Platform categories
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Hardware sets the limits of what a game can be, so every entry in the archive is filed under the kind of machine it belongs to. An entry can sit in more than one category when a moment spans them, and events with no single machine behind them, such as company formations or ratings, are recorded as industry-wide.
- 13 Laboratory and mainframe systems Before there was an industry there were computers the size of furniture, owned by universities, laboratories and corporations.
- 21 Arcade cabinets A cabinet in a public room is a business before it is a game. It occupies floor space, it takes coins, and if it stops paying the operator hauls it out and puts something else there instead.
- 59 Home consoles A home console is a closed appliance with one job. You buy the box, you buy software made for that box, and the company that built it decides what may be sold for it at all.
- 15 Handheld systems Portable play is a series of trades. Screen quality against battery life, power against weight, price against library.
- 39 Personal computers No single company decides what runs on a personal computer. That has made it the most chaotic, most technically adventurous and most durable place to play games, and much the hardest one to summarize tidily.
- 10 Mobile devices Phones became the largest gaming platform in the world almost by accident.
- 4 Virtual reality headsets Virtual reality was announced as the future of games twice. The first attempt, in the 1990s, could not deliver it. The second, built on parts made cheap by the phone industry, mostly can.
- 3 Cloud and streaming Cloud gaming moves the machine out of the room.
- 13 Industry-wide Some of the most consequential things that ever happened to video games happened in boardrooms, courtrooms, hearing rooms and convention halls.