P1,M1,D1 Platforms

A gaming platform is a collection of hardware that is collectively designed to run games and applications an example of a complete gaming platform could be an Xbox 360, platforms can fall under various different category's.


The development of platforms:



First home console "Brown Box"

The first home console was the "Brown Box" invented by a Mr Ralph H. Baer in 1967, (some time later than the first gaming PC "Nimrod" that came to life in 1951). It was a small wooden box with two controllers attached, it used to plug into the family's TV and you could play games like "Ping-Pong" and a "Light Gun Game". There wasn't a lot else to do besides that compared to the consoles of today. Then in 1972 followed the "Magnavox Odyssey" that featured removable game cartridges but still no sound. As time went on consoles and platforms started to develop the first multi-coloured home console was the "Coleco Telstar" which came in 1978 by the "Coleco" company. Along with the first 3D games coming out in the early 80's. Ever since then gaming has become bigger and bigger from single core CPUs in PCs we now have octo-core monsters that where half the size of their grandparents, we now have amazing 4K HD displays that show off more colour than the eye can see, its exciting to see where it will be in another 20 years time. In the future I expect to see more progress in the portability and price along with power.


PC Gaming:

A PC is a collection of hardware such as ram, cpu, gpu, psu, soundcard, optical drives and storage means all this is connected together inside a metal or plastic case, on the case may be several different things like fans for ventilation or LEDs for display. PCs are often connected to a output devise such as a monitor or television and have several peripherals such as mice & keyboard, PCs are common everywhere you look from home use to business.



First Home PC "The UNIVAC PC"

PC gaming for years has been considered the crème de la crème of gaming platforms, (providing you have the pocket for the initial asking price) upon entering the world of PC gaming you are instantly charmed with the realm of awesome graphics and amazing value thanks to your new best friend Steam. PC gaming has come a long way since the early 50's when it was first spotted, in the mid 70's Bill Gates and Paul Allen started a humble garage based company known as Microsoft, this company is now regarded as one of the wealthiest and most successful company's ever to have existed. Some key PC features allow the user seamless multi-tasking and the ability to do practically anything, there are also things called Emulators that allow the user to play console games via their PC. There are some pros and cons to PC gaming and some are pretty nasty.

Pro's:
Cheap Games
Better Graphics
More Features
Better Multi-tasking
No game is exclusive thanks to emulators

Con's:
Very high initial price
Unexplainable errors
Lack of pick up and playability

Internet is a must
Some understanding of PC's is required


Console Gaming:

Games consoles are small plastic boxes filled with what is essentially a shrunken PC, consoles will likely be connected to a TV or monitor and will be common throughout a lot of households some pubs also have consoles like the Nintendo Wii set up on special nights. Consoles would not be seen in a business environment unless that is the specific industry.

The initial idea of a home console started of in the late 60's imagined by a Ralph Baer, however this was only a prototype the first purchasable console was the Magnavox odyssey back in 1972. Consoles have came a long way since then for example the xbone features, HD graphics and resolutions, integrated wifi play.



The most recent generation console "PlayStation 4"

If you are new to gaming and are thinking of trying it out this is probably where you should start. Consoles are the flesh and blood of the gaming community and there is very good reason for it, consoles such as the Wii and Nintendo DS are very cheap and simple and thrive of how easy it is to just pick up and play. Consoles like the Xbox platform and the PlayStation live of their competitive nature and are meant for the
average gamer who doesn't have the world to spend on a new PC. Consoles are great for those who just want to play games because consoles suck at multi-tasking they simply don't have the platform design or the hardware only now are consoles beginning to be able to develop the basic functionality that PC has had for years.

Pro's:
Initially cheaper
Simplistic design
More people play console
Not as much can go wrong
Games will always work/no system requirements

Cons:
More expensive games
Membership fees
Worse/no multi-tasking
Worse graphics
Hardware limitations


Arcade Gaming:

Arcade machines are large sized metal, wooden or plastic boxes that are often roughly as high as an average sized person, the arcade machines will have a coin slot/door, a change slot, some form of interacting with the cabinet and a screen with the monitor that the display is shown on whilst being protected by the bezel sort of in the same way as the speakers are protected from vandalism. Arcade cabinets are common in places like pubs or seaside attractions arcade machines use their brightly coloured marquees to attract customers. Again these devises are used purely for gaming and wouldn't be seen in office use, also it is very rare that an individual would own an arcade cabinet due to unit cost and size. The games would often in the early days come preloaded on their PCB (printed circuit board) this has all the components on it and kept things compact, nowadays the games can be swapped around to improved cost effectiveness.

First Coin operated game system "Computer Space"

Arcade gaming is great, you can spend just £1 for a go play until you lose and the games you play are very often new and unique experiences compared to what you could ever experience at home, for example Moto GP on actual motorbike controllers. Coin operated machines started way back in the early 1900's around 1905 you could expect to see some primitive pinball machines poping up around certain festivals. It wasn't until the late 70's/80's that you would start seeing the now legendary games like Pac Man and  space invaders. There were also arcade games that were vector based (made purely of straight lines) games like Asteroids were the best known. Back in the 80's the storage that a game could use was heavily restricted limiting the developers to lower detailed resolutions and assets in every aspect of their games a new
technology known as LaserDisc was introduced to allow for greater storage, however this limited some aspects interns of actual gameplay, the disks were also very large and very expensive, they saw rare usage outside of Asia. The most known release that used this format is arguably Dragons Lair.

