BTEC National Diploma


Unit number and title Unit 20: Computer Game Platforms and Technologies.


Task 1)

Consider these factors :-


Graphics capabilities


Size (and portability)


Processor power


Memory size


Storage size


Games available for platform (ie how many)


Series (is this platform the latest in a series and what where they are show them and describe them as


well, if they are used)


Give examples of each one and what if anything is unique about them. What limitation does this platform


have? (limited games or audience size or pricing)


Compare them to each other as well. As in rate them (in your view) and put them in order of least


favourite to most favourite and why.



play station series


Ps1: the ps1 was the first of the play station console series, it was released on December 3,1994 , It has included successor consoles and upgrades including the net yaroze. this console sold 102.49 million units including the 28.15 million amount psone. the ps1 sold for £299 per unit.

this console was fairly small and needed a constant power supply to work so for portability you could only move it from house to house no more. the cpu used in the play station was the R3000A 32bit RISC chip @ 33.7 MHz ,The R3000 is a full 32 bit RISC microprocessor chip set developed by MIPS Computer Systems that implemented the MIPS I instruction set architecture (ISA). Introduced in June 1988, it was the second MIPS implementation, succeeding the R2000 as the flagship MIPS microprocessor. It operated at 20, 25 and 33.33 MHz.


The MIPS 1 instruction set is very small compared to the instruction sets of other microprocessors, such as the contemporary 80x86, 680x0 architectures), as it includes only most commonly used instructions and supports very limited number of addressing modes. The small number of CPU instructions, as well as other instruction set features—fixed instruction length and only three different types of instruction formats—greatly simplify instruction decoding and processing. To speed up processing even further the CPU employs a 5-stage instruction pipeline. The pipeline design allows the R3000 CPU to execute most instructions at a rate close to 1 instruction per cycle.


the GPU could handle up to16.47 million colors


Resolution: 256x224 - 640x480 Sprite/BG drawing Adjustable frame buffer No line restriction, 4,000 8x8 pixel sprites with individual scaling and rotation Simultaneous backgrounds (Parallax scrolling) 620,000 polygons/sec


the memory for these consoles were stored on detached memory cards that could store up to 1mb minimum could be held on a basic memory card.


the games for the playstation in total i believe to be over the hundreds, some of these games being ,


A Bug's Life (video game),Alien Trilogy and arc of time, they are only three games that were available on the ps1 console. a limitation of the ps1 would be how it's controller was needed to be wired and its change from no joy sticks to 2 joysticks and then the wires becoming stiff and shortening the distance.


the media device was CD-ROM-based media for the ps1


system software:proprietary OS






ps2:

the play station 2 like the ps1 used memory cards to store game data but with the ps2 it could store 8mb minimum for the cards.this console sold for £299 per unit like the ps1 but this was able to hold more data the the last console.a limatation i would say with this would be the controlers wire again and then the memory cards could hold a decent amount of data but they were filled fast so you would have to pay out more for more memory cards.

155 million units (as of December 28, 2012) were sold of this console this was a increase of 53 million units in comparison showing the fan base grew over time.

the media form used for the ps2 was a DVD-ROM/CD-ROM.

the cpu used was a 300 MHz MIPS "Emotion Engine",The Emotion Engine was a CPU developed and manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment and Toshiba for use in the Sony PlayStation 2 video game console. It was also used in early PlayStation 3 models sold in Japan and North America,For comparison, 128-bit wide registers and SIMD instructions had been present in the 32-bit x86 architecture since 1999, with the introduction of SSE.

