Fifth generation 1993-1997

In 1993 Atari made a surprising re-entry to the game console market with the technologically advanced Jaguar (Schilling 2003, p. 12). It was inexpensive but there were only a few games and they were not too good. Even the rare good games such as Tempest 2000 and Alien vs. Predator could not save Jaguar (Kent 2001, p. 489). It was discontinued in 1996 (DeMaria and Wilson 2004, p. 278).

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In 1994 (in Japan, in 1995 in the rest of the world) Sega again launched a new console, the CD- based Saturn, but the game Virtua Fighter was the real star of the day (Kent 2001, p. 501). It was not packed with the console but as many game copies as consoles were still sold (p. 502). The competitor was Sony‘s PlayStation, but Saturn was more popular (ibid.) Saturn was the first Internet-enabled console, which proved slightly premature (DeMaria and Wilson 2004, p. 282).

In the early 1990s Sony and Nintendo had entered into a contract to create a CD-peripheral to the SNES. As the deal fell through Sony decided to make a CD-based console, PlayStation, on their own (DeMaria and Wilson 2004, p. 283). Initially Sega Saturn was more popular but eventually Sony PlayStation‘s market share increased. By 1999, PlayStation had a 55% market share in the USA and a 70% market share in Japan (Aoyama and Izushi 2003, p. 428). The rise of PlayStation is due to their content strategy. Sony negotiated an exclusive six-month deal for Mortal Kombat III ensuring good sales in the period after the launch (Kent 2001, p. 506). Sony also signed a deal with Electronic Arts and convinced several other game developers to produce solely PlayStation titles (Schilling 2003, p. 12). Another wise content move was the release of Lara Croft by Eidos exclusively for PlayStation and PC (DeMaria and Wilson 2004, p. 286). Moreover, the price of PlayStation at $299 was more attractive than Saturn‘s $399 price (Kent 2001, p. 516).

In the meantime Nintendo struggled with its delayed new console Ultra 64 (Kent 2001, p. 516).

Finally in 1996, after more than two years of announcements, Nintendo launched the Nintendo 64 console (Schilling 2003, p. 12). Super Mario 64 was the lead game for Nintendo 64 and, according to Kent (2001, p. 530), the console release had been delayed in order to perfect the game. This was the game in which Mario switched from 2D to 3D. Another important 3D title was Legend of Zelda:

Ocarina of Time (1998), both in-house productions. Nintendo 64 had trouble in attracting game developers (Poole 2000, p. 5) because it was still based on cartridges instead of the dominant CD technology. Every N64 game title reached best-seller status because of a limited selection. Saturn and PlayStation game sales were spread across five times as many game titles. (Kent 2001, p. 539) Nintendo 64 first sold at $250 (Kent 2001, p. 531) but as PlayStation‘s price was cut to $199 both Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn followed (Kent 2001, pp. 531-532). In August 1997 the market shares were Nintendo 64 40%, Sony PlayStation 47% and Sega 12% (Kent 2001, p. 558).

In addition to the three giants Sega Saturn, Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64, the fifth generation included several multiplayer consoles. Multiplayers were devices designed as living room entertainment centres capable of playing audio and photo CDs in addition to playing games on CD- ROM. Probably the best known of these was the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer by Panasonic. Other competitors included Apple Bandai Pippin and Pioneer‘s Laser Active. The latter introduced laser disks as a game medium. The fifth generation multiplayers also competed with the fourth generation equivalents Commodore CDTV and Philips CD-i. The multiplayers were expensive devices compared to the mainstream game consoles and pricing was also a method to position a high-end adult product in contrast to juvenile game consoles. 3DO Interactive Multiplayer launched at 700 dollars, Apple Bandai Pippin at 600 dollars and Pioneer LaserActive at 1,000 dollars while the consoles cost approximately 300 dollars.

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The fifth generation devices were divided between cartridge and CD as the game medium. In addition to the Nintendo 64, the handhelds Nintendo Virtual Boy, Sega Nomad and Tiger Game.Com relied on cartridges, whereas the other consoles were CD-based. Exceptions to this included the Pioneer LaserActive with laser disks and Atari‘s Jaguar with both cartridge and CD ports. The fifth generation is labelled the 32-bit era, seven of the 13 devices actually being 32-bit.

Atari Jaguar and Nintendo 64 were 64-bit. The handheld Tiger Game.Com and Bandai‘s Playdia for children were only 8-bit.

The truecolour of 16.8 million colours became a standard feature in fifth generation consoles, as is shown in Figure 9. However, there have subsequently been several devices with a much lower colour count. These devices are usually handhelds in which technological advancement lags behind that of consoles. This is due to the smaller size and limited battery power of the handheld devices.

Figure 9. Number of colours in each device, by generation, logarithmic scale.

Once the truecolour level was achieved the development efforts in graphics took a turn in a different direction. As graphics were now 3D instead of 2D, the relevant performance metric was rendering capability in polygons per second. PlayStation was able to render 360,000 polygons per second, which marked a change in the fundamentals of digital games (Mäyrä 2008, p. 94). Sega Saturn rendered 500,000 polygons per second, but Sega had decided to render quadrilaterals instead of triangles, which made game programming challenging and many games ended up unable to benefit from the substantial rendering capability. Nintendo 64 rendered 100,000 polygons per second.

Japan continued to dominate as the bestselling PlayStation and N64 were both Japanese.

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On the peripheral front the fifth generation saw the first dance mat developed for home use. In the late 1990s Konami introduced music and rhythm games and the most successful of these was the 1998 Dance Dance Revolution, which included a dance mat (Mäyrä 2008, p. 142).