They played on handheld systems, mobile devices, consoles, and computers. More than 2.5 billion people played video games in 2016, according to WePC. Video games are now one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the world. This began the “console wars” among Nintendo, Sega, Sony’s PlayStation series (first released in 1995), and Microsoft’s Xbox (launched in 2001), which continue to this day. Though Atari and Magnavox put out video games during the late 1970s and 1980s, the next major breakthrough came with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, in 1985. Even though it sold only 8,000 units its first year, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, Pong was the first commercially successful example of what we now call video games. Gameplay was simple: Let the ball past your paddle and the opponent scored a point the first player to 11 points won. Pong was a virtual two-dimensional pingpong table with two paddles and a ball that moved back and forth across a dotted line. In 1972, a wooden box with a screen and two knobs changed the world forever.
