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    Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

    Learning a bit of ASM for my ZX Spectrum clone that i bought a couple weeks ago got me thinking about this.

    A programmer can learn many things on a limited system. For example, in an assembler program that runs on the Spectrum, you need to tabulate the listings by hand. If it's a label it must be on the first column, if it's an instruction it's absolutely gotta be on the second column, and so on. Comments can be put anywhere but doing so makes things messy so i just put them on the fourth column just like the manual says. An actual printed manual. Writing straight machine code is pretty much the only way of doing anything useful on a Z80... and really, it does more cool things than i expected. I'll probably get started on PICs next (see my older topic about PSUs and microcontrollers). But back on topic.

    When a new game comes out for your console, you betcha it looks better than the ones you already have. When a new game comes out for the PC... you find out you have to upgrade. Even if the console is technically weaker than the PC (hey, the original Xbox was a Celeron and a Geforce 2), as the game developers get to know the system, they optimize their code better so they can do more stuff while keeping the same framerate. Whereas on the PC... hey, new hardware's gotta sell, ain't it? No optimizations for you. You start seeing a lot of games that are basically direct console ports, with GTAIV being the first example that pops into my mind here. Some may blame it on the myriad of configurations that a PC might have - but hey, code optimization for PC has been done in the past and CPU manufacturers still release extensive documentation so that's just an excuse for being lazy.

    What sucks is that even simple software has started to suffer from this lack of optimization. You need the latest hardware to run the latest bloatware, er, excuse me, software, when the previous version of the same program does the same thing but runs twice faster. I found it surprising how easy and straightforward it is to code a little something in ZX Spectrum Basic that does something useful. Like SMPS math. And it came with a programming manual too. Whereas Microsoft stopped including Basic with their OS a long time ago... it has to sell doesn't it.

    As PCs become more and more "generic" from software developers' view, and the "one size fits all" approach is applied, with obvious consequences for the low end, consoles will gain more and more popularity. They can already play movies and use the Internet. It's only a matter of time till they do an office suite or a CAD program for the Playstation.
    Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 05-13-2011, 02:00 PM.
    Originally posted by PeteS in CA
    Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
    A working TV? How boring!

    #2
    Re: Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

    Well, we'll have to see how long the ps3 lasts with the psn outage. People are selling and exchanging them left and right for Xbox 360's.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

      You're just now figuring this out?

      The likes of Microshaft, Intel, MAC and all the others have been deliberately obsoleting themselves [and each other] since day one.
      It's easy for them.
      Stop making the old chip and don't support the new chip with the old OS.
      The chip could be any chip with a driver.
      Mann-Made Global Warming.
      - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.

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        #4
        Re: Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

        Originally posted by PCBONEZ View Post
        The likes of Microshaft, Intel, MAC and all the others have been deliberately obsoleting themselves [and each other] since day one.
        It didn't use to be this bad. The open-source guys aren't too much in a hurry to support what M$ leaves behind either.
        Originally posted by PeteS in CA
        Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
        A working TV? How boring!

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

          Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
          (hey, the original Xbox was a Celeron and a Geforce 2)
          733MHz Celeron, 64MB RAM, Geforce 3 Ti based graphics.

          Try playing GTA San Andreas on an original XBOX and do the same thing with the PC version on a beefy PIII 1GHz or even a 1+GHz Tualatin PIII, with lots of RAM and a much faster graphics card. it'll still run like shit.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

            Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
            It didn't use to be this bad. The open-source guys aren't too much in a hurry to support what M$ leaves behind either.
            I am beginning to agree with that... laziness resulted in my laptops i855-GM graphics being blacklisted gnome 3... I had to hack it to run (when it does, it works). they blacklisted everything i8xx... so even working chips get shafted. damn.
            sigpic

            (Insert witty quote here)

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              #7
              Re: Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

              Starcraft 2 has a huge playerbase, and I still play Counterstrike (original) from time to time.

              I think Valve's latest games have been catastrophic, and I feel that everything they touch they turn into excrement. CounterStrike 2 and TF2 are complete disasters. They sacrificed level space for their "cool" graphics. the levels feel a lot smaller, and the level design is awful (They completely ruined 2fort).

              Nothing beats a good 60 player game of Neo TF1 on WELL. Unfortunately, the last time I found a suitable game of NeoTF was a while ago.

              As the younger people seem to be born stupider and stupider, and the older generation dies out, the quality of the games will degrade by way of attrition. No one with enough common sense to design them.

