title: History of video games

text: SuperSet Software created "Snipes", a text-mode networked computer game in 1983 to test a new IBM Personal Computer–based computer network and demonstrate its abilities. "Snipes" is officially credited as being the original inspiration for NetWare. It is believed to be the first network game ever written for a commercial personal computer and is recognized alongside 1974 game "Maze War" (a networked multiplayer maze game for several research machines) and "Spasim" (a 3D multiplayer space simulation for time shared mainframes) as the precursor to multiplayer games such as 1987's "MIDI Maze", and "Doom" in 1993. In 1995 iDoom (later Kali.net) was created for games that only allowed local network play to connect over the internet. Other services such as Kahn, TEN, Mplayer, and Heat.net soon followed after. These services ultimately became obsolete when game producers began including their own online software such as Battle.net, WON and later Steam.


title: History of video games

text: The first user interfaces were plain-text—similar to BBSs— but they operated on large mainframe computers, permitting larger numbers of users to be online at once. By the end of the decade, inline services had fully graphical environments using software specific to each personal computer platform. Popular text-based services included CompuServe, The Source, and GEnie, while platform-specific graphical services included PlayNET and Quantum Link for the Commodore 64, AppleLink for the Apple II and Macintosh, and PC Link for the IBM PC—all of which were run by the company which eventually became America Online—and a competing service, Prodigy. Interactive games were a feature of these services, though until 1987 they used text-based displays, not graphics.


title: History of video games

text: Meanwhile, schools and other institutions gained access to ARPANET, the precursor of the modern internet, in the mid-1980s. While the ARPANET connections were intended for research purposes, students explored ways to use this connectivity for video games. "Multi-User Dungeon" ("MUD") originally was developed by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at the University of Essex in 1978 as a multiplayer game but limited to the school's mainframe system, but was adapted to use ARPANET when the school gained access to it in 1981, making it the first internet-connected game, and the first such MUD and an early title of massively multiplayer online games.


title: History of video games

text: While the 1983 video game crash devastated the United States market, the Japan video game sector remained unscathed. That year, Nintendo introduced the Famicom (short for Family Computer), while newcomer Sega used its arcade game background to design the SG-1000. The Famicom quickly became a commercial success in Japan, with 2.5 million consoles sold by the start of 1985. Nintendo wanted to introduce the system into the weak United States market but recognized the market was still struggling from the 1983 crash and video games still had a negative perception there. Working with its Nintendo of America division, Nintendo rebranded the Famicom as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), giving it the appearance of a video cassette recorder rather than a toy-like device, and launched the system in the United States in 1985 with accessories like R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) to make the system appear more sophisticated than prior home consoles. The NES revitalized the U.S. video game market, and by 1989, the U.S. market has resurged to . Over 35 million NES systems were sold in the U.S. through its lifetime, with nearly 62 million units sold globally.


title: History of video games

text: Besides revitalizing the U.S. market, the Famicom/NES console had a number of other long-standing impacts on the video game industry. Nintendo used the razor and blades model to sell the console at near manufacturing cost while profiting from sales of games. Because games sales were critical to Nintendo, it initially controlled all game production, but at requests from companies like Namco and Hudson Soft, Nintendo allowed for third-party developers to create games for the consoles, but strictly controlled the manufacturing process, limited these companies to five games year, and required a 30% licensing fee per game sale, a figure that has been used throughout console development to the present. Nintendo's control on Famicom games led to a bootleg market of unauthorized games from Asian countries. When the NES launched, Nintendo took the lessons it learned from its own bootleg problems with the Famicom, and from the oversaturation of the U.S. market that led to the 1983 crash, and created the 10NES lockout system for NES games that required a special chip to be present in cartridges to be usable on NES systems. The 10NES helped to curb, though did not eliminate, the bootleg market for NES games. Nintendo of America also created the "Nintendo Seal of Approval" to mark games officially licensed by Nintendo and dissuade consumers from purchasing unlicensed third-party games, a symptom of the 1983 crash. Within the United States, Nintendo of America set up a special telephone help line to provide players with help with more difficult games and launched "Nintendo Power" magazine to provide tips and tricks as well as news on upcoming Nintendo games.


title: History of video games

text: Sega's SG-1000 did not fare as well against the Famicom in Japan, but the company continued to refine it, releasing Sega Mark III (also known as the Master System) in 1985. Whereas Nintendo had more success in Japan and the United States, Sega's Mark III sold well in Europe, Oceania, and Brazil.


title: History of video games

text: Numerous fundamental video game franchises got their start during the Famicom/NES and Mark III/Master System period, mostly out of Japanese development companies. While Mario had already appeared in "Donkey Kong" and the Game & Watch and arcade game "Mario Bros.", "Super Mario Bros.", debuting in 1985, established Mario as Nintendo's mascot as well as the first of the "Super Mario" franchise. Sega also introduced its first mascot characters, the Opa-Opa ship from "Fantasy Zone" in 1986 and later replaced by Alex Kidd via "Alex Kidd in Miracle World" in 1986, though neither gained the popular recognition that Mario had obtained. Other key Nintendo franchises were born out from the games "The Legend of Zelda" and "Metroid", both released in 1986. The formulative center of turn-based computer role-playing games were launched with "Dragon Quest" (1986) from Chunsoft and Enix, "Final Fantasy" (1987) from Square, and "Phantasy Star" (1987) from Sega. Capcom's "Mega Man" (1987), and Konami's "Castlevania" (1986) and "Metal Gear" (1987) also have ongoing franchises, with "Metal Gear" also considered to be the first mainstream stealth game.


title: History of video games

text: With Nintendo's dominance, Japan became the epicenter of the video game market, as many of the former American manufacturers had exited the market by the end of the 1980s. At the same time, software developers from the home computer side recognized the strength of the consoles, and companies like Epyx, Electronic Arts, and LucasArts began devoting their attention to developing console games By 1989 the market for cartridge-based console games was more than $2 billion, while that for disk-based computer games was less than $300 million.


title: History of video games

text: NEC released its PC Engine in 1987 in Japan, rebranded as the TurboGrafx-16 in North America. While the CPU was still an 8-bit system, the TurboGrafx-16 used a 16-bit graphics adapter, and NEC chose to heavily rely on marketing the system as a "16 bit" system to differentiate from the 8-bit NES. This ploy led to the use of processor bit size as a key factor in marketing video game consoles over the next decade, a period known as the "bit wars".


title: History of video games

text: Sega released its next console, the Mega Drive in Japan in 1988, and rebranded as the Sega Genesis for its North American launch in 1989. Sega wanted to challenge the NES's dominance in the United States with the Genesis, and the initial campaign focused on the 16-bit power of the Genesis over the NES as well as a new line of sports games developed for the console. Failing to make a significant dent in NES' dominance, Sega hired Tom Kalinske to president of Sega of America to run a new campaign. Among Kalinske's changes was a significant price reduction in the console, and the bundling of Sega's newest game "Sonic the Hedgehog", featuring Sega's newest mascot of the same name, with the console. Kalinske's changes gave Genesis the edge over the NES by 1991 and led off the start of a console war between Sega and Nintendo. Nintendo's 16-bit console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) struggled on its initial launch in the United States due to the strength of the Genesis. This console war between Sega and Nintendo lasted until 1994 when Sony Computer Entertainment disrupted both companies with the release of the PlayStation.


title: History of video games

text: Among other aspects of the console war between Sega and Nintendo, this period brought a revolution in sports video games. While these games had existed since the first arcade and console games, their limited graphics required gameplay to be highly simplified. When Sega of America first introduced the Genesis to the United States, it had gotten naming rights from high-profile people in the various sports, such as "Pat Riley Basketball" and "Joe Montana Football", but the games still lacked any complexity. Electronic Arts, under Trip Hawkins, were keen to make a more realistic football game for the Genesis which had the computation capabilities for this, but did not want to pay the high licensing fees that Sega were asking for developing on the Genesis. They were able to secure naming rights for John Madden and reverse engineer the Genesis as to be able to produce "John Madden Football", one of the first major successful sports games. Electronic Arts subsequently focused heavily on sports games, expanding into other sports like basekball, hockey and golf.


title: History of video games

text: SNK's Neo-Geo was the most costly console by a wide margin when released in 1990. The Neo-Geo used similar hardware as SNK's arcade machines, giving its games a quality better than other 16-bit consoles, but the system was commercially non-viable. The Neo-Geo was notably the first home console with support for memory cards, allowing players to save their progress in a game, not only at home but also shared with compatible Neo-Geo arcade games.


title: History of video games

text: The 1990s were a decade of marked innovation in video games. It was a decade of transition from raster graphics to 3D graphics and gave rise to several genres of video games including first-person shooter, real-time strategy, and MMO. Handheld games become more popular throughout the decade, thanks in part to the release of the Game Boy in 1989. Arcade games experienced a resurgence in the early-to-mid-1990s, followed by a decline in the late 1990s as home consoles became more common.


title: History of video games

text: As arcade games declined, however, the home video game industry matured into a more mainstream form of entertainment in the 1990s, but their video games also became more and more controversial because of their violent nature, especially in games of "Mortal Kombat", "Night Trap", and "Doom", leading to the formation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and their rating games by signing them their ESRB ratings since 1994. Major developments of the 1990s include the popularizing of 3D computer graphics using polygons (initially in arcades, followed by home consoles and computers), and the start of a larger consolidation of publishers, higher budget games, increased size of production teams, and collaborations with both the music and motion picture industries. Examples of this include Mark Hamill's involvement with "", the introduction of QSound with arcade system boards such as Capcom's CP System II, and the high production budgets of games such as Squaresoft's "Final Fantasy VII" and Sega's "Shenmue".