GPU:147 MHz "Graphics Synthesizer"; fill rate 2.352 gigapixel/sec; 1.1 gigapixel w. 1 texture(diffuse); 588 megapixel/sec w. 2 textures (2 diffuse maps or 1 diffuse map and 1 other(0 around 74 mill, 1 around 40 mill, 2 around 20 mill); 2 textures per pass


Capable of multi-pass rendering;


Connected to VU1 on CPU (a vector only for visual style coding things with 3.2Gflops) to deliver enhanced shader graphics and other enhanced graphics.


system softwear;proprietary OS, Linux DVD Playback Kit


amount of games released for the ps2:as of March 2014 accounted a total of 3874 released games






ps3:

the play station 3 had a inbuilt harddrive to hold memory replaceing the old memory cards with a area that could store more then the old consoles , this lead to a price increase makeing it £425 per unit,in its time it sold 84 million units this is a decrease of 71 million units thothe amount per unit may have just got them the same amount as the ps2 sales.this consol was the first of the ps consoles with wire less online connection.




the media player used was a BD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, SACD

Cpu: Cell Broadband Engine,The first-generation Cell Broadband Engine processor is a multi-core chip comprised of a 64-bit Power Architecture processor core and eight synergistic processor cores, capable of massive floating point processing.




GPU:550 MHz RSX "Reality Synthesizer" this was based on the Nvidia G70 architecture.

system software: XrossMediaBar (XMB)

amount of games released for console:There are currently 812 games (multi-platform: 644; exclusive: 150; console exclusive: 11)







ps4:

the playstation 4 uses a built in hardrive to store data for games and is connected to the internet for software updates and online use this is the second ps with online capability's wire less, the cost of this per unit was £349 and they have so far soled 20.2 million units this so far is a poor turn out for the play station consoles.

for media they used:Blu-ray, DVD Blu-ray 6x CAV, DVD 8x CAV

CPU:8-Core AMD "Jaguar

GPU:Custom AMD Radeon 18 Compute Units (1152 shaders) @ 800 MHz

software used:Orbis OS

amount of games released for console:There are currently 449 games on this list (33 of which have been confirmed as free-to-play).Exclusive = 43 ,Sony Exclusive = 46, Console exclusive and/or timed = 94/4,Multiplatform/or Unknown = 233/1, Playable = 178 available to purchase



each of the play station systems use the duel shock controllers from duelshock to the wireless duelshock 4, this has been getting more advanced little by little to fit with the games available for the console.

xbox series




xbox(original):the xbox original was made to for what i believe to compeat with the playstation console.released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market.

a issue to this console i found id that the console its self would be prone to scratching you disk and the disk reader would brake after a few years.

the price of the console was matched to the ps1 and ps2 being £299 per unit in total they sold 24+ million units, in comparison to the ps1 this was nothing in sales.the xbox had a total of 999 titals made in total for it.




the media functions were only cd and dvd readers in this console

cpu: 733 MHz x86 Intel Celeron/Pentium III Custom Hybrid CPU

gpu: 233 MHz nVidia custom GeForce 3 NV2A DirectX 8.0 based GPU

memory:64 MB DDR SDRAM @ 200 MHz; in dual-channel 128-bit configuration giving 6400 MB/s

video:VGA, Component (YPbPr), SCART, S-Video, Composite, 1080i, 720p, 576p, 576i, 480p, 480i

system software: Xbox Music Mixer DVD Playback Kit, Xbox Linux





xbox 360: the successor of the original Xbox in November 2005, competing with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. As of June 30, 2013, 78.2 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide.each unit sold for £266.78 this price is a general idea from it being converted from us dollar.There are currently 1,137 games (multiplatform: 936; exclusive: 187; console exclusive: 74) on this list as of March 3rd , 2015.

the issue witht he xbox 360 is the original sold consoles had a solvent then would melt away and the coolant fans would move and the console would over heat this was later fixed.

media:CD, DVD, HD DVD (movies only)

CPU:3.2 GHz IBM PowerPC tri-core CPU codenamed "Xenon"
GPU:500 MHz ATi custom Radeon X1800 DirectX 9.0c based GPU codenamed "Xenos"

video:HDMI (on models manufactured after August 2007), VGA, Component/D-Terminal (YPbPr), SCART, S-Video, Composite, 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p, 576i, 480p, 480i


