Assessment 1: Game Platform Types
Nintendo Wii
CPU: The system has a processing unit of PowerPC-based Broadway processor, made with a 90 nm SOI CMOS process, reportedly clocked at 729 MHz
GPU: The system uses the ATI Hollywood GPU made
with a 90 nm CMOS process, reportedly clocked at 243 MHz
RAM: 88 MB main
memory (24 MB internal 1T-SRAM integrated into graphics package, 64 MB external
GDDR3 SDRAM). 3 MB embedded GPU texture memory and frame buffer.
Memory Storage: 512 MB built-in NAND flash memory, Expanded
storage via SD and SDHC card memory (up to 32 GB), Nintendo GameCube memory
card (required for GameCube game saves), Slot-loading disc drive, compatible
with 8 cm Nintendo GameCube Game Disc and 12 cm Wii Optical Disc, Mask ROM by
Macronix.
Size and Portability : 44 mm (1.73 in) wide, 157 mm (6.18 in) tall and 215.4 mm (8.48 in) deep in its vertical orientation, slightly larger than three DVD cases stacked together. The system weighs 1.2 kg (2.7 lbs.), which makes it the lightest of the three major seventh-generation consoles.
Game Library: 1359
games planned or released. Wii Sports sold a total of 82.54 million copies
worldwide. It has since become the bestselling game of all time.
Series: This home
console is the successor to the Nintendo GameCube and acts as the predecessor
to the Nintendo Wii U.
Unique Point: The
motion controls of this console is what makes it unique. The motion controls
coupled with incredibly fun games such as Wii Sport and No More Heroes have
kept Nintendo at the top of the video game console market.
Limitations: The
console is not as powerful as its same gen counterparts. The controller is made
to play motion based games so it is not ideal for use as a conventional
gamepad.
Rating: Personally
I think the Nintendo Wii is a very innovative console and the motion controls,
although not perfect, are revolutionary. It does however suffer because of its
inferior GPU and CPU and so has a less than stellar game library.
Nintendo WiiU:
CPU: The Wii U
uses a custom multi-chip module (MCM) developed by AMD, IBM and Renesas in
co-operation with Nintendo IRD and Nintendo Technology Development. The MCM
combines an "Espresso" central processing unit (CPU) and a
"Latte" graphics chip (GPU), as well as a SEEPROM memory chip. The
Espresso CPU, designed by IBM, consists of a PowerPC 750-based tri-core
processor with 3 MB of shared L2 cache memory and clocked at approximately 1.24
GHz.
GPU: The Latte
graphics chip contains both a "GX2" GPGPU, which runs Wii U
applications, and a "GX" GPU, which enables backwards-compatibility
with Wii games. The GX2, designed by AMD, is based on the Radeon R600/R700
architecture and is clocked at approximately 550 MHz.
RAM: The console
contains 2 GB of DDR3 system memory consisting of four 512 MB (4 Gb) DRAM chips
with a maximum bandwidth of 12.8 GB/s.
Hard Drive Memory: The
console includes either an 8 GB (Basic) or 32 GB (Premium (WW) / Deluxe (NA))
internal eMMC flash memory, expandable via SD memory cards up to 32 GB and USB
external hard disk drives up to 2 TB.
Size and Portability:
Dimensions 6 x 1.75 x 8.5 inches. Weight : 2.65 lb. Again this console does
not have a portable battery so would require mains connection to be used.
Therefore its portability is limited.
Series: Nintendo
is a massively successful company that creates video game consoles and games. Nintendo
have released several different video game consoles throughout the years, but
the Nintendo WiiU is a direct sequel to the largely successful Nintendo Wii.
Unique Point: The
WiiU features an interactive controller much like the Nintendo DS drawing pad.
It is used to interact with many of the games on the WiiU and adds a unique
feel to games such as New Super Mario Bros where the player using the gamepad
can create platforms for the other players to jump on.