title: History of video games

text: By end of the 1980s, console games were distributed on ROM cartridges, while PC games shipped on floppy disks, formats that had limitations in storage capacity. Optical media, and specifically the CD-ROM, had been first introduced in the mid-1980s for music distribution and by the early 1990s, both the media and CD drives had become inexpensive to be incorporated into consumer computing devices, including for both home consoles and computers. Besides offering more capacity for gameplay content, optical media made it possible to include long video segments into games, such as full motion video, or animated or pre-rendered cutscenes, allowing for more narrative elements to be added to games.


title: History of video games

text: Prior to the 1990s, some arcade games explored the use of laserdiscs, the most notable being "Dragon's Lair" in 1983. These games are considered as interactive movies and used full motion video from the laserdisc, prompting the player to respond via controls at the right time to continue the game. While these games were popular in the early 1980s, the prohibitive cost of laserdisc technology at the time limited their success. When optical media technology matured and dropped in price by the 1990s, new laserdisc arcade games emerged, such as "Mad Dog McCree" in 1990. Pioneer Corporation released the LaserActive game console in 1993 that used only laserdiscs, with expansion add-ons to play games from the Sega Genesis and NEC TurboGrafx-16 library, but with a base console price of and add-ons at , the console did not perform well.


title: History of video games

text: For consoles, optical media were cheaper to produce than ROM cartridges, and batches of CD-ROMs could be produced in a week while cartridges could take two to three months to assemble, in addition to the larger capacity. Add-ons were made for the 16-bit consoles to use CD media, including the PC Engine and the Mega Drive. Other manufacturers made consoles with dual-media, such as NEC's TurboDuo. Philips launched the CD-i in 1990, a console using only optical media, but the unit had limited gaming capabilities and had a limited game library. Nintendo had similarly worked with Sony to develop a CD-based SNES, known as the Super NES CD-ROM, but this deal fell through just prior to its public announcement, and as a result, Sony went on to develop to the PlayStation console released in 1994, that exclusively used optical media. Sony was able to capitalize on how the Japanese market handled game sales in Japan for the PlayStation, by producing only limited numbers of any new CD-ROM game with the ability to rapidly produce new copies of a game should it prove successful, a factor that could not easily be realized with ROM cartridges where due to how fast consumers' tastes changed, required nearly all cartridges expected to sell to be produced upfront. This helped Sony overtake Nintendo and Sega in the 1990s. A key PlayStation game that adapted to the CD format was "Final Fantasy VII", released in 1997; Square's developers wanted to transition the series from the series' 2D presentation to using 3D models, and though the series had been exclusive to Nintendo consoles previously, Square determined it would be impractical to use cartridges for distribution while the PlayStation's CD-ROM gave them the space for all the desired content including pre-rendered cutscenes. "Final Fantasy VII" became a key game, as it expanded the idea of console role-playing games to console game consumers. Since the PlayStation, all home gaming consoles have relied on optical media for physical game distribution, outside of the Nintendo 64 and Switch.


title: History of video games

text: On the PC side, CD drives were initially available as peripherals for computers before becoming standard components within PCs. CD-ROM technology had been available as early as 1989, with Cyan Worlds' "The Manhole" being one of the first games distributed on the medium. While CD-ROMs served as a better means to distribute larger games, the medium caught on with the 1993 releases of Cyan's "Myst" and Trilobyte's "The 7th Guest", adventure games that incorporated full motion video segments among fixed pre-rendered scenes, incorporating the CD-ROM medium into the game itself. Both games were considered killer apps to help standardize the CD-ROM format for PCs.


title: History of video games

text: In addition to transition to optical media, the industry as a whole had a major shift toward real-time 3D computer graphics across games during the 1990s. There had been a number of arcade games that used simple wireframe vector graphics to simulate 3D, such as "Battlezone", "Tempest", and "Star Wars". A unique challenge in 3D computer graphics is that real-time rendering typically requires floating-point calculations, which until the 1990s, most video game hardware was not well-suited for. Instead, many games simulated 3D effects such as by using parallax rendering of different background layers, scaling of sprites as they moved towards or away from the player's view, or other rendering methods such as the SNES's Mode 7. These tricks to simulate 3D-rendeder graphics through 2D systems are generally referred to as 2.5D graphics.


title: History of video games

text: True real-time 3D rendering using polygons were soon popularized by Yu Suzuki's Sega AM2 games "Virtua Racing" (1992) and "Virtua Fighter" (1993), both running on the Sega Model 1 arcade system board; some of the Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) staff involved in the creation of the original PlayStation video game console credit "Virtua Fighter" as inspiration for the PlayStation's 3D graphics hardware. According to SCE's former producer Ryoji Akagawa and chairman Shigeo Maruyama, the PlayStation was originally being considered as a 2D-focused hardware, and it wasn't until the success of "Virtua Fighter" in the arcades that they decided to design the PlayStation as a 3D-focused hardware. Texture mapping and texture filtering were soon popularized by 3D racing and fighting games.


title: History of video games

text: Home video game consoles such as the PlayStation, the Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64 also became able to produce texture-mapped 3D graphics. Nintendo had already released "Star Fox" in 1993 which included the Super FX graphics co-processor chip built into the game cartridge to support polygonal rendering for the SNES, and the Nintendo 64 included a graphics coprocessor on the console directly.


title: History of video games

text: On personal computers, John Carmack and John Romero of id Software had been experimenting with real-time rendering of 3D games through "Hovertank 3D" and "Catacomb 3-D". These led to the release of "Wolfenstein 3D" in 1992, considered to be the original first-person shooter as it rendered the game's world fast enough to keep up with the player's movements. However, at this point, "Wolfenstein 3D" maps were restricted to a single flat level. Improvements would come with "Ultima Underworld" from Blue Sky Productions, which included floors of different heights and ramps, which took longer to render but was considered acceptable in the role-playing game, and id's "Doom", adding lighting effects among other features, but still with limitations that maps were effectively two-dimensional and with most enemies and objects represented by sprites in-game. id had created one of the first game engines that separated the content from the gameplay and rendering layers, and licensed this engine to other developers, resulting in games such as "Heretic" and "", while other game developers built their own engines based on the concepts of the "Doom" engine, such as "Duke Nukem 3D" and "Marathon". In 1996, id's "Quake" was the first computer game with a true 3D game engine with in-game character and object models, and as with the "Doom" engine, id licensed the "Quake" engine, leading to a further growth in first-person shooters. By 1997, the first consumer dedicated 3D graphics cards were available on the market driven by the demand for first-person shooters, and numerous 3D game engines were created in the years that followed, including Unreal Engine, GoldSrc, and CryEngine, and establishing 3D as the new standard in most computer video games.


title: History of video games

text: The 1991 release of Capcom's "Street Fighter II" popularized competitive one-on-one fighting games. Its success led to a wave of other popular fighting games, such as "Mortal Kombat" and "The King of Fighters". Sports games such as "NBA Jam" also briefly became popular in arcades during this period.


title: History of video games

text: Further drawing players from arcades were the latest home consoles which were now capable of playing "arcade-accurate" games, including the latest 3D games. Increasing numbers of players waited for popular arcade games to be ported to consoles rather than pumping coins into arcade kiosks. This trend increased with the introduction of more realistic peripherals for computer and console game systems such as force feedback aircraft joysticks and racing wheel/pedal kits, which allowed home systems to approach some of the realism and immersion formerly limited to the arcades. To remain relevant, arcade manufacturers such as Sega and Namco continued pushing the boundaries of 3D graphics beyond what was possible in homes. "Virtua Fighter 3" for the Sega Model 3, for instance, stood out for having real-time 3D graphics approaching the quality of CGI full motion video (FMV) at the time. Likewise, Namco released the Namco System 23 to rival the Model 3. By 1998, however, Sega's new console, the Dreamcast, could produce 3D graphics on-par with the Sega Naomi arcade machine. After producing the more powerful Hikaru board in 1999 and Naomi 2 in 2000, Sega eventually stopped manufacturing custom arcade system boards, with their subsequent arcade boards being based on either consoles or commercial PC components.


title: History of video games

text: As patronage of arcades declined, many were forced to close down by the late 1990s and early 2000s. Classic coin-operated games had largely become the province of dedicated hobbyists and as a tertiary attraction for some businesses, such as movie theaters, batting cages, miniature golf courses, and arcades attached to game stores such as F.Y.E. The gap left by the old corner arcades was partly filled by large amusement centers dedicated to providing clean, safe environments and costly game control systems unavailable to home users. These newer arcade games offer driving or other sports games with specialized cockpits integrated into the arcade machine, rhythm games requiring unique controllers like "Guitar Freaks" and "Dance Dance Revolution", and path-based light gun shooting gallery games like "Time Crisis". Arcade establishments expanded out to include other entertainment options, such as food and drink, such as the adult-oriented Dave & Buster's and GameWorks franchises, while Chuck E. Cheese's is a similar type of business for families and young children.


title: History of video games

text: In 1989, Nintendo released the cartridge-based Game Boy, the first major handheld game console since the Microvision ten years before. Included with the system was "Tetris", which became one of the best-selling video games of all time, drawing many that would not normally play video games to the handheld. Several rival handhelds made their debut in the early 1990s, including the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx (the first handheld with color LCD display). Although these systems were more technologically advanced and intended to match performance of home consoles, they were hampered by higher battery consumption and less third-party developer support. While some of the other systems remained in production until the mid-1990s, the Game Boy and its successive incarnations, the Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, were virtually unchallenged for dominance in the handheld market through the 1990s. The Game Boy family also introduced the first installments in the "Pokémon" series with "Pokémon Red" and "Blue", which remains one of the best-selling video game franchises for Nintendo.