Nowadays you can expect at the amusements to see things like the 2p machines along with things like House of the Dead and Time Crisis. There are also things like emulations that allow games that were meant purely for one platform to be able to be played on a totally different system, this effectively works the same for the arcade systems as they are just PCs that emulate being a separate system.

Pros:
Unique gaming experience
Often more social
It is possible to get hours of entertainment of £1
Penny machines offer prizes
Great to just kill some time

Cons:
Lack of portability
Never yours, always owned by the business
Often feel like money is wasted
Often incredibly hard (to make you pay more if you fail)
Prizes often suck
No saves/often very short
Socializing again (it's both as not everyone likes people!)


Mobile Gaming


The first mobile phones to hit the UK were in the mid 80's along with the first mobile phone network Vodaphone. The first text message was sent on December the 3rd 1992. The first camera phones appeared in japan in the year 2000. In 2008 the HTC Dream was released, this was the first Android phone.

First mobile game "Snake"

The mobile market has recently exploded into the hearts and lives of  billions of people, in the developed world it is literally impossible to not find a single person who doesn't know what Angry Birds is and that says a lot considering it only came out in 2009! Mobile gaming started of in the early 90's when Snake was first introduced onto some mobiles obviously snake was very basic, but it was still incredibly entertaining and showed how in time devises could perform multiple different tasks. The key features of mobile are that they are portable and have a reasonably long battery life, along with the fact that 91% of the worlds adults own a mobile, that's a pretty big potential market. Things like PDAs that are often used in business often fly somewhat under the radar, they are often very specific in what they do like check email, allow schedules and business things like that, but they are starting to die off thanks to smartphones and tablets but back in their day they were used everywhere where the dress code was a suit.

Apps that allow for free messaging,
are destroying the usefulness of
the text message.

All phones obviously rely on a signal for calls and internet, the major supplier of this is a company known as GSM they are responsible for over 80% of  market share for this. They are responsible for and own 3G (3GPP) and 4G mobile web browsing and connections, so they helped mobile development immensely. There are of course some pretty serious limitations with all this portability for example the storage on these devises will never even be close to a PC's storage meaning games will always lack the depth of a PC or console title. Hardware will also struggle to keep up with its major competitors also due to size restrictions.

Pros:
Portable
Great for when you need to kill some time
Cheap games
Millions of choices
Calls & Texts
Multi-tasking

Cons:
Games are often basic
Requires payment to use phone once its bought
Limited battery life
Requires a modern phone for mist games



TV

The first home TV was made in 1927 by Philo Farnsworth all it could do at the time was display the shape of a dollar sign using 60 lines, he clearly knew how much money TV would make. Colour TV was first broadcasted in Britain in 1966, it was predicted that when it was first introduced that only 5% of the TV owning population would watch in colour. The first HD TV surprisingly came out in 1974 with a Japanese prototype that could display 1125 pixels where as the current standard was 480. The first HDTVs to hit the consumer market came out in 1998

TV gaming was an idea that never really took of, the whole idea was to have a TV that also worked as a console the problems with this is that licensing was complicated due to the console company's license and the TVs company license had to be issued. This lead to the units being very expensive, almost burying them from the start. Obviously there would of been benefits to this also television had a very appealing feature, being a television!

PS2 TV hybrid

The most famous example of TV game console is likely the PS2 inside a TV and that wasn't very successful...

However TV took a separate route into the "Smart" direction introducing interactive TVs that can connect to the internet save data about the individual user to remember programs that the user likes and all sorts of other life invading features. For the most part TV will remain what it always has been, because that's what it's best at doing...
This is similar to an i-TV that lets users do things like online shopping, check emails and other basic things that a computer has been able to do for years. It also shares some traits with multimedia home platforms (MHP) these are also just basically combined devices that can be a PC along with many other things.

TV in terms of actual broadcasting has a few different things about it such cable or satellite, with cable the TV is directly connected into a cable that runs into a cable box that is in turn connected to the cable company that provides the programs. Where as with satellite TV the installed dish receives the signal from an orbiting satellite. There are 3 main TV providers Freeview, Sky, Virgin all these such as public broadcasting witch are things like the news, and religious television.

TVs have some pretty serious limitations compared to the other devices, TVs have to get thinner and thinner otherwise no progress is being made in the eyes of many, meaning that any realist chance of a hybrid device.

Pros:
Plays TV
Nothing can really go wrong
Good for web services like Netflix

Cons:
Not used for much else...
Somewhat expensive.


Links
Fig 1 http://www.thegameconsole.com/ralph-baer-brown-box/
Fig 2 http://pc-museum.com/gallery/rcm-001.jpg
Fig 3 http://www.dazeinfo.com/2013/08/21/ps4-release-date-announced/
Fig 4
Fig 5 http://cdn10.mixrmedia.com/wp-uploads/wirebot/blog/2011/08/snake-game.jpg
Fig 6
Fig 7 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2538488/SMS-takes-seat-IM-number-texts-sent-Britain-falls-time.html