Various monitor resolutions available via VGA and HDMI/DVI (640×480, 848×480, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×768, 1280×1024, 1360×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050 & 1920×1080)


system software:It resides on a 16 MB file system and has access to a maximum of 32 MB of the system's memory. The updates can be downloaded from the Xbox Live service directly to the Xbox 360 and subsequently installed. Microsoft has also provided the ability to download system software updates from their respective official Xbox website to their PCs and then storage media, from which the update can be installed to the system.







xbox one:the xbox one was released on November 22, 2013 in North America, as the successor of the Xbox 360. The Xbox One competes with Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Wii U as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles.this unit as so far sold 3 million units as of jan 6th 2014 each for the price of £429, so far the only problem i see with the xbox one is the connects responce time and how much internet it takes on low priority. total games made and announced so far for xbox one, Exclusive = 39, Microsoft exclusive = 15,Console exclusive or timed = 29/8,Multiplatform/TBA = 252/5,Playable = 171 available to purchase, Total = 348

media usable on the xbox one:CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, USB Drive with supported media, DLNA Servers

CPU:1.75 GHz AMD x86-64 eight-core CPU codenamed "Jaguar"
GPU:853 MHz AMD Radeon HD 7000 series DirectX 11.1 based GPU codenamed "Durango"

Viedo:HDMI (one in, one out)4K 2160p, 1080p, 1080i, 720p

memory:8 GB of DDR3 RAM @ 2133 MHz 68.3 GB/s, 32 MB ESRAM GPU frame buffer memory

System software:Xbox OS, Windows 8, Windows 10(future)


all the xbox use the same style controller its a thick hand held that doesn't fit all hands it can be hard to used , the xbox ones controller was less thick compared to its older forms but it is still thick in all terms i personally prefer the ps controllers.

nintendo


wii: The Wii Remote is the primary controller for the console. It uses a combination of built-in accelerometers and infrared detection to sense its position in 3D space when pointed at the LEDs in the Sensor Bar.the wii was the first console focused on the sencers rather then buttons on a remote this was a huge thing for sometime but over time this hype died with the issuse of responce time and the shaking.1359 games have been made total.

memory:The Wii console contains 512 megabytes of internal flash memory, and features an SD card slot for external storage. An SD card can be used for uploading photos and backing up saved game data and downloaded Virtual Console and WiiWare games.


CPU: PowerPC-based Broadway processor, made with a 90 nm SOI CMOS process, reportedly clocked at 729 MHz

GPU: ATI Hollywood GPU made with a 90 nm CMOS process,[113] reportedly† clocked at 243 MHz

viedo:

Custom "AV Multi Out" port supporting composite video, YPBPR component video, S-Video (NTSC consoles only) and RGB SCART (PAL consoles only)480p, 480i or 576i, standard 4:3 and 16:9anamorphic widescreen


wii u

The Wii U GamePad is the console's primary controller: its main feature is a built-in 6.2 inch (15.7 cm) resistive touchscreen, which can be used as a companion to games being played on a television, or as a means of playing games on the GamePad itself without a television.

Media:A single self-loading media bay plays 12-centimeter proprietary high-density optical discs that can hold 25GB of data for the new console with a transfer speed of 22.5 MB/s. It also reads 12-centimeter Wii optical discs.

Video Output: Supports 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i. Compatible cables include HDMI, Wii D-Terminal, Wii Component Video, Wii RGB, Wii S-Video Stereo AV and Wii AV.

Audio Output: Uses AV Multi Out connector. Six-channel PCM linear output through HDMI.

Storage: The console has internal flash memory, as well as the option to expand its memory using either an SD/SDHC memory card (up to 32GB) or an external USB hard disk drive (up to 2TB).

CPU: IBM Power®-based multi-core microprocessor.

GPU: AMD Radeon™-based High Definition GPU.



3ds

the 3ds was released in 2010 ,Width: 5.3" (13.4cm), height: 2.9" (7.4cm) this is a hand held platform that plays games in 3d if you want this is optional.

ports:

3DS game card slot (also accepts DS games)

SD memory card slot

AC adapter port

Stereo headphone jack