Game Library: There
are currently 457 games planned or released for the Nintendo
WiiU. Nintendo has a very strong library of console exclusive games such as New
Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart, Legend of Zelda, etc. The highest selling games
for the console are: New Super Mario Bros. U - 4.16 million. Nintendo Land -
3.09 million. Super Mario 3D World - 2.17 million.
Limitations and
Rating: The Nintendo WiiU console has a less powerful CPU and GPU than its
generation counterparts. This means that the WiiU cannot play games that are
very CPU or GPU demanding such as Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. It is not as
expensive as other consoles of the same generation but it is still a lot of
money at around £160 pounds for the basic console. I think this is too much
money for the limited game library on the system.
Nintendo 3DS:
CPU: The main
processor (CPU) is a ARM11 MPCore-based dual-core processor manufactured at 45
nm. One processor core is dedicated to games and applications, while the other
core is exclusive to the operating system, enabling multitasking and background
tasks. These tasks are handled seamlessly in the background during gameplay or
while the system is in sleep mode. The system also contains a single-core ARM9
processor, enabling backwards compatibility with Nintendo DS games.
GPU: The graphics
processor (GPU) is developed by Digital Media Professionals, and consists of a
semi-custom PICA200 processor.
RAM: The system
contains a total of 128 MB of system memory consisting of two 64 MB (512 Mb)
FCRAM chips developed by Fujitsu, with a maximum bandwidth of 3.2 GB/s.
However, 32 MB are reserved for the operating system and unavailable to games.
Additionally, the system contains 6 MB of VRAM.
Storage Memory: The
system includes 1 GB of internal flash memory manufactured by Toshiba, but it
is mostly used by the operating system and its pre-installed applications. The
system's memory can be expanded via an SD memory card slot, which supports up
to 128 GB SDXC memory cards.
Unique Point: The
Nintendo DS series uses two screens. One of these screens is a touchpad and is
incorporated with many popular games such as Art Academy, Cooking Ma’ma, Nintendogs
etc. The top screen is able to produce a three-dimensional effect without the
need of 3D-enabling glasses using a parallax barrier.
Game Library: There are
currently 612 games planned or released for the Nintendo
3DS, however the 3DS is backwards compatible with its predecessors so there are
actually many more games available for the console. The Nintendo 3DS shares
similar exclusivity with the Nintendo WiiU with games such as Pokemon and Mario Kart. The
highest selling games for the console are 1. Pokémon X/Y-10.9 million 2. Mario
Kart 7-9.4 million 3. Super Mario 3D Land-9.4 million.
Series: This
console is the latest in a long line of Nintendo consoles. This line includes:
Nintendo DS, Nintendo DS lite, Nintendo DSi, Nintendo DS XL, Nintendo 2DS,
Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 3DS XL. This line is also the successor to the popular
Game Boy line of portable consoles.
Limitations and
Rating: Being a handheld console, the Nintendo 3DS has less powerful
hardware than less portable consoles. This limits things such as graphical
quality, objects rendered, etc. For example, if you ported a game over from
Xbox One to Nintendo 3DS it would have to be scaled down drastically to be run
properly.
PlayStation:
HCI:
Based on the button system of the Super NES controller, but
added a second pair of shoulder buttons for easier navigation of a 3d
environment. Uses a 12 button layout, arrow keys, shoulder buttons and triangle, square, circle and X buttons along with a start and
select function buttons. Later models (dual shock) introduced two analogue
sticks to control movement and camera view.
CPU: 32-Bit RISC
CPU with 5KB L1 cache, running at 33.8688 MHz
GPU: 32-bit Sony
GPU, 1MB 256×448 to 640×480 pixel
resolution Maximum colour depth of
16,777,216 colours
Size &
portability: 1.77 x 10.24 x 7.28” 3.97
lbs
RAM: 2 MB main
DRAM 4 kB instruction Cache 1 kB non-associative SRAM data cache
Storage Memory: 1MB
per memory card
Games available:
7918 game titles on this platform. Some famous exclusives being, crash
bandicoot, spyro, metal gear solid and gran turismo.
