Why are Consoles and Home Computers Segregated?

[jeff20]

Gaming historians, are there any segregationists' arguments for discussing consoles and home computers apart from one another?  For example, (if one subscribes to the idea of console generations) it seems the C64 and VIC 20 are essential in discussing the 2nd Generation.  Reading some wiki on the subject always seems incomplete. It also feels weird to discuss the Atari XE with the 3rd Generation, ignoring the computer roots.

 

There are even different sections in this forum for the two.  I honestly want to know if there is a reason for this I may be overlooking.

[Keatah]

Well I always played console games to have fun. And did computers to do serious stuff (and play games). Consoles were generally closed to us kids of the 70's and 80's. Had to rely 100% on game cartridges. Computers were open and we could get inside and do things, like program and create stuff.

 

Consoles were single-function game machines. Computers were multi-purpose.

[CatPix]

I think because historically those groups were always separated. There is a clear divide in my retrogaming club about people that played on 8/16 bits computers and people that played on 8/16 bits consoles : they rarely go to the other's platforms (well less so for modern computers and from computer to console but that's becaus we're all grown adults).

Also there is a really different mindset on technological level :

Console gamers are usually more adamant in preserving their hardware "as is" with the exception of A/V -HDMI mods.

Computer games are usually very happy to upgrade their machines (to ridiculous levels sometime if you consider the Amiga scene).

 

The divide is also probably historical :

Retrogaming history was first/mostly written about the Atari 2600 and the Krach of 83. And people that were there and lived through it, and wrote about it, did not went to play computer games.

Thus the legend was born that "video games almost died" (when in reality, at least the C64 had a spike in sales in the US).

This mean that newcomers in the retrogaming scenes are first dragged toward consoles, and computers are in a sort of "nerd guetto" where people spent more time tinkering with their hardware and writing shoddy BASIC programs and demos than playing, making those machines unnappealing.

There's also probably the fact that the PC/console war since the 90's is all about PC being superior in power to consoles, which wasn't true in the 80's, so new retrogamers come in expecting the C64 to just crush the NES graphic-wise... Which it doesn't (especially with original games. Less so with homebrews)

 

This is especially aggravating in Europe since computer steamrolled consoles up to 1990 yet today if you listen to "gaming historians", the Atari 2600 then the NES were the queens of the gaming field (with the Master System, that shared the European market 40/60 with the NES, mostly forgotten).

(on a side note it also mean that computers are also an exception, with PAL being the dominant format for the most popular platforms since most games come from Europe)

I could add (so many little differences) at least in Europe, the computer scene had many "local" games, made by local people and focused on very local things.

One example : French singer Renaud was hugely popular in the 80's, and he got at least one video game based on his songs.

This is somethign you may have seen on the 2600 but was completely gone on the NES.

 

I think that also, the hardware being one generation ahead also made them hard to classify at first.

The 16 bits computers arrived in 1985, before the NES came out! And they petered out in the 90's, replaced by the IBM PC, as the 16 bits console came.

 

 

Edited January 20 by CatPix

[zzip]

50 minutes ago, CatPix said:

Console gamers are usually more adamant in preserving their hardware "as is" with the exception of A/V -HDMI mods.

Computer games are usually very happy to upgrade their machines (to ridiculous levels sometime if you consider the Amiga scene).

And because of that the discussions in the computer forums tends to be quite tech focused, rather than about games

 

 

[CatPix]

Someone should bother comparing if there are really more topics on tech, rather than computer forums having the same number of "games" topic but much more tech topics.

[82-T/A]

On 1/20/2023 at 1:52 AM, jeff20 said:

Gaming historians, are there any segregationists' arguments for discussing consoles and home computers apart from one another?  For example, (if one subscribes to the idea of console generations) it seems the C64 and VIC 20 are essential in discussing the 2nd Generation.  Reading some wiki on the subject always seems incomplete. It also feels weird to discuss the Atari XE with the 3rd Generation, ignoring the computer roots.

 

There are even different sections in this forum for the two.  I honestly want to know if there is a reason for this I may be overlooking.

 

 

Hahah, this started out like Civil War discussion.

 

I'd kind of wondered the same thing, but I think it's simply a matter of cost. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s... very few people actually had computers. I know many of us had an Atari computer, or a Commodore computer, or something else like a TRS-80 or Aquarius or Timex Sinclair. Some of us even had PCs (I had an 8088 KayPro) and slogged through monochrome or CGA graphics early on.

 

But the overwhelming vast majority of people during this time did not have a home computer. I didn't even get a home computer until 1985... so my earliest memories until that point were just of the Atari 2600. Most people wanted to play games, but there was little need for a Computer for home use. No one is going to spend big money on a home computer just so they can do spreadsheets and type a school paper up, especially if they didn't also have a printer (and schools expected you to hand-write things at the time). So... I think game systems became far more prevalent in the homes than PCs did early-on, and it just stayed that way.

 

Today, I don't know that there's really much difference other than the fact that people who still play games, likely want to play it on their big screen TV. The number of people who actually play computer games (rather than tablet games, etc.) is a very, very small number of people. But like... the XBOX is basically a modern day computer, so is the Playstation, etc. The Atari VCS runs some kind of Linux I guess... so we're pretty close to a compatible framework.

 

I really do think that the days of consoles is somewhat limited.

[+madman]

'Eh, post deleted. No need for jokes in here.

[Bromosel]

Well, my TI-99/4a came to me at Xmas 1982. Several game modules followed but I was very interested in learning to write programs in TI-BASIC and later XB. I spent a lot of time typing down programs from magazines to store them 'forever' on tapes, mostly games. Whilst typing down the programs I learned a lot about the structure of TI-BASIC.

In 1984 at school we had a physics theme about the solar system. At that time there was a printed simulation in a magazine that showed the movement of the planets around the sun. Our school did not have computers at that time and I think I was the first one that had a programmable comuter. I talked to my teacher and he was very interested to use this simulation in one of his lessons.

So they day came when I took my TI to school, connected it to the Tube-TV and the teacher and my classmates were very impressed. It was obviously the first time they saw such a computer simulation.

After running 1 hour the TI hung up, it had a heat problem. Back at home my father identified an overheating IC inside and he removed this IC, placed it on a passive cooling unit and screwed it at the back of my TI.

From then on the TI never ever hung up anymore. 🥰

Many of my friends had the game consoles like VCS2600 or Intellivison. But I had a real programmable computer...

 

Cheers,

Dirk

 

[zylon]

Some of it, likely had to do with licensing back then. The Atari v Coleco battle over Donkey Kong, is a well known example. I'd imagine some of that carries over today still.