title: History of video games

text: With the introduction of 3D graphics and a stronger emphasis on console games, smaller developers, particularly those working on personal computers, were typically shunned by publishers as they had become risk-averse. Shareware, a new method of distributing games from these smaller teams, came out of the early 1990s. Typically a shareware game could be requested by a consumer, which would given them a portion of the game for free outside of shipping charges. If the consumer liked the game, they could then pay for the full game. This model was later expanded to basically include the "demo" version of a game on the insert CD-ROM media for gaming magazine, and then later as digital downloads from various sites like Tucows. id Software is credited with successfully implementing the idea for both "Wolfenstein 3D" and "Doom", which was later used by Apogee (now 3D Realms), Epic MegaGames (now Epic Games).


title: History of video games

text: Several key genres were established during this period. "Wolfenstein 3D" and "Doom" are the formative games of the first-person shooter (FPS); the genre itself had gone by ""Doom" clones" until about 2000 when FPS became the more popular term. Graphic adventure games rose to prominence during this period; including the forementioned "Myst" and "The 7th Guest", several of LucasArts adventure games including the "Monkey Island" series. However, the adventure game genre was considered dead by the end of the 1990s due to the rising popularity of the FPS and other action genres. The first immersive sims, games that gave the player more agency and choices through flexible game systems, came along after the rise of FPS games, with games like "" and "". "Thief" also expanded the idea of stealth games and created the idea of "first person sneaker" games where combat was less a focus.


title: History of video games

text: Real-time strategy games also grew in popularity in 1990s, with seminal games "Dune II", "" and "Command & Conquer". The first 4X (short for "Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate") strategy games also emerged during this decade, popularized by "Sid Meyer's Civilization" in 1991. "Alone in the Dark" in 1992 established many elements of the survival horror genre that were in the console game "Resident Evil". Simulation games became popular, including those from Maxis starting with "SimCity" in 1989, and which culminated with "The Sims", which was first released in early 2000.


title: History of video games

text: Online connectivity in computer games became increasingly important. Building on the growing popularity of the text-based MUDs of the 1980s, graphical MUDs like "Habitat" used simple graphical interfaces alongside text to visualize the game experience. The first massively multiplayer online role-playing games adapted the new 3D graphics approach to create virtual worlds on screen, starting with "Meridian 59" in 1996 and popularized by the success of "Ultima Online" in 1997 and "EverQuest" and "Asheron's Call" in 1999. Online connective also became important in genres like FPS and RTS, allowing players to connect to human opponents over phone and Internet connectivity. Some companies created clients to help with connectivity, such as Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net.


title: History of video games

text: During the 1990s Microsoft introduced its initial versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system for personal computers, a graphical user interface intended to replace MS-DOS. Game developers found it difficult to program for some of the earlier versions of Windows, as the operating system tended to block their programmatic access to input and output devices. Microsoft developed DirectX in 1995, later integrated into Microsoft Windows 95 and future Windows products, as a set of libraries to give game programmers direct access to these functions. This also helped to provide a standard interface to normalize the wide array of graphics and sound cards available for personal computers by this time, further aiding in ongoing game development.


title: History of video games

text: Sony's introduction of the first PlayStation in 1994 had hampered both Nintendo and Sega's console war, as well as made it difficult for new companies to enter the market. The PlayStation brought in not only the revolution in CD-ROM media but built-in support for polygonal 3D graphics rendering. Atari attempted to reenter the market with the 32-bit Atari Jaguar in 1993, but it lacked the game libraries offered by Nintendo, Sega or Sony. The 3DO Company released the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer in 1993, but it also suffered from a higher price compared to other consoles on the market. Sega has placed a great deal of emphasis on the 32-bit Sega Saturn, released in 1994, to follow the Genesis, and though initially fared well in sales with the PlayStation, soon lost ground to the PlayStation's larger range of popular games. Nintendo's next console after the SNES was the Nintendo 64, a 64-bit console with polygonal 3D rendering support. However, Nintendo opted to continue to use the ROM cartridge format, which caused it to lose sales against the PlayStation, and allowing Sony to become the dominant player in the console market by 2000.


title: History of video games

text: "Final Fantasy VII", as previously described, was an industry landmark title, and introduced the concept of role-playing games to console players. The origin of music video games emerged with the PlayStation game "PaRappa the Rapper" in 1997, coupled with the success of arcade games like "beatmania" and "Dance Dance Revolution". "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill" formed the basis of the current survival horror genre. Nintendo had its own critical successes with "GoldenEye 007" from Rare, the first first-person shooter for a console that introduced staple features for the genre, and "", one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time.


title: History of video games

text: The 2000s (decade) showed innovation on both consoles and PCs, and an increasingly competitive market for portable game systems. The impact of wider availability of the Internet led to new gameplay changes, changes in gaming hardware and the introduction of online services for the consoles.


title: History of video games

text: The phenomena of user-created video game modifications (commonly referred to as "mods") for games, one trend that began during the "Wolfenstein 3D" and "Doom"-era, continued into the start of the 21st century. The most famous example is that of "Counter-Strike"; released in 1999, it is still one of the most popular online first-person shooter, even though it was created as a mod for "Half-Life" by two independent programmers. Eventually, game designers realized the potential of mods and custom content in general to enhance the value of their games, and so began to encourage its creation. Some examples of this include "Unreal Tournament", which allowed players to import 3dsmax scenes to use as character models, and Maxis' "The Sims", for which players could create custom objects.


title: History of video games

text: In China, video game consoles were banned in June 2000. This has led to an explosion in the popularity of computer games, especially MMOs.


title: History of video games

text: Consoles and the games for them are easily acquired however, as there is a robust grey market importing and distributing them across the country. Another side effect of this law has been increased copyright infringement of video games.


title: History of video games

text: Sony's dominance of the console market at the start of 2000s caused a major shift in the market. Sega attempted one more foray into console hardware with the Dreamcast in 1998, notably the first console with a built-in Internet connection for online play. However, Sega's reputation had been tarnished from the Saturn, and with Sony having recently announced its upcoming PlayStation 2, Sega left the hardware console market after the Dreamcast, though remained in the arcade game development as well as developing games for consoles. The Dreamcast's library has some groundbreaking games, notably the "Shenmue series" which are regarded as a major step forward for 3D open-world gameplay and has introduced the quick time event mechanic in its modern form.


title: History of video games

text: Sony released the PlayStation 2 (PS2) in 2000, the first console to support the new DVD format and with capabilities of playing back DVD movie disks and CD audio disks, as well as playing PlayStation games in a backward compatible mode alongside PS2 games. Nintendo followed the Nintendo 64 with the GameCube in 2001, its first console to use optical discs, though specially formatted for the system. However, a new player entered the console picture at this point, Microsoft with its first Xbox console, also released in 2001. Microsoft had feared that Sony's PS2 would become a central point of electronic entertainment in the living room and squeeze out the PC in the home, and after having recently developing the DirectX set of libraries to standardize game hardware interfaces for Windows-based computers, used this same approach to create the Xbox.


title: History of video games

text: The PS2 remained the leading platform for the first part of the decade, and remains the best-selling home console of all time with over 155 million units sold. This was in part to a number of critical games released on the system, including "Grand Theft Auto III", "", and "Final Fantasy X". The Xbox was able to gain second-place to the PS2 sales, but at a significant lost to Microsoft. However, to Microsoft, the loss was acceptable, as it proved to them they could compete in the console space. The Xbox also introduced Microsoft's flagship title, "", which relied on the Xbox's built-in Ethernet functionality to support online gameplay.


title: History of video games

text: By the mid-2000s, only Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft were considered major players in the console hardware space. All three introduced their next generation of hardware between 2005 and 2006, starting with Microsoft's Xbox 360 in 2005 and Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) in 2006, followed by Nintendo's Wii later that year. The Xbox 360 and PS3 showed a convergence with personal computer hardware: both consoles shipped with support for high-definition graphics, higher-density optical media like Blu-rays, internal hard drives for storage of games, and had built-in Internet connectivity. Microsoft and Sony also had developed online digital services, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network that helped players to connect to friends online, matchmake for online games, and purchase new games and content from online stores. In contrast, the Wii was designed as part a new blue ocean strategy by Nintendo after the poor sales of the GameCube. Instead of trying to compete feature for feature with Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo designed the Wii to be a console for innovative gameplay rather than high performance, and created the Wii Remote, a motion detection-based controller. Gameplay designed around the Wii Remote provided instant hits, such as "Wii Sports", "Wii Sports Resort", and "Wii Fit", and the Wii became one of the fastest selling consoles in its few years. The success of the Wii's motion controls partially led to Microsoft and Sony to develop their own motion-sensing control systems, the Kinect and the PlayStation Move.


title: History of video games

text: A major fad in 2000s was the rapid rise and fall of rhythm games which use special game controllers shaped like musical instruments such as guitars and drums to match notes while playing licensed songs. "Guitar Hero", based on the arcade game "Guitar Freaks", was developed by Harmonix and published by Red Octane in 2005 on the PS2, and was a modest success. Activision acquired Red Octane and gained the publishing rights to the series, while Harmonix was purchased by Viacom, where they launched "Rock Band", a similar series but adding in drums and vocals atop guitars. Rhythm games because a highly-popular property second only to action games, representing 18% of the video game market in 2008, and drew other publishers to the area as well. While Harmonix approached the series by adding new songs as downloadable content, Activision focused on releasing new games year after year in the "Guitar Hero" series; by 2009, they had six different "Guitar Hero"-related games planned for the year. The saturation of the market, in addition to the fad of these instrument controllers, quickly caused the market in 2008 to fall by 50% in 2009. By 2011, Activision had stopped publishing "Guitar Hero" games (though returned one time in 2015 with "Guitar Hero Live"), while Harmonix has continued to develop "Rock Back" after a hiatus between 2013 and 2015.


