Timeline of Video Games
Video games from early experiments such as Tennis for Two in 1958 and Spacewar! in 1962 through arcades, home consoles, personal computers, online worlds and smartphones to the $55 billion buyout of Electronic Arts in 2026.
- Category
- Humanities & Culture
- Events
- 30 events 1958 – 2026
- Generated
- by claude-opus-5-5
1958: Higinbotham demonstrates Tennis for Two
William Higinbotham, head of instrumentation at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, designed a two-player tennis game for the laboratory's visitors' day on October 18, run on a Donner Model 30 analog computer and shown side-on on an oscilloscope. Whether it was the first video game depends on definition: OXO (1952) and other computer games came earlier, but it was among the first made purely to entertain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two1962: Russell and colleagues write Spacewar! at MIT
Steve Russell, with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen and others around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), wrote a two-player space dogfight for MIT's new PDP-1 minicomputer; Dan Edwards added a star's gravity and Peter Samson a real star map. Freely shared, it spread to other PDP-1 sites, inspired the first coin-operated video games in 1971, and was played at the earliest known video game tournament, at Stanford University in 1972.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!1972: Magnavox releases the Odyssey home console
Magnavox began selling the Odyssey, the first commercial home video game console, in the United States in September. It grew from prototypes that Ralph Baer's team at the defense contractor Sanders Associates built from 1966 to 1968, the last called the Brown Box; it drew only dots and a line on a television, used plastic screen overlays and had no sound. About 350,000 sold by 1975, and the team's patents later won Sanders and Magnavox more than $100 million in lawsuits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey1972: Atari's Pong becomes an arcade hit
Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, whose Computer Space (1971) was the first commercially sold arcade video game, founded Atari in June and had engineer Allan Alcorn build a table tennis game based on one Bushnell had seen demonstrated on the Odyssey. Tested in a local bar in August and announced on November 29, Pong became the first commercially successful video game and drew many imitators; Atari settled Magnavox's patent suit in 1976 by paying $1.5 million for a license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong1976: Crowther writes Colossal Cave Adventure
Will Crowther, a programmer and caver at the research firm Bolt Beranek and Newman, wrote a text game modeled on part of Kentucky's Mammoth Cave system for a PDP-10 mainframe, in which players typed short commands such as "get lamp"; Stanford student Don Woods expanded it with more fantasy and puzzles in 1977. Copied between research computers, it gave the adventure genre its name and inspired Zork and Infocom's commercial text adventures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure1977: Atari launches the Video Computer System
Atari, sold by Nolan Bushnell to Warner Communications in 1976 to fund the project, released the Video Computer System (VCS), later renamed the Atari 2600, in the fall at $199. It popularized microprocessor-based consoles that played interchangeable cartridges, a format introduced in 1976 by Fairchild's Channel F, developed under engineer Jerry Lawson. Former Atari programmers founded Activision in 1979 as the first independent console game developer; an estimated 30 million VCS units sold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_26001978: Taito releases Space Invaders
Taito released Tomohiro Nishikado's Space Invaders in Japan in July, and Midway Manufacturing distributed it outside Japan from later that year. Waves of descending aliens that fired back, with no time limit and a high score kept on screen, set the template for the fixed shooter and began an arcade boom; its 1980 version for Atari's Video Computer System was the first officially licensed home console conversion of an arcade game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders1978: Trubshaw and Bartle create MUD at Essex
Roy Trubshaw, a student at the University of Essex in England, wrote the first version of MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) on the university's PDP-10 in the autumn, and fellow student Richard Bartle took over its development in 1980. Players typed commands to explore a shared text world and fight or chat with one another; outside players began connecting over networks in 1980, and its name became the generic term for a genre of online worlds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD11980: Namco releases Pac-Man
Namco began testing Toru Iwatani's maze game Puck Man in Tokyo on May 22, and Midway released it in North America as Pac-Man late in the year. Iwatani wanted a nonviolent game with cute characters that would draw women and couples into arcades; the dot-eating hero and four ghosts with distinct behaviors became a mass phenomenon, with merchandise, a television cartoon and the hit single "Pac-Man Fever".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man1982: Sinclair and Commodore launch low-cost home computers
Sinclair Research launched the ZX Spectrum in Britain on April 23, and Commodore International began selling the Commodore 64 in the United States in August. Inexpensive machines that plugged into a television and loaded software from cassette tapes or disks, they became mass game platforms on which hobbyists wrote and sold their own games; the Spectrum supported the growth of Britain's games industry, and the Commodore 64 sold an estimated 12.5 to 17 million units.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum1983 – 1985: Video game market crashes in North America
