Most revolutionary year in video game history?

[gbpxl]

I have to go with 2001.

I really believe that Grand Theft Auto 3 and Halo brought gaming to the masses moreso than anything previously and anything since.

I also dont know for certain but I believe Gran Turismo 3 was one of the highest selling games of all time. It was one of the first console games I am aware of that looked photo-realistic.

It was a good year in general obviously for gamers what with the releases of the Game Boy Advance, GameCube, and Xbox but the games is what people talk about more than anything.

This was also the first year where the current 3 relevant console makers first started competing against one another. The landscape hasnt really changed much since Sega started going third-party. I guess other than Sony introducing a competitor to Nintendo's portable.

The only other year I can think of is 1995 just because of the release of the PS1, a console that did everything right at the time and completely dominated the market henceforth thereafter.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

Here are some years that stand out as revolutionary:
1972. Pong and original Odyssey.
1976. First plug-in cartridge system (Channel F).
1977. First SUCCESSFUL plug-in cartridge system (Atari VCS).
1980. First third party game maker (Activision)
1981. First online video game (Game Line)
1983. Video game crash.
1986. Revival of video game market with NES (in 1985, the NES was NYC-only) and competition with Sega Master System and Atari 7800
1989. Handheld video games reach quality comparable to TV video games (Game Boy)
1993. First mainstream, polygonal 3D (Star Fox) and beginning of 32 bit generation
1995. Beginning of real 32 bit generation, launch of PS1 (and Saturn)
1996. Super Mario 64 sets standard for 3D platformers
1998. Beginning of Sony's nearly uninterrupted dominance of the home console market (N64 was in the lead in 1996-1997)
2000. Launch of PS2
2001. The things you mentioned, plus Xbox was first console with hard drive
2002. Launch of Xbox Live, first centralized online service with widespread success
2006. Launch of PS3 and Wii, Xbox 360 still new, online capable consoles come to the forefront.

That's 16 years. I'm going to have to vs. them against one another to get them to 8, then to 4, then to 2, then to 1.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

I would rank them:

1. 1986
2. 1995
3. 2006
4. 1980

Here's the "tournament":
'72 vs '76: 1976. The original Odyssey wasn't fully a "video game" the way we see it, more of a video game-board game hybrid with all of its overlays, extra game pieces, etc. Plus while PONG may have come out in 1972, it wasn't in the home until 1975, and 1976 spawned a whole slew of PONG clones. Plus, the Channel F's interchangeable cartridge idea is the same idea that consoles use to this day (with discs or flash memory)
'77 vs '80: 1980. As beloved as the Atari VCS (2600) is, it wasn't a totally new idea. Third party games, again, was a new concept.
'81 vs '83: 1983. Sadly. The Game Line and Play Cable services available in the early 80s didn't catch on.
'86 vs '89: 1986. That grey box brought back video games as we know it, and brought a console manufacturer in that is still healthy today.
'93 vs '95: 1995. The PS1 was HUGE from day 1.
'96 vs '98: 1998. The PS1 was starting to get a lot more serious, adult oriented games during this year.
'00 vs '01: 2001. Beginning of the current 3-manufacturer race with Microsoft entering and Sega bowing out, first console with a hard drive (Xbox) that was designed from the ground up for online.
'02 vs '06: 2006. At this point, nearly photo-realistic graphics were common, and motion controls also became mainstream (for a while).

'76 vs '80: 1980. Can you imagine gaming without third-party games?
'83 vs '86: 1986. The revival beats the crash itself.
'95 vs '98: 1995. '98 owed its status to the PS1's release, and the massive changes of '95.
'01 vs '06: 2006. The beginnings of the online-capable, photo-realistic graphic, multifunction console era we're in now.

[gbpxl]

Damn you put a lot more effort into this than I did.

I think all those years you mentioned were relevant to gamers but I think none of them captured mainstream attention except the year that the NES was released, and maybe the year Pong was released. How many non-gamers were turned into gamers because of these products. Id say Pong would be the easiest answer, but NES is up there too, from your list

[bb_hood]

1986. Revival of video game market with NES (in 1985, the NES was NYC-only) and competition with Sega Master System and Atari 7800

this

[Aussie2B]

1996 felt pretty revolutionary to me. Sure, the Saturn and PS1 were already out in '95 (earlier yet if you go by Japanese release dates), but the Saturn was a flop in the US, and the PS1 didn't hit the US until September '95, so it didn't exist in the US in '95 for very long. And a lot of those early PS1 games were old-fashioned and/or limited in one way or another, by still using 2D, or being prerendered, side-scrolling, on rails, etc. It wasn't until '96, and especially with the launch of the N64 and Super Mario 64, that we really started seeing the full potential of 3D and felt the industry shift in an entirely new direction.