The book is divided up into the eight console generations starting with the Magnavox Odyssey and the plethora of devices designed to play various versions of Pong. With the second generation came the Atari 2600, the Commodore 64 and the ColecoVision, but it also came with a ton of lesser consoles as many companies tried to join in the newest fad. Unfortunately, the result was a crash where many consumers simply didn't know which systems they should get or what games would work with what consoles they might already own. The result of that crash not only left Atari floundering and trying a few times to regain its momentum, but also clearing the board of most US-based consoles and letting the Japanese market make its way to the States.
With the third generation, Nintendo's Famicom appeared, as well as Sega's original SG-1000 system, but Americans would know these as the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Master System. These iconic consoles would be followed by the Sega Genesis, the Super NES, as well as a new market, handheld games. Along with their 16-bit console brethren, Nintendo and Sega would release the Game Boy and the Game Gear, respectively.
The fifth generation would see a new competitor, the Sony PlayStation, and it would battle with the Nintendo 64 and poorly released Sega Saturn, while the sixth would put an even more unexpected company into the mix, Microsoft with its Xbox. The sixth generation would also see the release of the PlayStation 2, a system whose sales numbers are still considered one of the best in the industry, the GameCube, and Sega's last console before becoming a third party software developer, the Dreamcast.
Generation seven saw Nintendo drop the GameBoy line with the start of the DS series of handhelds, as well as a change in tactics for its consoles with the Wii. Sony and Microsoft continued to battle for the most powerful system with the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, while Sony also released their own handheld in the PlayStation Portable.
The Game Console: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox's final section is about the eighth, and current, generation. This includes both the relatively short-lived Wii U and its successor the Switch, as well as the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
While most of the consoles discussed above are ones most people already interested in this book will be aware of, don't think that The Game Console has only those in it. Each generation was filled with consoles that attempted to get a market share and this book includes most of them (those that it doesn't are listed in the back, and it's a short list). Amos worked hard to either purchase or borrow some rather obscure consoles in order to document them and there are over 100 different systems described in this volume. Not only does each entry have a basic description of the console and a blurb about its specs with some bit of trivia, but the pictures taken to show off the various machines are of high quality and often provide an exploded view of the components, the controllers, and even close ups of the motherboards. It's clear that photo-documenting these products is the heart and soul of The Game Console: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox, but the actual history lesson of the industry makes it a bit more than a coffee table picture book.