title: History of video games

text: Nintendo still dominated the handheld games market during this period. The Game Boy Advance, released in 2001, maintained Nintendo's market position with a high-resolution, full-color LCD screen and 32-bit processor allowing ports of SNES games and simpler companions to N64 and GameCube games. The next two major handhelds, the Nintendo DS and Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) within a month of each other in 2004. While the PSP boasted superior graphics and power, following a trend established since the mid-1980s, Nintendo gambled on a lower-power design but featuring a novel control interface. The DS's two screens, with one being a touch-sensitive screen, proved extremely popular with consumers, especially young children and middle-aged gamers, who were drawn to the device by Nintendo's "Nintendogs" and "" series respectively, as well as introducing localized Japanese visual novel-type games such as the "Ace Attorney" and "Professor Layton" series to the Western regions. The PSP attracted a significant portion of veteran gamers in North America and was very popular in Japan; its ad-hoc networking capabilities worked well within the urban Japanese setting, which directly contributed to spurring the popularity of Capcom's "Monster Hunter" series.


title: History of video games

text: As affordable broadband Internet connectivity spread, many publishers turned to online games as a way of innovating. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) featured significant PC games like "RuneScape", "EverQuest", and "Ultima Online", with "World of Warcraft" as one of the most successful. Other large-scale massively-multiplayer online games also were released, such as "Second Life" which focused mostly on social interactions with virtual player avatars and user creations, rather than any gameplay elements.


title: History of video games

text: Historically, console-based MMORPGs have been few in number due to the lack of bundled Internet connectivity options for the platforms. This made it hard to establish a large enough subscription community to justify the development costs. The first significant console MMORPGs were "Phantasy Star Online" on the Sega Dreamcast (which had a built in modem and aftermarket Ethernet adapter), followed by "Final Fantasy XI" for the Sony PlayStation 2 (an aftermarket Ethernet adapter was shipped to support this game). Every major platform released since the Dreamcast has either been bundled with the ability to support an Internet connection or has had the option available as an aftermarket add-on. Microsoft's Xbox also had its own online service called Xbox Live. Xbox Live was a huge success and proved to be a driving force for the Xbox with games like "Halo 2" that were highly popular.


title: History of video games

text: The first major esports (electronic sports) competitions also began in the 2000s. While "Street Fighter II" and other fighting games of the 1990s had introduced organized video game competitions earlier, professional esports emerged from South Korea around 2000, with many of their events around current fighting games and various RTS games like "StarCraft" and "WarCraft III". By 2010, numerous international esports tournaments had been established across various game genres.


title: History of video games

text: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Internet accessibility and new online technologies flourished, such as Java and Adobe Flash. Though Adobe Flash was initially intended to be a tool to develop fully interactive websites, Flash lost favor in this area but individual developers found ways to use the tool for animations and games, aided by the ease of the development tools for this purpose. The website Newgrounds was created to help people share and promote their Flash works. Though these Flash games lack the complexity of gameplay of games on consoles or computers, they were available for free and sparked creative ideas that would carry forward; for example, "Crush the Castle" directly inspired the popular mobile game "Angry Birds", while the founder of Newgrounds, Tom Fulp, teamed with animator Dan Paladin to create "Alien Hominid" as a Flash game, which they later built upon into the more complete "Castle Crashers" under the studio The Behemoth.


title: History of video games

text: Flash and other in-browser platforms created a new trend in casual games, with limited complexity and designed for shortened or impromptu play sessions. Many were puzzle games, such as Popcap's "Bejeweled" and PlayFirst's "Diner Dash" while others were games with a more relaxed pace and open-ended play. Sites like Kongregate and developers like PopCap, Zynga and King emerged as leaders in this area. Casual games also entered into more mainstream computer games with numerous simulation games. The biggest hit was "The Sims" by Maxis, which went on to become the best selling computer game of all time, surpassing "Myst".


title: History of video games

text: As social media sites started to grow, the first social network games emerged on social platforms. These games, often based on casual game mechanics, typically rely on users to interact with their friends via the social media site as to gain a form of "energy" to continue to play. "Happy Farm", released in China in 2008, is considered the first such major social game. Influenced by the Japanese console RPG series "Story of Seasons", "Happy Farm" attracted 23 million daily active users in China. It soon inspired many clones such as "Sunshine Farm", "Happy Farmer", "Happy Fishpond", "Happy Pig Farm", and Facebook games such as "FarmVille", "Farm Town", "Country Story", "Barn Buddy", "Sunshine Ranch", "Happy Harvest", "Jungle Extreme", and "Farm Villain". "Happy Farm" served as direct inspiration for "FarmVille", which had over 80 million active users worldwide by 2010.


title: History of video games

text: Separately, gaming on mobile devices had limited success until the mid-2000s. Nokia had installed "Snake" onto its line of mobile phones since the Nokia 6110 in 1997. Similar manufacturers of phones, personal digital assistants and other devices also included built-in games, but these were designed to pass the time and not engaging. As phone technology improved, a Japanese mobile phone culture grew around 2003 with games ranging from puzzle games and virtual pet games that use camera phone and fingerprint scanner technologies to 3D games with PlayStation-quality graphics. Older arcade-style games became very popular on mobile phones, which were an ideal platform for arcade-style games designed for shorter play sessions. Namco made attempts to introduce mobile games to Europe in 2003. Nokio released its N-Gage, a hybrid phone/handheld game system, in 2003 but had limited success compared to Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.


title: History of video games

text: Around 2005, the first smartphones were available on the market, which offered data connectivity alongside phone services. Carriers licensed games to be made available for sale on a storefront, but this did not catch on due to the disparate storefronts and differences between phone models, and the games could not be as sophisticated as on consoles or handhelds due to limited hardware on the smartphones. In 2007, Apple, Inc. introduced its iPhone which was technologically more advanced than other smartphones on the market, and unveiled its App Store in 2008 through which new apps could be purchased. With the App Store, developers, once signed up as a partner, could then develop and publish their own apps through the store. This allowed developers of any size to participate in the App Store marketplace. Google, which developed the competing Android mobile operating system, released its own version of an app store in 2008, later named as Google Play in 2012.


title: History of video games

text: The use of Apple's and Google's app storefronts for gaming applications quickly took off with early successes like "Angry Birds" and "Bejeweled". When Apple introduced in-app purchases (IAP) in October 2009, a number of developers found ways to monetize their mobile games uniquely compared to traditional games, establishing the freemium model where a game is usually free to download and play but players are encouraged to speed up their progress through IAPs. Games like "Candy Crush Saga" and "Puzzle & Dragons", both in 2012, established this approach as highly-profitable business models for mobile games. Many of the social network game developers worked to either integrate a mobile version with their existing version, or completely shift their game to the mobile platform, as mobile gaming became more popular. A further rise in the popularity of mobile games was from China, where most residents do not own computers and where imported consoles were banned by the government starting in 2000, though eventually eased in 2014 and completely lifted in 2015. Instead, most players in China used mobile phones or accessed subscription-based games through PC cafes. Mobile games also proved popular and financially-successful there as well, with a ten-fold growth of China's video game market between 2007 and 2013.


title: History of video games

text: Coupled with the growth of mobile games was the introduction of microconsoles, low-cost home consoles that used the Android operating system as to take advantage of the large library of games already made for mobile devices. However, mobile gaming also displaced the handheld console market: both the Nintendo 3DS and the PlayStation Vita (both 2011 releases) had major drops in sales from their predecessors, the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable respectively (both 2004 releases), following the rapid growth of mobile gaming. Sony has since exited the handheld console arena.


title: History of video games

text: Video games began seeing increasing larger budgets for development entering the 2000s; "Final Fantasy VII" had an estimated budget excluding marketing, while the first "Shenmue" game was estimated to cost . Larger developers began approaching games comparable to Hollywood filmmaking, not only considering the aspects of development, distribution, and marketing, but incorporating budgets for both in-game cinematography, including professional actors and licensed properties, and larger promotional elements. These new approaches further extended game budgets. Similar to blockbuster films, the video game industry began calling these high-budget games and the publishers and developers behind them as "AAA" or "triple A" by the late 1990s and early 2000s.


title: History of video games

text: As a result of the larger budgets and better technology, new narrative-driven games emerged to incorporate larger stories as more direct components of gameplay, such as by eliminating prerendered cut scenes in favor of scenes carried out within the game's engine. Incorporation of narrative into action games partially led to the waning of the adventure game genre by the early 2000s. Examples of influential games from this period include "Half-Life 2", "Portal", "", "BioShock", "", and "Resident Evil 4", as well as the first entries in the long-running series "Call of Duty" and "Assassin's Creed".


title: History of video games

text: Hobbyist and homebrew game development had been in place since the first home computers in the late 1970s and 1980s, with the shift to shareware by individuals and small development teams in the 1990s, but the importance of console gaming and the rise of 3D game technology had made it initially difficult for individual developers to participate competitively in game development. The growth of AAA games with large budgets further made publishers risk-averse to support smaller games with non-standard or more experimental gameplay.


