourth largest exporter of video games and Polish publicly-traded gaming companies were worth over €12 billion. The game studios in the country employ around 10,000 people and release almost 500 new games annually.
