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There are virtually no limits to mobile gaming fun on smartphones.
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From American universities to the arcades, then from the arcades to the games consoles in the living room and finally, thanks to increasingly portable devices, always available, mobile and everywhere. From Pong to Pokémon Go: experience the development of today's mobile gaming level by level by level.
Unlimited entertainment in your pocket - today, mobile gaming is an industry worth billions. It was a long road before electronic gaming culture made the leap to smartphones. But let's start with:
In 1946, the first computer game for a tube computer was developed by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann.
Strongly dependent on the further development of computer technology, the first, graphically still quite simple computer games such as Spacewar! were created on mainframe computers at American universities and thus remained the preserve of a lucky few in a scientific setting.
When it suddenly became possible for a wider audience to control objects on a screen at the beginning of the 1970s, it was revolutionary. Thanks to mass-produced and relatively inexpensive television technology, gaming machines were developed that were accessible to the public for the first time in coin-operated form. The first successful video game was Pong, created by Atari founder Nolan Bushell.
This was the starting signal for rapid development. With the implementation of the highly successful arcade game Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 Video Computer System, the breakthrough for home consoles came in 1979, whereby the arcades gradually lost their supremacy.
Among other things, a flooding of the market, the increasing superiority of home computers and the ease with which computer games could be copied led to the so-called "video game crash" in 1983, the economic collapse of the video game industry in the USA.
The Japanese industry was hardly affected by this and Nintendo achieved a historic success with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the mid-1980s. And with the release of Super Mario Bros. at the latest, which surpassed all video games released up to that point in terms of length and complexity, the world was in Nintendo fever.
In 1989, the Game Boy and the Atari Lynx were the first two handheld consoles with interchangeable games to be launched on the market.
From then on, people could play to their heart's content and for hours on end on the train, at the beach or even in the now not-so-quiet bathroom.
The casings were already colorful - the display was not at first: the Game Boy was a real game changer.
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The 1990s brought the Sega Mega Drive, another handheld console in the form of the Sega Game Gear and finally another important innovation with the first Playstation, the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64: the move from 2D to 3D graphics.
The rest is history: the 2000s with the Playstation 2, the Nintendo GameCube, the XBox, the Wii and the Playstation 3, the advent of touchscreens, 3D glasses and online gaming.
While the consoles were getting better and better: the Playstation 4, the XBox One, the Nintendo 3 DS, the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch, online platforms such as Android, iOS and Windows Phone also entered the electronic entertainment market for the first time in the 2010s.
When Pokémon Go was released in summer 2016, it was a dream come true for many fans: using their smartphone as a Pokémon trainer to roam the real world in search of the little pocket monsters. The virtual passion for collecting led to unprecedented hype, while many ignorant people were surprised by the spontaneous gatherings of people in seemingly random places.
With today's consoles, such as the Playstation 5 or Xbox Series X, 4K resolution is standard, the controllers vibrate and the variety of games is overwhelming. Thanks to advanced technologies, these consoles offer impressive graphics and an almost lag-free gaming experience. Online features and game streaming also open up new possibilities and connect gamers worldwide.
What a development!
In the future, augmented and virtual reality are likely to allow us to immerse ourselves even more deeply in foreign worlds.
Increasingly high-resolution, faster, better and more immersive - gaming has not only arrived in the middle of society, but also on smartphones. The cliché of the scruffy gamer on the social sidelines no longer applies. The increasingly powerful chips in today's smartphones allow you to enjoy gaming anytime and anywhere. Regardless of whether you are on the move with an iPhone or Android device. The selection of games for cell phones is huge. While there are almost 6000 console games available worldwide, there are an incredible 1.5 million mobile games for smartphones. The arcade of the future is in your pocket!
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