Developments of gaming platforms.

Arcade Games

• First Introduction - 1971, The Galaxy Game first shown in Stanford University

• Famous Consoles/Games – People often refer to PacMan as being one of the famous arcade games but one of the earliest arcade consoles was the Atari renowned for it’s pong game.

• Latest Arcade Games – Some of the more recent games include Tekken 6 and Rush 2049 produced by Atari.

• Processor Capabilities – The advancements of games have come a long way, from 2D to 3D with greater graphical capabilities and fast paced fighting games E.G Super PacMan which uses the Motorola 6809 Processor

• Display Capabilities – Arcade screens generally got bigger, especially with the advancements of co-op play, which would need a much bigger screen to accommodate the game, the latest arcade machines are high resolution.

• Peripherals – In the earlier days it was just 2 standard buttons with a joysick, which would then advance to controllers, we now use an assortment of motion detection/game pads and even model replicas of guns which are often attached to the machine.

Consoles

• First Introduction – The fist console made was the Magnavox Odyssey which was released in 1972.

• Famous console/game – People nowadays often refer to the PS3 or the Xbox 360 as their console of choice, but the most famous console was the PS2 or it’s innovation, and is also the best seller world wide with just over 155 million units sold and released in 2000.

• Latest consoles/games – One of the latest and renowned editions to console games is GTA V, and the “latest” consoles include the Xbox 360 and the PS3 as well as hand held consoles like the Nintendo DS and the PS vita.

• Processor Capabilities – the Xbox 360 uses a triple core Xenon processor, and has 10MB of eDRAMalthough its main memory pool is 512MB in size.

• Display capabilities – All the latest consoles use at least 360p although this goes all the way up to 1080p HD.

• Peripherals – The Xbox 360/PS3 use many different peripherals such as the controllers which can be used wirelessly, headsets, charger kits, cameras, wireless adaptors (PS3 wireless built in) and even remotes for the TV.

PC Games

• The first ever PC game was Spacewars! Which debuted in 1956 and was made by students Martin Graetzand Alan Kotok at MIT, it was first made for the PDP-1 Mainframe.

• Famous PC games include Half Life, Starcraft, Deus Ex and World of Warcraft (subscription based).

• Processing capabilities – Processors for PC’s range from low budget like the Intel Pentium dual core E5200 2.5ghz to the more costly/powerful Intel 4th gen Core i7 4770K 3.5GHz Quad core processor.

• Display capabilities – Displays on PC’s use the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to give image, the GPU is mainly used for gaming higher end GPU’s such as the GTX 780 will be able to play games on the highest graphics (also depends on other aspects such as the RAM/CPU) lower cards like the GT 9700 are much less powerful.

• Connectivity – PC gaming is renowned for it’s online play, with games such as World of Warcraft. Internet speeds are increasing yearly, with fibre optic being one of the fastest at the moment.

• Peripherals – You can use console controllers on the PC and third party headsets such as the corsair headset. PC’s also use a mouse and keyboard, some companies specialize in these, such as razer.

• Cost – The cost of a gaming PC is high, but for good reason. If you were to buy a gaming PC now, it would last a few years before you would need to upgrade the hardware, or you can just change the hardware whenever you want, PC gamers see having a PC as freedom, being able to swap out old parts, with a console this isn’t possible.

Hand Held Devices

• The first popular hand held device was the Gameboy which sold millions of units mainly in the US and had popular games such as Pokemon and Mario.

• Famous Games – Famous hand held games include Pokemon, Mario, Angry birds etc…

• Processing – An early handheld console such as the Gameboy had bad specs compared to todays tech, the latest handheld consoles such as the PS Vita use an ARM Cortex-A9 core (4 core) compared to a current iPhone 5s which uses an A7 Apple processor bearing in mind this is just a phone.

• Display – A PS Vita uses a SGX 543 which was developed just for hand held consoles and gives a good punch in power, an iPhone 5s uses a standard Retina display at 1080p

• Storage – A hand held such as a PS Vita uses memory cards which reach up to 32GB considering most of the games come on a small disk this will just be used for saves/game content. A standard iPhone starts at 16Gb and goes all the way up to 64GB, this is because people use the phone not just for calls etc but also emails, music, videos and games.

• Connectivity – The PS Vita uses standard Wifi/3g connection whereas the iPhone can go up to 4G (new tech) for greater speeds.