What is a game platform: Is a specific piece hardware that is built to run games and play games. It can be either a Computer, console or a TV. These all allow to run and play games and all classed as platforms.
Arcade Games:
Arcade games Are mainly found at Amusement parks, Piers and Fairgrounds, they will be found in large quantities but you won’t really find them anywhere else due to the new developments into games like Pc and console which has made arcade games obsolete. Arcade games have aged quite a bit through the ages advancing and becoming collector items for collectors, some arcades have games that are over 20 years old. Nowadays you don’t really see arcades like we use to see in the 1970’s and onward. One of the most popular arcade games that you could play was Pacman. Pacman was made in 1980 by the Japanese game designer Toru Iwatani who then went on to make lots of different versions of the game that got more and more advanced as the years went on to be improved in every way from the scoring system to the Ghosts pathing all be improved to make the game more fun.You controlled the game with a joystick and two buttons for movement and interaction with objects in the game. Pacman was a simplistic design with 4 ghosts that would attempt to catch you, your goal as Pacman was to survive as long as possible trying to collect as many pellets as possible. The more pellets you gather the higher your score would get, another pick up that gives you points was the Cherry that allowed you to eat the ghosts for a short period of time giving you extra points adding to your score. You would pay a small fee to play the games by inserting a coin into the coin slot allowing you to play the game for 1 turn so when you finish the 3 lives your given you would have to play to play another game with 3 lives. Nowadays you can play all the classic arcade games on a thing called an emulator which allows you to port over games that used to be played on older devices to new ones and allowing you to enjoy the arcade in your own home on your PC or your phone. The reason why the cabinets for arcade games were so big is that of the hardware inside them it needed a lot of space to allow the machine to keep the high amount of data like high scores and such. These games still exist and some are still evolving and proving to this day and becoming even better than when they were in arcades.
Console Platforms:
Consoles where a massive step from arcades devices, Smaller More efficient and sometimes including more than 1 game on them advancing from just one game to two games and onwards one every year getting better and better and games companies loved it this allowed them to make their own consoles and make particular games only work on those consoles meaning people would have to buy a new console to play that new game. The first working prototype of a home integrated games console was 1967 called the “Brown Box” Which was very bulky and featured six simple games, namely ping-pong, tennis, handball, volleyball, chase games and a light-gun game. This was where consoles began and progressed to where they are today. The most popular one everyone would know would be the Atari consoles that progressed through the year starting with; Atari Sears Tele-Games Pong System (1975) to the newest reveal with an Atari Console coming out in late 2018. Consoles began to get better and better through the years but one console had a lot of promise until a massive floor was found in its design allowing Console owner to copy and pirate games and play them without playing this caused a massive issue for sales and for developers of the games that were on it, the Dreamcast tried hard to stay alive which did not last because of the ability to copy a game and play it without playing. The market nowadays is a little better for the old console with people buying them to add to their collection or to allow them to play the old games. The Dreamcast had some serious competition with Sony owning a large percentage of the console market and announcing their new console the Playstation 2 which did wonders on the console market sales reaching 50 million in 2008 in North America alone, in 2012 the sales reached about 150 million worldwide. The Console was discontinued on December 28th, 2012 and is now classed as a collector’s item. Consoles such as the Dreamcast and the PlayStation show us how technology has been advancing and evolving always with two consoles fighting for the top title, the Dreamcast was discontinued in 2001 just 1 year after the PlayStation 2’s release. Nowadays we the race for first place between Sony and Microsoft, starting with the PlayStation 1 in 1994 then moving onto the PlayStation 2 then Microsoft releasing their console the Xbox which then moved onto the Xbox 360 which was many steps ahead of the PlayStation 2 with online. Exactly 1 year after the PlayStation 3 was released with free online features which allowed the PlayStation to get a large number of players in a short period of time. The Newest consoles at the moment are in a competition for the top releasing upgraded versions of their consoles the Xbox one to the Xbox one X and the PlayStation 4 to The PlayStation 4 Pro, both consoles have Pros and cons and they both have come along way from the first console the brown box to one of the top performing consoles in the world to this date.