title: History of video games

text: Independent games, or indie games, gained a significant share of the market in the latter half of the 2000s that continued into the 2010s, and generally seen as a result of the industry looking for innovation beyond the safe, non-risky approaches that AAA development had centered on. Interest in indie games grew out from the booming Flash game industry of the mid-2000s which had drawn attention to individual and small developers normally overlooked by the media. Further, smaller developers were highlighted by the rapid growth in the mobile game industry, allowed them to complete equally on mobile app stores with larger developers. Crowdfunding through sites like Kickstarter became a viable pathway for indie developers to gain funding in the late 2000s, explosively growing in popularity into the mid-2010s, while early access distribution, where players purchase a not-yet-final version of a game to help play, test and provide feedback, was successfully demonstrated with "Minecraft" in 2009 and used as a model for some indie games since. On personal computers, Valve opened up their digital content platform Steam to allow indie games to be listed alongside triple-A games, and several other similar digital storefronts. Microsoft launched the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) in 2004 which they used to publish games for the Xbox and later the Xbox 360 from smaller publishers and independent teams. Sony and Nintendo followed suit with similar indie game publishing programs in the early 2010s. Several indie games gained the media spotlight in this period, including "Super Meat Boy", "Fez", and "Braid".


title: History of video games

text: In the 2010s, the traditional model of racing to a five-year console life cycle was reduced. Reasons included the challenge and massive expense of creating consoles that were graphically superior to the then-current generation, with Sony and Microsoft still looking to recoup development costs on their current consoles and the failure of content creation tools to keep up with the increased demands placed upon the people creating the games.


title: History of video games

text: On June 14, 2010, during E3, Microsoft revealed its new Xbox 360 S or Slim. It is smaller and quieter, with a 250GB hard drive and 802.11n WiFi. It started shipping to US stores the same day, and in Europe on July 13.


title: History of video games

text: Cathode ray tube-based display units had begun to phase out in the 2000s, replaced by inexpensive flat-screen televisions and monitors which had far higher screen resolution and refresh rates. Video game hardware began introducing support for the new High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) standard, allowing for resolutions up to 4K (3840 × 2160 pixels), which itself stressed the need for more powerful GPU cards with faster processors and larger memory. Game engines such as Unreal, Unity, and DirectX added support for improved texture mapping to support high-resolution textures to give photorealistic graphics in games.


title: History of video games

text: Microsoft and Sony both released their next console generations, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, in 2013. Both expanded on features from their previous consoles with the added support for high-resolution graphics, and more support for digital distribution of content with additional storage space. The Xbox One had an initial flubbed launch, as Microsoft wanted to require users to be always connected to the Internet, along with persistent use of the Kinect motion sensor, which in turn would have given certain benefits to players. However, these decisions were met with negative feedback in the months prior to release over their privacy concerns, and Microsoft revamped their policies. The Kinect, though initially bundled with the Xbox One, was made optional, and a year after launch, Microsoft opted to end Kinect's production for the Xbox One.


title: History of video games

text: Nintendo still kept to its own path. The company decided that the Wii may have lost a portion of core gamers and developed the Wii U to draw this group back in. The Wii U, released in 2012, included a tablet-like Wii U GamePad that included controls and a touchscreen display that acted as a second screen during gameplay, along with support for Wii Remote controllers, and included backward compatibility with Wii games. The Wii U was a commercial failure for Nintendo following the Wii; while the Wii had sold more than 100 million units, the Wii U only sold about 13 million in its lifetime. Nintendo attributed this to both the marketing of the Wii U which failed to make clear the purpose of the GamePad and which made consumers believe it was just another tablet system, and to the lack of third-party support on the console which dropped off quickly once initial console sale numbers were obtained. and marketing reasons.


title: History of video games

text: Nintendo had already been working on its next console once the Wii U had been released, but pushed ahead as to get another console to release sooner to financially recover from the Wii U. Again, staying with their past blue ocean strategy to focus on innovation rather than technical superiority of their competitors, Nintendo released the Nintendo Switch in 2017, one of the first hybrid consoles, with the ability to be played as a handheld device but also can be placed into a docking station connected to a television and played like a home console. The Switch uses detachable Joy-Con which function as both regular controllers and as motion-sensing devices like the Wii Remote. Alongside the Switch, Nintendo sought out third-party support for the console from both triple-A studios and indie developers. The Switch proved to be very successful, as of 2022, it is Nintendo's best-selling home console, succeeding the Wii, and helped Nintendo regain position in the hardware market.


title: History of video games

text: The handheld market began to wane in the 2010s as mobile gaming supplanted it. Nintendo continued to refine the DS line; it released the Nintendo 3DS in 2011, which included a screen with a autostereoscopic display as to create a 3D effect without the need for special glasses. Sony released the PlayStation Vita in 2012 as a successor to the PSP, which included a front touch screen and a back-facing touchpad in addition to existing control. The Vita failed to gain a significant market share, and after Sony discontinued the product, have stated they have no plans for further handheld systems. Nintendo, on the other hand, released a modified version of the Switch, the Nintendo Switch Lite, in 2019. The Switch Lite a lower-cost version that directly integrates the Joy-Con into the unit and removes other features, as to create a device that supports handheld gameplay directly, but otherwise fully compatible with the existing Switch library.


title: History of video games

text: In personal computers, the graphics card market centered on the progress made by industry leaders NVidia and AMD, who also supplied GPUs for the new consoles. Starting in the late 2010s, the power of these GPU cards were being used by cryptocurrency "miners", as they were comparatively lower cost than other computing hardware for the same purposes, and created a run on GPU cards that inflated prices and card shortages over extended periods. Solid state drives (SSDs), which had been used for flash card storage for video game consoles in the past, had advanced far enough to become consumer options for large volume storage. Compared to the traditional hard disk drive (HDD) which used electromechanical parts, SSD drives have no mechanical componentry and are capable of much higher data throughput, which made them popular options for computers designed for video games.


title: History of video games

text: Until the 2010s, online play for most platforms were limited to players on that same platform, though some games such as "Final Fantasy XI" had experimented with limited models. As new gaming consoles converged in design to personal computers and with common middleware libraries, it became technically feasible to allow for cross-platform play between different platforms, but business objectives by Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, looking to maintain control on their online services, initially rejected this, most notably by Sony who had stated they wanted to maintain a family-friendly environment for its online services. Epic Games' "Fortnite Battle Royale" first released in 2017 proved an instrumental driver on cross-platform play. "Fortnite" had quickly gained popularity in its first few months of release, and Epic had been able to prove the ease which cross-platform play could be implemented between the Xbox, Windows, and mobile platforms with its backend libraries. Nintendo followed by allowing cross-play on the Switch, and eventually, by 2018 Sony agreed to allow selected games such as "Fortnite" to have cross-platform play. Since then, numerous games have gained or were released with cross-platform play support across consoles, computers, and mobile devices.


title: History of video games

text: The first cloud gaming services emerged in 2009. These services allowed players to play games where the processing power was performed on a computer system at a hosted location, while the game's output and player's input were sent to that system over the Internet, using the power of cloud computing. This eliminated the need for a costly console or dedicated gaming computer for players. Early services like OnLive and Gaikai showed that cloud gaming was possible but was very much tied to the player's latency, as a slow network could easily stall the game's performance.


title: History of video games

text: Cloud gaming became more refined in the 2010s as total network capacity around the world increased with higher bandwidths made available to consumers, in addition to new technologies to try to overcome the latency issue. Sony acquired both OnLive and Gaikai in the mid-2010s, and used the former as the basis for its PlayStation Now cloud gaming service, allowing players to play older PlayStation games on newer consoles. Other players in the cloud gaming arena that emerged in this period include NVidia's GeForce Now, Microsoft's xCloud, Google's Stadia, and Amazon Luna.


title: History of video games

text: With game development budgets for triple-A games growing larger, developers and publishers looked for ways to gain additional revenue for games beyond the first sale of the game. Multiple factors from the prior decade including the growth of the mobile game market and the introduction of in-app purchases, subscription-based games such as MMOs, and the digital distribution market, led to new avenues for recurring revenue by treating games as a service (GaaS).


title: History of video games

text: Larger expansions and downloadable content had existed prior to the mid-2000s, and players had become accustomed to the subscription-based model for MMOs by that point. Microsoft enabled developers to offer microtransactions, content sold at a small price point typically under , for their games on the Xbox 360 around 2005, with one of the most well-known examples being a horse armor package for "" in 2006. While mostly a cosmetic item in the game, the armor pack was one of the most popular items sold in for "Oblivion" by 2009, and cemented the idea of microtransactions.


title: History of video games

text: Games that followed "Oblivion" found ways to include additional microtransaction content to games to extend per-game earnings. Publishers that produced games with online content created special online passes, such as Electronic Arts' "Project Ten Dollar", which required purchase to gain access to online features; this was also intended to stall secondary sales of games. This approach was heavily criticized by consumers and players, and abandoned by 2013. Instead publishers offered the season pass model, first appearing in games like "L.A. Noire" and "Mortal Kombat". Without a season pass, players would still have access to all fundamental features of a game including online play, but the season pass gave access to all planned expanded content for single player modes and new characters or items and cosmetics for online modes, all planned to be released typically within a year's period, typically at a discount compared to purchasing each individually. A game could thus offer repeating season passes year after year and generate revenue this way. A related concept to the season pass is the battle pass, first introduced in "Dota 2". Within a battle pass are a number of in-game items that a player can earn at various levels of the battle pass, but requires them to complete in-game challenges as to earn the levels within the pass. Some battle passes include a free tier of items but most incorporate a tier that requires purchase of the pass. Battle passes can be cycled like season passes, offering a fresh set of items with new challenges on a regular basis, and supply recurring revenue for a game.


