Over the past decade, the video game industry has skyrocketed, attracting colorful new customers every year and investing in just about everything that is "pop culture" today. "The Industry", as I refer to it, is relatively friendly and easy going with one another - but every 5 years or so, companies will compete by releasing new consoles sometimes on the exact same date. At these points in time, a certain console can triumph, and others will fall, becoming nothing more than a memory in gamer's minds. One of these events began less than a year ago and is still raging on, coming closer and closer to its groundbreaking conclusion.

It all began about 3 years ago, it was the turn of the 21st century and the Sony Playstation was fighting a losing battle against the powerful Sega Dreamcast. Meanwhile, long time superpower Nintendo hung in the back of the crowd with the slowly progressing system; Nintendo64. Sega and Nintendo had been long time rivals in the video gaming industry ever since Atari stopped making consoles, but their had been an strange silence between them lately. Sony was relatively new to the video game industry, but still gave good competition to Sega and Nintendo at the time. Early in the year of 2001, Sony announced plans to release the Playstation2 during the early holiday season of that year. Around the time this happened, almost by coincidence, Sega started losing sales on the Dreamcast and lost almost all hope of bringing out another console idea to counter Sony.

Almost immediately after Sony's announcement, Nintendo released to the public that they had been working on a console for the past year as well. Nintendo's project, respectively code-named "Project Dolphin", had been floating around chat rooms and web sites for the past few months before the official announcement. After hearing this, Sega virtually pissed their pants, and began contemplating plans for selling the company. Shortly afterwards, Sega announced they would immediately halt production of the Dreamcast and sell the rights to their games (such as the popular "Sonic The Hedgehog") to the highest bidder.

With Sega out of the way, Sony triumphed with the release of the Playstation2. Immediately selling millions by the day after its release. Nintendo, having problems with a deadline for the completion of their console, constantly pushed the release date back (Gamers were used to this, as Nintendo was known for changing release dates frequently). Meanwhile, a secret project was nearing completion, the head of it being one of the most powerful and wealthiest men in America.

Late in the year of 2001, Nintendo finally announced a final release date for the Nintendo Gamecube early 2002. Less than a week later, Computer Software superpower Microsoft shocked the world by announcing they would release a "super" console on the same date as the Gamecube's release, the console was named XBOX by Microsoft founder, Bill Gates. As the days progressed, eager gamers waited with anticipation for the release date of these consoles who were produced by some of the most popular companies in the world to this day. When the time finally came for the consoles to be released to the public, people spent days lined up around city blocks waiting to get their hands on one (or both) of them first.

On the first week of the consoles release, sales were relatively equal, but then the Gamecube sales slowly started to decline as the year progressed. By the end of 2002, XBOX had climbed in sales and posed a great threat to Sony's Playstation2, the Gamecube hung in the back of the crowd focusing mainly on the handheld market, much like the old Nintendo64. One year ended, another began, and the Playstation2 was fighting a losing battle against the powerful superpower Microsoft. Sega, now a simple video game production company, made many classic games for all three of these "next generation" consoles, much like Atari did 15 years ago.