Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
have been available for a year or so, the manufacturer has to cut the hardware design
to the bone to keep the cost down. This means that, as computing devices, the most
expensive console is always less powerful than the most expensive personal computer,
and more difficult to program. On the other hand, their low price means that far
more consoles are in players' hands, which creates a larger market for their games.
The home console differs from the personal computer in another important way.
Console manufacturers won't let just anyone make a game for their machine. You
have to have a license from the manufacturer and their approval for your game
idea—and they tend to be reluctant to approve anything controversial. Once the
game is ready, you also have to submit it to the manufacturer for extensive testing
before releasing it. Nintendo instituted these policies after the video game industry
was nearly destroyed in the early 1980s by a flood of low-quality, buggy games
(mostly made for the Atari VCS console). Nowadays, all the console manufacturers
have policies similar to Nintendo's. When developing for personal computers, you
aren't constrained this way. You can create any game you want, without anyone's
permission, on any subject you like. Obviously some publishers won't publish
games that they feel might be offensive, and many countries have censorship laws
that explicitly prohibit certain content. But the PC is an open platform; you can
build games for personal computers without being bound by any contractual
limitations.
In the last few years, a partial convergence has taken place between the home con-
sole and the PC. Consoles now routinely include hard disk drives that enable the
player to store far more data than before, and they all include networking capabil-
ity as well. Services such as Xbox LIVE have begun to network console machines,
although this is not yet the standard way that people play. The single-player or
multiplayer local experience is still the most common one.
Personal Computers
A personal computer (PC) can be set up away from the communal living space, on
a computer desk. In this case, the player has a keyboard, a mouse, possibly a joy-
stick, and (more rarely) a dedicated game controller such as those on console
machines. The player sits 12 to 18 inches away from a relatively small (compared to
the television) high-resolution display. The high resolution means that the game
can have subtle, detailed graphics. The mouse allows precision pointing and a more
complex user interface. The keyboard enables the player to enter text conveniently
and send messages to other players over a network, something that is nearly impos-
sible with console machines.
The personal computer is quite awkward for more than one person to use. The con-
trols of a PC are all designed for one individual, and even the furniture it usually
sits on—a desk—is intended for solitary use. PC games are rarely designed for more
than one person to play on a single machine. On the other hand, a PC is very likely
to be connected to the Internet, whereas consoles only recently got this capability.
The PC is still the machine of choice for multiplayer networked games.
