Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
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popped up on handheld devices like the Nintendo 3DS, Sony
s Vita, the iPhone/iPad,
Android devices, and many others. The biggest growth in gaming from the third edi-
tion of this topic to the fourth edition by far is Web-based gaming, especially Face-
book and Google+.
At the time of this writing, the big consoles on the market are the Wii from Nin-
tendo, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, and the PlayStation 3 from Sony. At first, the
battle seemed to sway to Nintendo, which came in third place during the PS2/Game-
cube/Xbox era. Late in the cycle, Microsoft and Sony seem to be winning. Since the
1950s and the very first computers, it was always software that sold the hardware,
which is a fact that will never change. PlayStation 2 won the last time because it
had the best games, period. The Wii came out strong because of its wide appeal to
gamers of all ages. But due to the fact that Microsoft and Sony strongly support all
their developers, not just their internal teams, they have gained ground, and it looks
like the Wii is fading. Still, if it weren
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t for Nintendo taking a big risk on the Wii
motion controls, we probably wouldn
t have seen them from the much more conser-
vative Microsoft or Sony. Fading or not, they are still influential, and the games
industry is used to surprises from Nintendo.
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My Nephew Makes
Mushroom Men
Better
One thing most games go through is something called blind playtesting.
This is when you let someone who has never seen the game come in and
give it a try. Usually, this happens with some developers watching and
cringing, as they see a new player have trouble with something they
designed. My then 10-year-old nephew, Sam, was a blind playtester for
Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars and actually found a pretty important
bug. It turned out that the special weapons Pax could build could only
be used while standing in one place
and my nephew immediately
noticed this. One of the programmers, Kain, was able to fix the bug and
show Sam how his comments made the game better.
—
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The best part of developing for consoles is the fact that you
ll never have to worry
about supporting a hellish grid of operating system and hardware configurations
that are guaranteed to change at least twice during your development cycle. You do
have to deal with standards compliance with the console manufacturers, which can
be quite difficult if you
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ve never had the experience.
Tables 1.1 and 1.2 list the various platforms on the market and their hardware
specifications.