TV Platforms:
TV gaming has never really been mixed into mainstream gaming but due to recent developments and the making of smart TV’s people have begun using them in a way that makes them stand out as a platform.TV gaming was really originally developed around the time consoles were made to allow the console to display the games you where playing. A lot of large television services have begun making things like TV Casinos and Betting systems. Sky uses the Red button to open up the games tab which allows you to see what games are attached to specific channels. TV’s as a platform has progressed a lot to the point where you can use something called sync that synchronizes your video your watching to your phone to your TV which you can also do with some games on phone bringing them to the big screen. Devices such as the steam link are used to display games on your tv that you’re playing on your pc, the steam link allows you to play games anywhere around your house making your games now portable turning your tv into a games console. Old games like bamboozle existed before all the new advances in games. Bamboozle was an 8-bit quiz game that was run by service providers.
Mobile Platforms:
Mobile games were made to be portable and a lot smaller than a computer or console, They offer other function and other games to computers. Hardware limitations are very common with the mobile phone platform because of the processors that are in phones it limits the phone to able to only process a specific amount of data on a screen. One of the most well-known games on early phones is Snake, Snake is an 8-bit game where you try to eat all the “Bits” to grow bigger and bigger raising your score. Snake is a game that is still progressing and changing like Pacman and other games that started small. Mobile games have advanced and mobiles all together have gotten better and better making an adjustment like turning your phone into a TV controller and also allowing you to control your home from your phone. Not only have phone devices become a massive platform for gamers and developers it has also become a controller for many different things in everyday life. Phones help people every day from the new Fingerprint login to banks making your account far more secure to allow gamers to stream their screens to fans. Gaming and using the phone platform is nowadays something everyone does to make things easy instead of lugging around Credit cards that you could lose or checking your bank balance, the phone platform is limitless. Other types of mobile devices that are in this category are devices such as tablets, that run the same software like IOS or Android which are compatible with more applications and have faster processors and larger amounts of ram.
Computer Platforms:
Computers are used in everyday life, they are used in lots of different ways by lots of different people. The Computer platform is a machine that allows you to access the whole electronic world. The computer platform is generalized as the best gaming platform because of prices of games and hardware being more advanced, that’s not to say that the hardware is cheap. Computers have progressed a lot from what they originally looked like and had in them, from only being able to play pixelated games to now some running 4k graphics and running games in FPS thought to be impossible to reach. Computers require hardware to be able to run and nowadays hardware is brought out by the year advancing quickly, a product like graphics cards and processors come out with a 1 – 2 year gap allowing users to upgrade ready for the next one.
Pre-built pcs are today’s version of competition between publishers, trying to make their pcs better and cheaper than the others. Pre-built pcs cost from £400-2.5K being a resonable price for a high-end prebuilt pcs when purchasing a pre-built people take into account that custom building sometimes is cheaper and allows people to learn how pcs work. Pre-build pc don’t really allow you to add new tech into them which does put a lot of people off when they go to buy a new pc. Pre-built pcs are promoted from adverts from Youtubers, Streamers, game companies etc. Pre-built pcs nowadays have very advanced gear in them if you have the money for it but also the lower priced ones have good gear in them as well. Bundles are also something companies sell, selling Keyboard, Mouses, Monitors, Headsets, Microphones etc, allowing them to entice people to buy them over a custom building. Laptops are pre-built and are a cheaper resolution to both Custom build and Pre-built, the bad points about it are that you cannot add new stuff into a laptop you are stuck with that until you buy a new one.
Custom Built pcs are considered the replacement for pre-built because it allows users to adjust what they have in their pcs and upgrade parts they want not forcing them to buy a new pc rather a new part to make that part better. Custom built pcs can be fairly cheap compared to pre-built which are a stuck price, ranging from £400 to pretty much any other price depending on what you want it for. Custom built pcs are taking over the gaming market and allowing anyone to have their own custom pc that they made for what they are needing it for. Most gamers will have custom built pc that they will make and use themselves to follow what they want to do, may that be Making games, being a professional gamer or working in a specific industry.
There are two major competitors in the computer industry and that is Apple and Microsoft, they both have there pros and cons but they both are very different running 2 different operating systems. Mac running OS and Normale everyday pcs running Windows. Windows is very open allowing the user to modify and use development mode at their own will on the other hand mac does the same but in a long way but is way more rewarding. Macs nowadays are used for art features and Media work, and computers are used more for modeling and high end processing bits that macs could not run.
The very first modern style personal computer was named the Datapoint 2200 and was released in the early 1970s. It only had 2kb standard memory, which when compared to nowadays where we have a massive amount of standard memory now. The machine could only really produce text so it was mainly used a sort of advanced typewriter.
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