A glut of consoles and hastily made cartridges, many from new third-party publishers, together with competition from home computers, collapsed home video game sales in the United States from late 1982. Atari lost hundreds of millions of dollars and buried unsold stock in a New Mexico landfill, Mattel and others left the business, and many retailers stopped stocking games, while the Japanese market and European home computer sales kept growing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_19831983: Nintendo releases the Famicom in Japan
Nintendo released the Family Computer (Famicom) on July 15, designed by Masayuki Uemura's team around hardware from its Donkey Kong arcade game; Sega's SG-1000 console launched the same day. From 1984 Nintendo licensed outside publishers such as Namco and Hudson Soft for a fee, a model later standard in the industry. Redesigned as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), it went on sale in the United States from October 1985; the two versions sold 61.91 million units.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System1984: Pajitnov creates Tetris in Moscow
Alexey Pajitnov, a researcher at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, wrote a falling-block puzzle game on an Elektronika 60, a Soviet clone of the PDP-11, and with Dmitry Pavlovsky and 16-year-old Vadim Gerasimov ported it to the IBM PC. Copies spread freely through the Eastern Bloc; after tangled licensing deals with the Soviet trade agency Elektronorgtechnica (Elorg), Western computer versions and Nintendo's Game Boy version of 1989 made it a worldwide hit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris1985: Nintendo releases Super Mario Bros. in Japan
Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka's side-scrolling platform game, scored by Koji Kondo, came out for the Famicom in Japan in September and later for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) abroad, often bundled with it. Mario, who first appeared as "Jumpman" in Miyamoto's arcade game Donkey Kong (1981), became Nintendo's mascot, and the game is credited, with the NES, as a key factor in reviving the American market after the crash of 1983.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.1989: Nintendo releases the Game Boy
Nintendo released the Game Boy in Japan on April 21, a cartridge-based handheld from Gunpei Yokoi and Satoru Okada's team that favored low cost, durability and long battery life over a color screen. Bundled with Tetris in North America and Europe, it drew players beyond traditional gamers, and with its successor, the Game Boy Color, it sold 118.69 million units; it followed Yokoi's single-game Game & Watch handhelds, introduced in 1980.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy1993: id Software releases Doom as shareware
On December 10, id Software uploaded the first episode of Doom to a University of Wisconsin–Madison server as shareware, free to copy, and sold the rest directly. John Carmack's fast pseudo-3D engine, design by John Romero and Sandy Petersen, deathmatch play over local networks and data files that fans could modify made it the game that popularized the first-person shooter, a view used earlier by Maze War (1973) and id's Wolfenstein 3D (1992).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1993_video_game)1994: Publishers set up the Entertainment Software Rating Board
Facing US Senate hearings, begun in 1993, on violence in games such as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, publishers formed the Interactive Digital Software Association, which launched the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) on September 16 with age categories and content descriptors. In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011), the US Supreme Court ruled 7 – 2 that video games are protected speech, striking down a California ban on selling violent games to minors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Software_Rating_Board1994: Sony launches the PlayStation
Sony released the PlayStation in Japan on December 3, after a planned compact disc add-on for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System fell through. Designed under Ken Kutaragi for 3D polygon graphics, it used compact discs rather than cartridges and courted outside developers; Sony reports more than 102 million shipped, and more than 160 million PlayStation 2s (2000). On the rival Nintendo 64, Super Mario 64 (1996) made its camera and analog control a model for 3D platform games.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_(console)1996: Game Freak releases Pokémon Red and Green
Game Freak's Pocket Monsters Red and Green, published by Nintendo for the Game Boy in Japan on February 27, grew from Satoshi Tajiri's childhood insect collecting: players caught 151 creatures and traded them between handhelds over a link cable. A sleeper hit, it spawned a trading card game and an anime series and spread worldwide from 1998; Niantic's smartphone game Pokémon Go brought the franchise to a new wave of players in 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Red,_Blue,_and_Yellow1998: StarCraft spawns professional leagues in South Korea
Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game StarCraft, released for Windows in March, became the main game of a professional scene in South Korea, where broadband networks built after the 1997 Asian financial crisis and PC bang internet cafés are thought to have fostered online play. Cable channels such as Ongamenet televised its leagues, companies sponsored teams, and the Korean e-Sports Association was founded in 2000 to promote and regulate competitive gaming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_in_esports2003: Valve launches Steam
Valve released Steam out of beta on September 12 as a client that automatically updated its online games; Half-Life 2 required it in 2004, and from 2005 it sold games from other developers. By the 2010s it was the largest store for PC games by industry estimates, and its Linux-based SteamOS later ran Valve's Steam Deck handheld, released in 2022.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(service)2004: Blizzard launches World of Warcraft
Blizzard Entertainment released World of Warcraft on November 23, a subscription massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that made the genre easier to approach than predecessors such as Ultima Online (1997), South Korea's Lineage (1998) and EverQuest (1999). It peaked at 12 million subscribers in October 2010 and was still receiving expansions more than 20 years after launch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft2006: Nintendo launches the motion-controlled Wii
Under president Satoru Iwata, Nintendo chose not to match the processing power of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 and launched the Wii, starting in North America on November 19, with a wireless, motion-sensing controller. Wii Sports, bundled in most regions, drew many older and first-time players; more than 101 million consoles sold, and Microsoft and Sony answered with Kinect and PlayStation Move.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii2008: Apple opens the App Store
Apple opened its App Store on July 10 with about 500 apps, games among them, letting developers sell directly to iPhone and iPod Touch owners rather than through mobile carriers; Google's Android Market followed in October. In-app purchases, added in 2009, enabled free-to-play hits such as Candy Crush Saga (2012). Earlier phone games included a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 (1994), Nokia's built-in Snake and downloads on Japan's i-mode service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(Apple)2009: Persson releases the first version of Minecraft
Markus Persson, a Swedish programmer, posted the first public version of Minecraft on May 17, a sandbox game of procedurally generated block worlds in which players mine, craft and build. Sold while still in development and spread by online videos and fan communities, it was formally released in 2011; Microsoft bought its developer, Mojang, for $2.5 billion in 2014, and Mojang reported more than 300 million copies sold by October 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft2011: Justin.tv spins off Twitch for game streaming
Justin.tv, a San Francisco live-video site co-founded by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear in 2007, spun off its fast-growing gaming section as TwitchTV, which opened in public beta on June 6. Watching others play live, from esports tournaments to individual streamers, became a mass pastime: Amazon bought Twitch for $970 million in 2014, and it had more than 100 million viewers a month by 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_(service)2017: Nintendo releases the hybrid Switch
Nintendo released the Switch on March 3, a tablet-like console that plays on a television when docked and as a handheld with detachable Joy-Con controllers, after the weak sales of its Wii U. Nintendo reported 156.59 million units sold by June 2026, more than any of its earlier consoles; its successor, the Switch 2, launched on June 5, 2025, and sold more than 3.5 million units in four days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch2017: Epic releases Fortnite Battle Royale free to play
Epic Games released Fortnite Battle Royale on September 26 as a free game for PCs, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, built in about two months after the success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds from South Korea's Bluehole. Funded by cosmetic items and a seasonal Battle Pass, and later playable across consoles, computers and phones together, it followed the free-to-play model that South Korean online games such as Nexon's QuizQuiz (1999) had helped popularize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale2021: China sharply limits minors' online gaming time
China's National Press and Publication Administration ordered on August 30 that online game companies serve players under 18 only from 8 to 9 p.m. on Fridays, weekends and public holidays, enforced through real-name registration; 2019 rules had allowed 90 minutes on most days. It bound companies such as Tencent in one of the world's largest game markets, where the sale of consoles had been banned from 2000 to 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notice_of_the_National_Press_and_Publication_Administration_on_Further_Strict_Management_and_Effective_Prevention_of_Minors%27_Addiction_to_Online_Games2026: Investor group takes Electronic Arts private
A consortium of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the private equity firm Silver Lake and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners completed its purchase of Electronic Arts (EA), maker of EA Sports FC, Madden NFL and The Sims, on August 4, paying $210 a share. Valued at about $55 billion, the deal added to a wave of industry consolidation that included Microsoft's $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard, completed in October 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout_of_Electronic_Arts