At least they did mention this:

Wow, they're missing half of the 90s, and no mention of the Wii whatsoever lol.

Mario was 1983 was it not?

Lot's a big turn point were missed, some big ones being

1989 - Gameboy

1994 - Playstation - Support shifts from Nintendo to Sony

1997 - Ocarina of Time - Often sited as the best video game ever made, was released

2004 - Nintendo DS/ Sony PSP - Japan has shifted to mobile gaming and pretty much abandoned consoles

2006 - Wii Nintendo introduced motion controls into home consoles, sales explode (How did Kinect make it, but Wii not?)

The 1985 entry is for Super Mario Bros. not Mario Bros.

If it was my timeline I'd include a few of your suggestions. But it's just a snapshot overview showing where gaming started and how it evolved. Listing all of even just the really important stuff would make for a image too long to post alongside an article.

1998 - Ocarina of Time - Often sited as the best video game ever made, was released

Yea, I know, I'm just saying it's not a good timeline in particular.

Yea, Super Mario was 1985, but Mario was around before that, and Donkey Kong was a big arcade game before Super Mario Bros. Giving credit to Super Mario Bros. as Mario's origin is like giving credit to Final Fantasy as the first JRPG, or giving credit to Halo as the first major FPS....

wait... they gave Halo credit for that too!!!

I had the vision in 1997.

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LOL my bad

Street Fighter II and the fighting game genre are notably absent from this diagram as well, which not only dominated much of the early- and mid-nineties, but helped breathe the last bit of life to the arcades and spark a tournament scene that is still going on strong to this day (e.g., Evo).

I have had to explain this so many times, but everyone seems to be looking at this timeline wrong. It's not a list to give credit to the best of gaming stuff. It's a timeline.

Super Mario Bros is on the timeline because it was a major turning point. If it was my timeline I would have at least included Donkey Kong as a bullet point in an entry for Arcade games.

Halo is not being give credit as the first major FPS. I think it's on the timeline to show where MS jumped in and made a big splash. It's bullet points don't claim it is the first, best, or most important FPS. It is just a landmark on the road of video game evolution. If I made a timeline for FPS games I would have made room for Wolfienstin 3D  and Doom and Quake and Half-Life and Goldeneye and Perfect Dark and so on. But as this is a short overview of the broad history of video games I think I can forgive NatGeo for trying to do something other than print pictures of Lions and Tigers and Bears.