Seventh Generation (2004–2010)

In the history of video games, the seventh generation of consoles is the current generation as of 2011, and includes consoles released since late 2005 by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. For home consoles, the seventh generation began on November 22, 2005 with the release of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and continued with the release of Sony's PlayStation 3 on November 11, 2006, and Nintendo's Wii on November 19, 2006. Each new console introduced a new type of breakthrough in technology. The Xbox 360 offered games rendered natively at HD resolutions (as opposed to upscaling, which could be done in a small number of sixth generation titles), the PlayStation 3 offered, in addition to HD gaming, HD movie playback out of the box via a built-in Blu-ray Disc player, and the Wii focused on integrating controllers with movement sensors as well as joysticks.

This generation of consoles saw an end to the bit race that had so characterized the generations that followed on from the 8-bit third generation. Having found that 128-bits offered a "sweet spot" in terms of price and performance trade-off, the three main consoles of this generation all used this architecture, just as the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 had in the previous generation.