Limitations: Originally
didn’t have analogue sticks to have more than 4 directional movement. No longer has release gamed for this
platform. No connectivity to other consoles or the internet, only coop play.
Outdated hardware.
PlayStation 2:
HCI: Dual shock 2
PlayStation controller
CPU: Processor: MIPS-based
"R5900" clocked at 294.912 MHz, 64-bit
GPU: "Graphics Synthesizer"(GS) clocked
at 147.456 MHz, 4 MB Resolution from
256 x 224 to 1920 x 1080
Size &
portability: 11.9, 3.1, 7.2” 4.9
lbs
RAM: 32 MB
Storage Memory: 8mb
memory card
Games available: 1,850
Limitations: No
longer has games released for this platform. Can only display at 480p. Outdated
hardware. Not able to download digital copies of games.
PlayStation3:
HCI: Dual shock 3
PlayStation controller
CPU: The PS3 uses
the Cell microprocessor, which is made up of one 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based
"Power Processing Element" and six accessible Synergistic Processing Elements.
A seventh runs in a special mode and is dedicated to aspects of the OS and
security.
GPU: The RSX,
based on the NVIDIA G70
Size &
portability: 32.5, 9.8, 27.4cm
RAM: 256MB
Memory Storage: 60MB
– 500mb
Games available: 812
games (multi-platform: 644; exclusive: 150; console exclusive: 11)
Limitations: Had
issues with overheating.
Playstation 4:
The central
processing unit (CPU) consists of two x86-64 quad-core modules for a total
of eight cores, which are based on the Jaguar CPU architecture from AMD. Each
core has 32 kB L1 instruction and data caches, with one shared 2 MB L2 cache
per four core module. The CPU's base clock speed is said to be 1.6 GHz, with an
unknown uptick in speed for CPU-intensive usage.
The graphics
processing unit (GPU) is AMD's GPGPU-capable Radeon GCN architecture,
consisting of 18 compute units (CUs) for a total of 1,152 cores (64 cores per
CU), that produces a theoretical peak performance of 1.84 TFLOPS. This
processing power can be used for graphics, physics simulation, or a combination
of the two, or any other tasks suited for general purpose compute. It is a
customized version of AMD's 7870 GPU, with 2 CUs disabled.
RAM : The PS4
contains a total of 8 GiB (16×4 Gbit (512 MiB) memory chips) of GDDR5 unified
system memory, and is capable of running at a maximum clock frequency of 2.75
GHz (5500 MT/s) with a maximum bandwidth of 176 GB/s. This is 16 times the
amount of RAM found in the PS3 and is expected to give the console considerable
longevity. The unified memory architecture allows the CPU and GPU to access a
consolidated memory, removing the need for separate, dedicated memory pools.
Audio Processing
Unit: Sharing the die with the rest of the components of the APU, is a
Digital signal processing SIP block that is either identical to AMD TrueAudio
or shares a certain amount of similarities with it.
Hard Drive Memory:
The console includes a 500 GB hard drive, which can be upgraded by the
user.
Size and Portability:
Dimensions: 2.09 x 10.83 x 12.01 inches. Weight: 6.17 lb = 2.8 Kilograms. The
PlayStation 4 requires a mains power connection to run as it does not have an
internal battery. This limits its portability as it is both rather cumbersome
and would need at least 80W of power at its minimum setting.
Series: The PlayStation
4 is part of the highly successful PlayStation range. This includes the
massively successful PlayStation and PlayStation 2. The PlayStation 4 is the
successor to the previous PlayStation consoles and is the most technically
impressive. It does not feature backwards compatibility and has its own
PlayStation 4 Dualshock controller, named the Dualshock 4. See the next section
for information on the Playstation 3.
Game Library: There
are currently 448 games for the in
production and released. This consists of 178 that are available to play. The highest selling game for the
console to date is Killzone: Shadow Fall at 2.1 million and was sold with the
game console. The second highest selling game for the PlayStation 4 is Infamous
Second Son at 1 million.
