The evolution of video game graphics

I thought it would be interesting to see how the graphical capabilities of the video game hardware has changed over the years. Unfortunately, there is no single indicator of graphical capabilities, instead graphics is a combination of the resolution, available colors, speed of the processor, etc. But I decided to focus strictly on the resolution.

System	Release date	Resolution
Atari 2600	1977	192 x 160
Atari 5200	1982	320 x 192
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)	1985	256 x 224
Sega Master System (SMS)	1986	256 x 224
Sega Genesis	1989	320 x 448
Super Nintendo (SNES)	1991	512 x 448
Sega Saturn	1995	640 x 480
Sony PlayStation (PS1)	1995	640 x 480
Nintendo 64 (N64)	1996	640 x 480
Sega Dreamcast	1999	640 x 480
Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2)	2000	1280 x 1024
Microsoft XBox	2001	1920 x 1080
Nintendo GameCube	2001	640 x 480
Microsoft XBox 360	2005	1920 x 1080
Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3)	2006	1920 x 1080
Nintendo Wii	2006	640 x 480

In graphical form this is what the data looks like.



You could draw a lot of conclusions from this data. Here are a few that stood out to me.

1. Resolution in and of itself is not a good benchmark, if you will, for system performance. The Atari 5200 has more pixels on screen than either the NES or the SMS, but the latter two systems are far superior.
2. The NES and SMS have the exact same resolution, yet many SMS games look better than NES games. This is because the SMS offers more colors (32 on screen from a palette of 64 versus 25 of 48 for the NES). This goes to show how important colors are.
3. For obvious reasons resolution plateaued at the NTSC standard for a while. But what is interesting is how as late as 2006 a new console (the Wii) was still limited to this old standard. That said, the Wii has outsold both the XBox 360 and the PS3, so better graphics do not equal better sales.