From Pong to PS2 – how games became big business

http://www.mediamagazine.org.uk/

• People didnt realise how the simple game of a simulation tennis match, will elad to the biggest entertainment industry in the history of entertainment industries,ever!
• In 2000, the UK computer and video games market alone was worth a mind-blowing £1.3 billion. In comparison, movie ticket sales totalled a comparatively measly £570.5 million and record sales £1.1 billion.
• Sony-with approximately 100 million sold – has become the most successful home console ever made, the ‘VCR of video gaming’: the PlayStation.
• Now a new machine, the X-Box, has arrived, and is produced by the company that made Bill Gates the richest man in the world. The gloves are off for a ruthless fight, less ‘International Karate’ than ‘Mortal Kombat’: stealthy Sony vs mighty Microsoft.
• the early 1990s, the competition between Sega and Nintendo was given a cute face when Sega created Sonic the Hedgehog (developed from a designer’s notebook doodle) as an answer to Nintendo’s incredibly successful Mario family (which had sold at least one copy for every man, woman and child in the UK).