2000s in video gaming

1990s .2000s in video gaming .2010s

Other events: 2000s . Games timeline

The 2000s in video gaming was a decade that was primarily dominated by Sony, Nintendo, the newcomer Microsoft, and their respective systems. Sega, being Nintendo's main rival in the 1980s and 1990s, left the console market in 2002 in favor of returning to the third party company they once were. Overall the decade saw the last of the low resolution three-dimensional polygons of the 1990s with the emergence of High Definition games, and often focused on developing immersive and interactive environments, implementing realistic physics, and improving artificial intelligence.

The sixth generation of video games officially began in 1998 with the introduction of the short-lived Dreamcast, which was discontinued in 2001. Sega announced that they would no longer produce video game consoles after two straight underperforming consoles and became a third-party developer. The PlayStation 2 was released in 2000 and became the best-selling video game console of all time. Microsoft entered the home console market with the Xbox. Although initially expected to struggle, it vaulted into a solid second place behind the PS2 on the strength of the launch title Halo: Combat Evolved. The Nintendo GameCube, launched in 2001 alongside the Xbox, fell into third place, a first for Nintendo.

The sixth generation improved on the 3D graphics of the fifth generation consoles as an era of many sixth generation games. Some of the new features in the consoles included built-in DVD players and hard drives. Internet play on consoles, pioneered by the Dreamcast, became commercially viable with the Xbox Live system, which was launched in November 2002, one year after the console's release. It featured a broadband connection and downloadable content and was a major success.

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