Limitations and
Rating: This console is part of the next generation of consoles so the
hardware is supposed to be top of the line. However, it is not as powerful as
commonly available PC hardware for a similar price so it is rather
disappointing. The console is locked to 30 frames per second at 1080p which is
rather low compared to the PC standard of 60 fps and heights of 4k resolution,
which is 4096 x 2160. Personally I haven’t used the PS4, however from what I
have seen I believe it to be overly expensive for what the hardware consists
of. The one saving grace of the PS4 are the games that are exclusive to that
platform. These games are titles such as Uncharted 4, The Last of Us
Remastered, Infamous: Second Son, etc.
PlayStation Vita
HCI: The device
holds all the original features of the normal Dualshock controller that appear
with other consoles developed by Sony. These include a D-Pad, the Square,
Triangle, and Circle and X buttons and two joystick analogue sticks. The
additional features the device supports are a touchpad positioned on the back
of the device and camera on the front and rear of the console.
CPU: -
Internally, the device features an up to 2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore
processor (3 of the 4 cores are usable for applications).
GPU: - Quad-core
GPU SGX543MP4+.
Size and Portability:
The 2000 (2nd Generation) model is 20% thinner and 15% lighter
compared to the original model.
RAM: - The
console has 512 MB RAM, 128 MB VRAM.
Storage size -
The PS Vita Slim has 1GB of internal storage memory. Users are unable to use
the 1GB internal memory and any expandable storage simultaneously, as access to
the internal memory is only possible if no memory card is inserted. Upon
inserting a PS Vita memory card, the system will offer to copy the existing data
from the internal memory to the new card. The PS Vita is incompatible with
standard memory cards, such as SD cards, and instead stores data on proprietary
PS Vita memory cards, which are available in sizes of 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB
and 64 GB.
Games Library: As
of March 9th 2015, there have been 961 games released for the
PSVita.
Series: This
platform is the successor to the PlayStation Portable in PlayStation series of
handheld consoles.
Unique Point: The
portability of this console makes it rather unique, but what really made this
console standout was its touchpad in the second generation of this device. It
opened up different ways of interacting with games and different ways designers
could interact with players.
Limitiations and
Rating: The PS Vita has a very small screen size and console size. This
makes playing the games quite fiddly and some users may struggle with using the
small controls. The graphical and processor power of the device is
significantly weaker than that of next gen consoles so this limits the game
library and the quality of games.
XboxOne:
HCI: Xbox One
wireless or wired controller
CPU: 8 Core AMD
custom CPU Frequency: 1.75 GHz
GPU: Clock Speed:
853 MHz(originally 800 MHz) Shader Cores: 768 Peak Throughput: 1.31 TFLOPS
RAM: 8GB DDR3
Clock: 2133MHz Bandwidth: 68.26 GB/s + 32MB eSRAM Bandwidth: 204 GB/s(102
In/102 Out)
Storage Memory:
500 GB Hard Drive non-replaceable, External Hard Drive support available
Size and Portability:
Dimensions: 3.1 x 10.8 x 13.1 in. 7.05479 pounds in weight.
Limitations and
Rating: The limitations of this console are very similar to the PlayStation
4. However it does not have as good exclusive game library in my opinion so the
console suffers. If I was to buy a next gen console it would most likely be the
PlayStation 4 because of its better exclusive library.
Xbox 360:
CPU: CPU speed3.2
GHz. CPU cores3
GPU: GPU speed 500 MHz
RAM: 512 MB
Storage Memory: The
original Pro configuration of the system came with a 20 GB hard drive, which
was also available to purchase separately (for the Core model, and later the
Arcade model, which did not include a HDD). This was upgraded to 60 GB in
September 2008, and the 60 GB HDD was also made available at retail.
Size and Portability:
DIMENSIONS: 3.27 x 12.17 x 10.16 inches.
WEIGHT: 7.72 lb
Limitations and
Rating: Had to pay for Multiplayer service. Not very durable and when
originally released there were a lot of cases of the console breaking
completely in a few short weeks or the first time someone used it.