title: History of video games

text: From mobile and free-to-play games, "gacha" games had grown popular in Japan by the early 2010s, based on the capsule toy vending machine concept, with the earliest known system being in "MapleStory". In-game, players would earn currency that they could use to earn a random draw from a set of items based on a preset rarities, often with the goal to collect all of a one set of items to gain a powerful in-game reward. While players could earn more currency through in-game actions, typically by grinding, they could also can currency by spending real-world funds into the game. The "gacha" concept expanded out into loot boxes through the Chinese game "ZT Online", and in Western games like "FIFA 09" and "Team Fortress 2" in the early 2010s; players would earn loot boxes through in-game actions, or which could be purchased through real-world funds, and when opened would contain a variety of items, randomly selected based on rarity. By 2016, numerous high-profile games had included loot box mechanics, but this drew attention of world governments and policy makers, fearing that loot boxes were too similar to gambling, since real-world money could be used to purchase them. Since many of these video games were being aimed at minors, some countries had passed laws banning or restricting games with loot box mechanics due to their gambling nature. Coupled with poor implementation of loot box mechanics in "Star Wars Battlefront II" and Electronic Arts's "FIFA" Ultimate Team game mode, loot box mechanics began to lose favor with consumers by the end of the 2010s.


title: History of video games

text: China's impact in monetization played a key role during this period, which exceeded over 500 million players by the mid-2010s. While the console ban had been lifted, China's government still required that imported hardware be sold through Chinese companies, and requires Chinese operators to manage online games as to uphold the country's laws on censorship and gameplay limitations for minors. Chinese companies that were already publishing games within the country began to make partnerships or other arrangements with foreign firms to help bring their games and hardware into the company through the complex approvals process. Such companies include NetEase and Perfect World, but the largest mover had been Tencent, which made numerous investments into foreign firms over the 2010s, which included full acquisition of Riot Games and partial ownership of Supercell and Epic Games, as well as minority stake in publishers Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard and Paradox Interactive. In exchange, Tencent had helped these companies refine their monetization approaches using their past experience with their own games.


title: History of video games

text: Virtual reality (VR) systems for video games had long been seen as a target for VR technology and had been in development as early as the 1990s, but had been hampered by their high cost and impractical for consumer sales. One of the initial attempts, Nintendo's Virtual Boy in 1996, used a monochromatic stereoscopic display to simulate 3D, but the unit was impractical and failed to gain developers, leading it to be a commercial failure for Nintendo. Breakthroughs in consumer-ready VR hardware came in the early 2010s with the development of the Oculus Rift by Palmer Luckey. The Rift was demonstrated at trade shows in 2013, and proved popular enough to lead Facebook to purchase the company and technology for in 2014. Shortly afterward, Valve and HTC announced the HTC Vive, first released in 2015, while Sony released its PlayStation VR in 2016. Valve later developed its own VR hardware line, the Valve Index, released in 2019. While numerous VR games took advantage of VR effectively over "flat-screen" games (those lacking VR capabilities) for immersive experience, VR's "killer app" came by way of "", released by Valve in 2020. "Half-Life: Alyx" brought several new ideas for integrating first-person shooter gaming into a VR app, and spurred sales of the Index.


title: History of video games

text: Augmented reality (AR) games, where the game takes a real-time video game image and renders additional graphics atop it, had also existed before the 2010s. Some PlayStation console games used the EyeToy, PlayStation Eye, or PlayStation Camera as part of the gameplay, as well as Xbox 360 and Xbox One games using the Kinect. Most of the games were more experimental since cameras were fixed and limited what interactions could be made. As handheld consoles including the PSP and the Nintendo DS line, and mobile phones incorporated video camera capabilities, new AR possibilities opened up on portable devices. Initial games were still more experimental and toys without comprehensive gameplay loops. AR-based games took off with the release of "Pokémon Go" in 2016, which combined AR with location-based games. Players would use their mobile device to guide them to where a virtual Pokémon may be found, which they searched for and attempted to capture using AR atop their device's camera.


title: History of video games

text: NVidia and AMD introduced graphics cards in 2020 with hardware support for real-time ray tracing, which was also a major component introduced with Microsoft and Sony's next consoles, the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, both released in November 2020. Significant improvements in technology also furthered the ability to display highly detailed textures, allowing for photorealism in rendered video game scenes at high resolutions and high frame rates. These changes necessitated larger storage space for texture memory on the hardware and greater bandwidth between the storage memory and graphic processor. Both new consoles included specialized SSD options designed to provide high-bandwidth storage options, which had the added benefit of virtually eliminating loading times in many games particular those featuring in-game streaming for open world games.


title: History of video games

text: Moving into the 2020s, the concept of the metaverse grew in popularity. Similar in nature to the social spaces of "Second Life", the concept of a metaverse is based on using more advanced technology like virtual and augmented reality to create immersive worlds that not only can be used for social and entertainment functions but as well as for personal and business purposes, giving the user the ability to earn from participation in the metaverse. "Roblox" is a more recent example of an open world game that allows players to build their own creations within game with the potential to earn money from these creations.


title: History of video games

text: The metaverse in the early 2020s was yet well defined but those developing the nascent technologies recognized that a financial system would be tied to these systems. Avoiding the pitfalls of prior game currency systems, the development of cryptocurrency-based games and systems that used decentralized blockchain technologies started to grow in popularity. These blockchain games were frequently based on the trading of non-fungible tokens that players created and improved through the game, mimicking how metaverse content would function. Some video game companies have expressed strong support for using blockchain and NFTs in their games, such as Ubisoft, but there has been generally negative feedback from players and game developers that consider cryptocurrency and NFT a scam.


title: History of video games

text: Regardless of these developments, interest in the metaverse had led to a large number of major acquisitions in the video game industry at the start of the 2020s as large publishers gathered more studios and other publishers within their folds as to be able to offer their properties within the parent's version of the metaverse, diversify their offerings, and preparate for futures where gaming platforms shift away from traditional systems. Tencent Holdings has gained stake in numerous video game developers since the 2010s, including full ownership of Riot Games and minority ownership of Epic Games. Epic Games themselves have also used Tencent's investment and further funding to acquire numerous additional video game developers and middleware developers in the 2020s as part its goal to build out its version of the metaverse using its Unreal Engine. Embracer Group also launched a large series of acquisitions leading into the 2020s as to broaden its portfolio, including Gearbox Software. Other major acquisitions in the 2020s in support of the metaverse includes Take-Two Interactive's purchase of mobile game publisher Zynga, Sony Interactive Entertainment purchase of developer Bungie for supporting live-service games, and Microsoft's purchases of ZeniMax Media (including Bethesda Softworks) and Activision-Blizzard.


title: Don Simpson

text: Donald Clarence Simpson (October 29, 1943 – January 19, 1996) was an American film producer, screenwriter, and actor. Simpson and his producing partner Jerry Bruckheimer produced hit films such as "Flashdance" (1983), "Beverly Hills Cop" (1984), "Top Gun" (1986), and "The Rock" (1996). At the time of his death in 1996, Simpson's films grossed $3 billion worldwide.


title: Don Simpson

text: Simpson was born in Seattle, Washington, to June Hazel ("née" Clark), a housewife, and Russell J. Simpson, a mechanic at Boeing at the time of his son's birth. He grew up in Juneau, Alaska. His parents were strict Baptists and Simpson would go to church four to five times a week. He would call himself a "straight-A Bible student". He attended West Anchorage High School and later majored in English at the University of Oregon. Upon graduation, Simpson worked as a ski instructor in Utah. He later moved to San Francisco where he worked for a theatrical advertising agency and did public relations for the First International Erotic Film Festival.


title: Don Simpson

text: In the early 1970s, Simpson started working for Jack Wodell & Associates in San Francisco before moving to Los Angeles. Where he got a job marketing exploitation films for Warner Bros in 1972, handling distribution marketing for the movies "Woodstock" and "A Clockwork Orange".


title: Don Simpson

text: In 1975 Simpson went into an interview with Paramount Pictures. He was referred by his friend Steve Tisch, nephew of Larry Tisch (who later owned CBS and Westinghouse). Larry Tisch was refereeing his nephew for the job Steve Tisch turned down the job, referring Simpson instead. Steve Tisch would later go on to produce Risky Business, Forrest Gump and More. Jerry Bruckheimer who was already friends with Simpson loaned his personal car to Simpson to drive to the interview.


title: Don Simpson

text: While there, he co-wrote the 1976 film "Cannonball", in which he also had a small role. By 1977, he was named vice-president of production at Paramount, and president in 1981. He was fired at Paramount in 1982 after passing out during a studio meeting due to drug use. He was working on eight productions at once, and would regularly throw a tantrum while in production.


title: Don Simpson

text: Soon after, he forged a partnership with fellow producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The two would go on to produce some of the most financially successful films of the 1980s: "Flashdance" (1983), "Beverly Hills Cop" (1984), "Top Gun" (1986) and "Beverly Hills Cop II" (1987). In 1985 and again in 1988, he and Bruckheimer were named Producers of the Year by the National Association of Theatre Owners. The success of Flashdance prompted Simpson and Bruckheimer to launch their own production company, that was affiliated with Paramount Pictures.


title: Don Simpson

text: In 1990, Simpson and Bruckheimer signed a five-year deal with Paramount worth a reported $300 million. The deal would prove to be short lived. Later that year, the Simpson/Bruckheimer-produced "Days of Thunder" starring Tom Cruise was released. The auto racing film received mixed reviews and grossed $158 million (on a $60 million budget). While a financial success, it did not match the success of Simpson and Bruckheimer's previous films. Simpson and Bruckheimer blamed Paramount for the film's lackluster box-office returns, saying the studio rushed its planning and release. Paramount blamed the film's performance on Simpson and Bruckheimer's overspending. The duo parted with Paramount shortly thereafter.