              I use my XBOX360 maybe once or twice a year, they've certainly grown in popularity, but not for any good reason.
              "We have offered them (the Arabs) a sensible way for so many years. But no, they wanted to fight. Fine! We gave them technology, the latest, the kind even Vietnam didn't have. They had double superiority in tanks and aircraft, triple in artillery, and in air defense and anti-tank weapons they had absolute supremacy. And what? Once again they were beaten. Once again they scrammed [sic]. Once again they screamed for us to come save them. Sadat woke me up in the middle of the night twice over the phone, 'Save me!' He demanded to send Soviet troops, and immediately! No! We are not going to fight for them."

              -Leonid Brezhnev (On the Yom Kippur War)

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

                I still play Starcraft1, didn't care for SC2. I also still play AoE1 (rise of rome expansion), Diablo2, and if I could find some people to play with/against me, I'd still play quake1.

                Never was into game consoles, beyond my nintendo classic back when I was in high school. Super mario bros 3, I was the champion. Today's games just don't do it for me..... Being a 'retired gamer', I won't look down on the newer stuff, it just doesn't tickle my fancy anymore, I outgrew it I guess.

                Since HDTV took root, thats when consoles really took off IMO. There was nothing worse than video games on a standard def old school CRT......the time when PC gaming was at its peak...but times change.
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                  #9
                  Re: Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

                  Originally posted by Scenic View Post
                  playing GTA San Andreas on an original XBOX and do the same thing with the PC version on a beefy PIII 1GHz or even a 1+GHz Tualatin PIII, with lots of RAM and a much faster graphics card. it'll still run like shit.
                  GTA: SA isn't that bad. There are worse offenders.


                  Originally posted by ratdude747 View Post
                  I am beginning to agree with that... laziness resulted in my laptops i855-GM graphics being blacklisted gnome 3... I had to hack it to run (when it does, it works). they blacklisted everything i8xx... so even working chips get shafted. damn.
                  An exercise in uselessness. It works... okay let's break it. But you're lucky - you CAN make it work. Others aren't so happy. The Trident Cyberblade series made their way in many otherwise nice laptops. For Linux there exists only one driver that supports hardware acceleration (otherwise it's even more useless than it is on uncle Bill's OS). That driver is ridiculously buggy, and it crashes the computer with a garbled screen 4 in 5 times when you try to actually do something. Like play a game or watch a video.

                  I woulda hacked at it myself. But the source code is nowhere to be found, and believe me, i spent months looking for it. Open Source? No sh**.

                  Originally posted by mockingbird View Post
                  I think Valve's latest games have been catastrophic.
                  Don't you like Portal 2??? And what's Counterstrike 2? If you mean CS Source, i personally thought it was great.
                  Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                  Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                  A working TV? How boring!

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Why Gaming Consoles have grown in popularity again

                    Don't you like Portal 2??? And what's Counterstrike 2? If you mean CS Source, i personally thought it was great.
                    Haven't tried Portal 2 yet, but a review I read basically confirmed my suspicion that they sacrificed innovation for "coolness". Remember, Portal 1 wasn't even released by Valve, it was a third-party mod (I think it was even free).

                    Yes, CS: Source, not CS2. As soon as they took over the CS Beta they turned it into garbage. I used to run around with the non-auto Benelli and rule, but they then introduced some terribly exaggerated recoil (Which was oddly missing from LAN play), and then released CSS and completely neglected CS. The game browser is a complete joke, and there are thousands of "ghost" servers which basically point you to one or two servers running somewhere in Eastern Europe, and they are completely incompetent in that they have already tried to clean up the master browser for years now and fail each time.

                    And they "fired" Sierra for mismanaging them... Sheesh, talk about mismanagment.

                    CS: Source like TF2 is awful because it takes away from the magic of having huge levels. They shrunk the sheer space of the levels dramatically to compensate for the increased load on the GFX cards. You go into the level, and you are goaded in two different approaches of attacking the opposing force.... This is not good practice nor good leveldesign. Look at how small the new CS_ASSAULT is compared to the original.
                    "We have offered them (the Arabs) a sensible way for so many years. But no, they wanted to fight. Fine! We gave them technology, the latest, the kind even Vietnam didn't have. They had double superiority in tanks and aircraft, triple in artillery, and in air defense and anti-tank weapons they had absolute supremacy. And what? Once again they were beaten. Once again they scrammed [sic]. Once again they screamed for us to come save them. Sadat woke me up in the middle of the night twice over the phone, 'Save me!' He demanded to send Soviet troops, and immediately! No! We are not going to fight for them."

                    -Leonid Brezhnev (On the Yom Kippur War)

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