PC (Personal Computer)
HCI: Traditionally
mouse and key board, but using port extensions and third party drivers other
controllers and devices can be used. This includes things such as graphics tablets,
Xbox 360 controller, etc.
CPU: Dependant on
the user's choice, any processor is compatible.
GPU: Dependant on
the user's choice, any graphics card is compatible.
Size & Portability:
Laptops are extremely portable as they are designed to be small and slim to
fit into bags and cases, however they are more expensive compared to PC.
Standard PC towers are usually very large and have to be
stationary with a mains power supply running through them. This limits their
portability vastly.
RAM: Dependant on
your motherboards ram slots, you can have any amount or type of ram. The
fastest type of ram currently is DDR5.
Storage Memory: Dependent
on the user’s choice. You can either have a hard drive or SSD of varying sizes.
Games available: Including
emulators the PC has a gigantic amount of games for the platform. The large
library of Steam is just one example of the open access to games for the
platform.
Limitations and
Rating: You can potentially spend thousands of pounds on the latest
computer components. Potential for contracting a computer virus that could
damage the system. Not easily portable. In my opinion PC has the most freedom
because of the variety of components that you can buy. This makes it one of the
better choices and its only drawback is that you have to learn about the
various components more so than if you bought an Xbox One.
Android (HTC ONE M8)
CPU: - Qualcomm
Snapdragon 801, quad-core CPUs
GPU: 5.0 inch screen, Full HD 1080p
Size and Portability:
146.4 x 70.6 x 9.4 mm (5.76 x 2.78 x 0.37 in) 160g
RAM: 2GB RAM
Storage Memory: -
Total storage: 16GB, available capacity varies, Expansion card slot supports
micro SD memory card for up to 128GB additional storage
Games Library: The
Google Play App has more than 1.4million apps available on the market.
Series: This device is the predecessor to the HTC One
M9 and the successor to the HTC One Mini 2 in the HTC One smartphone series.
Limitations: The
small lithium battery would cause problems as it would constantly need to be
charged up. Also lithium batteries tend to degrade over time and would cause
problems for the player. The graphical and processor power of the device is
significantly weaker than that of next gen consoles so this limits the game
library and the quality of games.
IOS (IPhone 6)
GPU: - PowerVR
GX6450 (quad-core graphics)
Size and Portability
: 138.1 x 67 x 6.9 mm (5.44 x 2.64 x 0.27 in) 129g
CPU: Dual-core 1.4 GHz Cyclone (ARM v8-based)
RAM: internal memory of 16/64/128 GB, 1 GB RAM
Games Library: 1.4million downloadable titles from the App
store.
Unique Point: The portability of Android and IOS devices is what makes them
Series: this device is the successor to the IPhone 5.
Limitations and Rating: The
battery needs to be charged regularly as it has a small battery life. The
graphical and processor power of the device are significantly weaker than that
of next gen consoles. This limits the game library and the quality of games for
the system. In the early stages of the App Store there were lots of interesting and unique titles available for free or for purchase, however now there the market has become over-saturated and you can spend large amounts of money on games that are unoriginal and "time-wasters". Examples of this are games like Clash of Clans, Dungeon Keeper, etc. With the rise of micro-transactions in free-to-play games there is now a horde of in-ambitious money grabbing developers.
Ratings
I haven’t used a lot of the consoles on this list. The ones
I have used are the Nintendo Wii, Playstation 1 + 2 + 3, Nintendo DS, IOS and
PC. I have explained my thoughts about these consoles in their dedicated
sections. My list of best to worst consoles that I have used is as follows:
1.
PC
2.
PlayStation 3
3.
Xbox 360
4.
PlayStation 2
5.
Nintendo DS
6.
PlayStation 1
7.
Nintendo Wii
8.
IOS
This is a separate list of my rating of the consoles that I
haven’t used:
1.
PlayStation 4
2.
Nintendo WiiU
3.
Xbox One
4.
PlayStation Vita
5.
Nintendo 3DS
6.
Android
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