title: Don Simpson

text: In 1991, the two signed with Disney. Their first film for Disney, "The Ref" (1994), was a financial flop. Their next films, "Dangerous Minds", "Crimson Tide", and "Bad Boys" (distributed by Columbia Pictures rather than Disney), all released in 1995, brought them back to success.


title: Don Simpson

text: In the 1970s, Simpson took classes to join the Church of Scientology, but quit after spending $25,000 and not seeing any significant personal improvements. During the shooting of "Days of Thunder", Simpson threw David Miscavige off the production because he refused to pay for a more expensive Scientology-patented sound recording device.


title: Don Simpson

text: Simpson was known for his brash personality, provocative comments and questionable claims. Of director Steven Spielberg, Simpson said, "I'm surprised for a smart Jew he's as white-bread as he is." He later said, "Any person who suggested David Lynch for "Dune" should have every part of their anatomy examined." He said several times that, as a producer, "our obligation is to make money". Simpson worked out every day with special equipment provided by Arnold Schwarzenegger.


title: Don Simpson

text: Simpson claimed he discovered Michael Mann, launched Debra Winger's career and cast Richard Gere for "American Gigolo". He also claimed he created the concept for "Beverly Hills Cop", which Michael Eisner denied. In the movie industry, professionals working with Simpson would refer to the "Don Simpson Discount Factor" (DSDF, coined by Jeff Katzenberg), a way to tone down his exaggerations.


title: Don Simpson

text: Due to their films' success, Simpson and Bruckheimer became very rich. They often dressed in similar clothing, choosing black as their signature color. Simpson would wear black Levi 501 jeans only before their first wash and then throw them away. He frequented the Canyon Ranch in Arizona for occasional workouts and tanning. Though Simpson claimed he never underwent any plastic surgery procedures, there are reports that he underwent ten different plastic surgeries between 1988 and 1994, including a penis-enlargement procedure. Those surgeries eventually led to infection and many reversal procedures.


title: Don Simpson

text: As Simpson and Bruckheimer's success grew, so did Simpson's reputation as a "party animal". He said that "next to eating and having sex, making movies is the best thing in the world". Simpson's debauched lifestyle was well known in Hollywood and has been documented in a number of sources. He was a fixture on the "Hollywood cocaine-party" circuit throughout the 1970s and '80s, and in his later years became known for throwing lavish all-night parties at his mansion. An entire chapter of the book "You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again" (which describes four prostitutes' stories about their sexual encounters with Hollywood celebrities) discusses his frequent sex parties and preference for S & M. He also gave himself testosterone shots to boost his sex drive. According to the call girl Alexandra Datig, Simpson auditioned struggling actresses for his movies, convinced them to have sex with him, and secretly filmed their sex acts.


title: Don Simpson

text: Simpson had been using cocaine since the 1980s, but increased his usage over the years. The excessive spending (in both films and his personal life) and erratic mood swings caused by his drug use were well known in Hollywood by the 1990s. In a 1994 interview with "The New York Times", Simpson tried to downplay his reputation and claimed that while he had done drugs in the past, he had stopped. He claimed that his only addiction at the time was food. According to screenwriter James Toback, Simpson's drug use never stopped, and prompted David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg to stage an intervention to get Simpson to go to rehab.


title: Don Simpson

text: Simpson refused to admit himself into a traditional rehab facility. In 1995, he employed Dr. Stephen Ammerman to help him with his addiction. Ammerman, who had a history of drug abuse himself, believed that in order for Simpson to quit drugs, he had to use other drugs to combat the painful withdrawal symptoms. Ammerman designed what has been called a "dangerously unorthodox" detox program, which included several medications (including morphine) for Simpson to take at home. In August 1995 Ammerman died of what was later determined to be an accidental overdose of cocaine, Valium, venlafaxine, and morphine.


title: Don Simpson

text: Frustrated with Simpson's escalating drug use and declining work, Bruckheimer terminated their partnership in December 1995. The two agreed to finish work on "The Rock", which was already in production. Simpson died before production was completed and the film is dedicated to his memory.


title: Don Simpson

text: On January 19, 1996, Simpson was found dead in the bathroom of his Bel Air, Los Angeles, home. His death was initially attributed to "natural causes". An autopsy and toxicology report later determined that Simpson had died of heart failure caused by combined drug intoxication (cocaine and prescription medications). At the time of his death, there were 21 different drugs in his system, including antidepressants, stimulants, sedatives, and tranquilizers. In August 1996, investigative reporter Chuck Philips of the "Los Angeles Times" revealed that Simpson had been obtaining large quantities of prescription drugs from 15 different doctors, and that police found 2,200 prescription pills lined up in alphabetical order in his bedroom closet.


title: Don Simpson

text: A 1998 book by journalist Charles Fleming reported that Simpson's prescription drug expenses totaled more than $60,000 a month at the time of his death. He called Simpson "a supercharged simple-minded creature, an Aesop's fable on crystal meth".


