Featured Console Redesigns - Videogame History #133
In practically all generations there have always been redesigns of consoles either desktop or portable that have left their users surprised due to the new features with which the product comes out, these are usually its size, weight and even speed in which it loads the games.
The development companies have always had the need to do this for several reasons, the most common being the need to continue to leave some of their consoles alive and the technological advance that is growing by leaps and bounds, offering a new look to attract the attention of their consumers.
Although some redesigns can be really horrible the vast majority of them are very well received by the gamer community, we can appreciate this between the 80s and 90s with the birth of the NES and SNES, both video game consoles received a change.
In the case of the NES it would become the Top Loader and for the SNES the Snes Jr. Both had the peculiarity of significantly reducing its size, but over time we would see other cases that were surprising, let's see the redesign of consoles that left many people impacted.
The Game Boy Advance was a very popular handheld console for many users, however, still had a big defect, the screen, this lacked backlighting, having the need to play in broad daylight or with some additional accessory, until two years later Nintendo would launch the Game Boy SP, reducing its size and adding an excellent backlit screen making it an almost perfect creation.
We will talk about a dark passenger who had the Microsoft in the seventh generation of consoles, the Xbox 360, its first model brought many problems due to its deadly error called "the three red lights of death", over time this problem was corrected with certain hardware updates.
However, the gamers were asking for clemency to bring out a new model, this was how Microsoft completely redesigned the console launching the Xbox 360 Slim, this was considerably smaller, apart from its cooling system was improved completely eliminating the death lights, if this had been the first model the story would have changed completely.
Now we will jump to one of the most successful companies since the launch of its first console, SONY, when launching the PlayStation 2 was a total commercial success in many countries, over time this company decided it was time to implement a redesign.
After an upgrade on virtually all the hardware, they released the PlayStation 2 Slim, a console that dramatically reduced the size of its predecessor, significantly extending its lifespan, was the best-selling model of all due to its excellent portability and faster disk reading, as well as producing several interesting editions.
We'll be back again with a handheld from Nintendo, but this one has the peculiarity of being bigger than its predecessor, it's the Nintendo 3Ds, at the time of its release it was really incredible, but many people wanted the screen to be bigger.
Then Nintendo would surprise everyone with the Nintendo 3DS XL, which increased the size of the screen by 70%, as well as correcting certain reflex problems that bothered many users.
There are a lot of redesigns which were relevant in the history of videogames, but these were the ones that had the most impact around the world (personal opinion) increasing sales and increasing the useful life of each one of them.
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