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Concept
Eighth generation of video game consoles
Summary
The eighth generation of video game consoles began in 2012, and consists of four home video game consoles: the Wii U released in 2012, the PlayStation 4 family in 2013, the Xbox One family in 2013, and the Nintendo Switch family in 2017.
The generation offered few signature hardware innovations. Sony and Microsoft continued to produce new systems with similar designs and capabilities as their predecessors, but with improved performance (processing speed, higher-resolution graphics, and increased storage capacity) that further moved consoles into confluence with personal computers, and furthering support for digital distribution and games as a service. Motion-controlled games of the seventh generation had waned in popularity, but consoles were preparing for advancement of virtual reality (VR), with Sony introducing the PlayStation VR in 2016. Sony focused heavily on its first-party developers and console exclusives as key selling points, while Microsoft expanded its gaming services, creating the Xbox Game Pass subscription service for Xbox and Windows computers, and its xCloud game streaming service. Microsoft and Sony consoles saw mid-generation refreshes, with high-end revisions PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X, and lower-cost PlayStation 4 Slim and Xbox One S models that lacked some features. As of 2021, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One families had sold an estimated 106 and 58 million units, respectively.
Nintendo remained on a separate path from Sony or Microsoft in its blue ocean strategy. The Wii U was designed to be a more robust Wii to appeal to dedicated gamers, but its means and purpose were lost in how it was marketed. The Wii U substantially undersold Nintendo's projections, selling only 13.5 million units by its discontinuation in 2017, which drove Nintendo to release the Nintendo Switch by 2017, its design and marketing accounting for several of the faults of the Wii U while meeting a broad range of global demographics and possible gaming situations.
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