title: Don Simpson

text: Following his death, his brother Lary Simpson had his own production banner, in order to develop products originated by Don Simpson himself in 1997.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: Star Trek 4 is the working title of an American science fiction film in development at Paramount Pictures based on the television series "Star Trek" by Gene Roddenberry. It is intended to be the 14th film in the "Star Trek" film franchise and the fourth installment in the reboot series. There have been several different iterations of the film in development since 2015.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: Development of a new "Star Trek" film following "Star Trek Beyond" (2016) was revealed before the release of that film, with J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay writing. In December 2017, Quentin Tarantino pitched his own idea for a new "Star Trek" film to producer J. J. Abrams, and development began separately from the "Beyond" sequel. S. J. Clarkson was hired to direct the latter in April 2018, but negotiations with stars Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth ended that August with the actors leaving the project. Noah Hawley was hired in November 2019 to write and direct a new version of the franchise. Tarantino revealed in January 2020 that he had decided not to direct his "Star Trek" film. Hawley's version was placed on hold that August to allow Paramount to decide on the best direction for the franchise. Kalinda Vazquez was set to write the script for a new film in March 2021.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: A separate script from Vasquez's was developed by Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, and Matt Shakman was hired to direct that film in July. The script was being re-written by Josh Friedman and Cameron Squires in November, and negotiations for the return of Pine and the rest of the main cast from the reboot series began in February 2022. Shakman left the film due to a schedule conflict that August with Marvel Studios, and Paramount has begun searching for a new director.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: Shortly before filming for "Star Trek Beyond" began in June 2015, Paramount Pictures completed last-minute contract re-negotiations with the main cast members of the "Star Trek" franchise's reboot films. This gave the actors pay raises while signing Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto to return for a fourth film in their respective roles as James T. Kirk and Spock. While promoting the release of "Beyond", producer J. J. Abrams revealed on July 15, 2016, that the fourth film would see Chris Hemsworth reprising the role of George Kirk, the father of Pine's character, from the prologue of the first reboot film, "Star Trek" (2009). Abrams added that the role of Pavel Chekov would not be recast following the death of actor Anton Yelchin a month earlier. On July 18, Paramount Pictures officially announced a fourth "Star Trek" reboot film with the temporary title "Star Trek 4". The announcement confirmed the return of Hemsworth and Pine as well as most of the main cast from "Beyond", with Abrams producing alongside Lindsey Weber under their company Bad Robot Productions. J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay were hired to write the screenplay for the sequel after doing uncredited writing work on "Beyond". David Ellison and Dana Goldberg of Skydance Media were set as executive producers.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: While making a guest appearance on "The Nerdist Podcast" in December 2015, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino expressed interest in making a "Star Trek" film. He stated that he was a fan of the as well as Abrams's 2009 reboot film, and felt that many classic "Star Trek" episodes could be "easily expanded" into a feature film; he gave the "" episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" (1990) as an example. In September 2017, after a clip of this discussion resurfaced on YouTube, Tarantino was asked about directing a "Star Trek" film and said "it would be worth having a meeting about". He noted that he planned to retire after directing ten films and had already made eight. Both Pine and Quinto separately stated earlier in 2017 that they had not heard any updates about a new "Star Trek" film other than it was being written. Karl Urban, who portrays Leonard McCoy in the films, reiterated this in September and expressed interest in having the fourth film introduce McCoy's ex-wife and daughter. That December, Tarantino approached Abrams and Paramount about an idea he had for a new "Star Trek" film, and development on the project began at the studio. At CinemaCon in April 2018, Paramount CEO Jim Gianopulos said the "Beyond" sequel and Tarantino's proposed film were both in development.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: Tarantino's story was based on the "Star Trek" episode "" (1968), which is set on an alien planet with an "Earth-like 1920s gangster culture". A few days after it was announced, Tarantino and Abrams convened a writers room consisting of Mark L. Smith, Lindsey Beer, Drew Pearce and Megan Amram, to hear the idea and begin developing it into a film. One of the group would be chosen to write a screenplay while Tarantino focused on his ninth film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019); Smith was considered to be the frontrunner. As part of their initial discussions, Abrams and Paramount agreed that the film could receive an R-rating like Tarantino's previous films, which would have made it the first R-rated "Star Trek" film.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: Smith was hired to write the screenplay by the end of December. Paramount president Wyck Godfrey gave Tarantino's "Star Trek" film as an example of how the studio was rejuvenating its existing franchises, believing that "people's eyes light up" at the thought of the filmmaker joining the franchise. Previous "Star Trek" actors Patrick Stewart and William Shatner both expressed interest in returning to the franchise to work with Tarantino on his project. They previously portrayed Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and James T. Kirk in "Star Trek: The Original Series", respectively. Quinto assumed that the cast of Abrams's films would be starring in Tarantino's, which Simon Pegg, who portrayed Montgomery Scott in the Abrams films, soon reiterated. In April 2018, Tarantino's film was believed to be set in a different timeline from the "Beyond" sequel, and had the potential to be another reboot of the franchise.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: Tarantino confirmed in May 2019 that his "Star Trek" film was still in development, explaining that the script had been written and he would return to the project following the release of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" that July. A month later, he said he would be giving notes on the script once he had the chance to and confirmed that the film would be rated R. In July, Tarantino said he had read Smith's script and liked it, but there were elements that he wanted to work on. He described the film as ""Pulp Fiction" (1994) in space". He also said that he was a fan of the performances of Pine and Quinto in Abrams's films and wanted them to star in his film, but he wanted his story to be a direct prequel to the original "Star Trek" series rather than being set in an alternate timeline like Abrams's films are; when discussing the different timelines with Abrams, Tarantino had said "I don't understand this, I don't like it", and Abrams encouraged him to ignore them entirely.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: When asked how a "Star Trek" film would fit into his ten film plan, Tarantino acknowledged that he could use a loophole by saying ""Star Trek" doesn't count" and then make a tenth original film, but suggested that he would rather commit to making ten films whether that tenth film is part of the "Star Trek" franchise or not. In December 2019, Tarantino said he was "steering away" from directing the film but had made no official decision. A month later, he confirmed that he was not going to direct the film. He did think it was a good idea for a "Star Trek" film and suggested that it still be made, offering to give notes on the first cut.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: S. J. Clarkson entered talks to direct the "Beyond" sequel in April 2018. Abrams and Paramount had held an extensive search for a female director, and Clarkson would have been the first woman to direct a "Star Trek" film. Payne and McKay had completed the screenplay, but Paramount had yet to sign new contracts for the main cast outside of Pine and Quinto, including Urban, Pegg, John Cho (Hikaru Sulu), and Zoe Saldaña (Nyota Uhura). After Clarkson joined the film, Quinto said the project was entering the "logistical kind of phase" and expressed excitement at working with the director again after they both worked on the television series "Heroes". In July 2018, Jennifer Morrison expressed interest in reprising her role as George Kirk's wife Winona from "Star Trek" (2009), and Danai Gurira was close to being cast in the film. Pegg met with Clarkson to discuss the project and expected production to begin in early 2019.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: The story Payne and McKay conceived for the film, which they worked on for two and a half years along with Clarkson and Lindsey Weber, involved James Kirk meeting his father George Kirk with the same age as him thanks to some "cosmic quirk" in the universe, in a father-son story galactic adventure akin to that of Indiana Jones and his father Henry in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989), including a new and original villain as well as a "" (1968)-esque sci-fi core idea. Inspired by the Scotty's mysterious subplot from the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "" (1992), the plot focused on the "Enterprise" crew exploring the U.S.S. "Kelvin"s wreckage following Nero's attack and finding out that George Kirk didn't perish in the ship's explosion in the first film but instead had beamed himself into Winona's shuttle as James was being born with the ship actually leaving some remains behind enough to allow Kirk to type out a text message that would save a copy of himself within the ship's computer with his same pattern, leading to a mystery and a new antagonist as the George copy doesn't understand how many years have passed.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: Contract negotiations between Pine, Hemsworth, and the studios ended with Pine and Hemsworth leaving the film in August 2018. The pair had existing deals for the film after Pine had signed on in June 2015 and Hemsworth had been attached in July 2016, but Paramount and Skydance wanted to lower the budget for the film following the financial underperformance of "Beyond", and wanted to decrease the actors' salaries as part of this. Development of the film was expected to continue without Pine and Hemsworth, as it was considered a priority project for the studios. Negotiations with Saldaña, Quinto, Urban, Pegg, and Cho had not yet begun by that point, as they had been waiting until talks with Pine and Hemsworth had been completed. At the end of the month, Urban said production for the film was expected to take place in the United Kingdom, where Clarkson is based, and that it was just waiting on negotiations with Pine and Hemsworth to resume. Pine said a month later that he still wanted to make the film, adding, "we will see what happens". Despite this, the film had been cancelled by January 2019 and Clarkson moved on to other projects. Payne and McKay felt heartbroken when the project fell apart, having envisioned the film to be terrific due to the title, story and cast. This later led them to shift away from filmmaking and move on to television, enabling them to develop the Amazon Studios streaming television show "", where they got to collaborate with Weber. That May, Hemsworth said he had turned down the film because he was underwhelmed by the script.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: Noah Hawley was hired to write and direct a new "Star Trek" film for Paramount in November 2019, which he would produce under his 26 Keys Production company alongside Abrams. The film was set to feature a new plot different from the George Kirk time travel premise and also separate from Tarantino's story idea, though the film was expected to be a sequel to "Beyond" and see Pine, Quinto, Urban, and Saldaña all return. Paramount and Skydance were hopeful that negotiations with the cast would be more successful without Hemsworth and with a new story.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: In January 2020, Hawley said he would begin work on the film after completing the fourth season of his television series "Fargo". He added that calling the film "Star Trek 4" was a misnomer and reports of the "Beyond" cast returning were not necessarily correct, explaining that he had approached Paramount with his own vision for the franchise that was going to be different from previous films, and would likely involve new characters. It was important to Hawley to tell a new story that was respectful of the source material as he did with "Fargo" and "Legion", and he specifically talked about evoking the "Star Trek" values of "exploration and humanity at its best, and diversity and creative problem solving". He referenced a scene from "" (1982) in which Kirk "puts on his reading glasses and lowers Khan's shields. It doesn't cost anything. But it's that triumphant feeling about [out]smarting your enemy" that Hawley wanted to recreate. Hawley discussed the film with his frequent composer Jeff Russo, who coincidentally was already the composer for the television series "" and "". Russo was excited about the possibility of working on Hawley's film, and said they discussed Hawley's story and intentions for the film's music. Russo began composing musical themes for the film.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: In February, ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish said Paramount was only developing one new "Star Trek" film. Hawley was still working on the film in May, during the COVID-19 pandemic. That July, Robert Sallin—the producer of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"—revealed that he had a concept for a new "Star Trek" film that he was writing a script for. He said it would be "unlike anything that has been done in "Star Trek"" before. Sallin had discussed his concept with Paramount, but had been told that the studio would not consider any other pitches for "Star Trek" films until they had seen Hawley's script. Hawley's project was placed on hold in August 2020 by new Paramount Pictures president Emma Watts, whose top priority at the studio was to figure out the direction of the "Star Trek" franchise. Hawley still intended to direct the film, and later confirmed that it was going to feature new characters. His added that his story had an explicit connection to the existing "Star Trek" canon in a similar way to how the first season of "Fargo" has a story connection to the 1996 film of the same name. The screenplay also reportedly featured a deadly virus plot that could be considered "awkward" due to the pandemic. Hawley said the film was "very close to production" when Watts put it on hold, with casting underway, filming set to take place in Australia, and Hawley preparing to move to that country at the time.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: In addition to Hawley's film, Watts was considering two other options for the future of the franchise: a new attempt at a sequel to "Beyond" featuring the cast of the previous films, or a new film that revisited Tarantino's story idea but with a new director. "Deadline Hollywood"s Mike Fleming Jr. suggested that a film featuring the previous cast may have the "cleanest path" forward, with the Hawley and Tarantino films deemed more suitable as spin-offs from the core franchise akin to the "X-Men" franchise's "Logan" (2017). Fleming added that the next film would need "an emphasis on boosting overseas gross numbers which have never been the franchise's strong suit". In September 2020, Hawley said his film was "still alive, just in stasis", but that November he said it did not "appear to be in [his] immediate future" anymore. Also during 2020, "The Wrath of Khan" director Nicholas Meyer wrote a detailed proposal with his producing partner Steven-Charles Jaffe for a new "Star Trek" project, including a treatment and illustrations. Meyer said the project was not connected to any of the franchise's previous films and was set in a gap in the "Star Trek" timeline where an original story could be told with new characters. He described the project as a feature film, but said it could also be a television series or a combination of television and film. Meyer and Jaffe presented this proposal to "Star Trek" television producer Alex Kurtzman, Abrams, and Watts, but had not heard anything back from Paramount by March 2021. At that time, Paramount set "Star Trek: Discovery" writer Kalinda Vazquez to write the script for a new "Star Trek" film, based on her own original idea, with Abrams's Bad Robot producing. A month later, the studio scheduled an untitled "Star Trek" film for release on June 9, 2023.


title: Development of Star Trek 4

text: After his success directing the Disney+ television miniseries "WandaVision" (2021), Matt Shakman turned down several offers in favor of directing the next "Star Trek" film, signing a deal by mid-July 2021. Watts had pushed hard to hire Shakman for the project, and his signing was considered to be a coup for her. Abrams was confirmed to be producing the film, with a screenplay written by Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet that was separate from the script that Vazquez was hired to write. Shakman's film was set for the June 2023 release date, and was said to be moving at "warp speed" after his hiring ahead of a planned filming start in early to mid-2022. No deals with cast members had been made at that point, but Paramount hoped for Pine and the other main cast from his previous films to return. Due to the length of time with no new "Star Trek" films after "Beyond", the studio decided to do market research to determine whether audiences were still interested in the previous cast. Paramount chose to bring them back after determining that there was "lasting audience enthusiasm" for the group. In November 2021, the film's release was pushed to December 22, 2023, to make room in Paramount's schedule for the delayed "" (2023). By then, Josh Friedman and Cameron Squires were re-writing the film's script.