Consoles in the HiFi shelf

From the 1990s, consoles became a standard of living room furniture. The industry takes this development into account and produces devices that look less like consoles and adapt instead to the current look of classic consumer electronics. For the first time, devices whose essential tasks are video games are marketed to adults. This is a side-show of a development that can also be observed in classic consoles – the advertised target group gets older together with the medium. This insight is crucial for the development of video games from a fleeting fashion to an established social factor.

According to the zeitgeist, these devices are applied as multimedia playback stations. This fails because the machines (beside their capabilities as game consoles) are limited to low-quality video sequences, images and low-interactivity applications.