Developement of video games

In three decades, home-computerised gaming has made huge steps towards complete integration into Western homes. In thirty years the “video game console” has become a multi-billion pound international industry, with a place in millions of homes worldwide. It all started in the 1970’s when this new invention was seen as only an experiment within the compounds of technology, yet we can now see that it has made more money than the movie industry, especially in recent years.

1972 was a remarkably important year for technology in which, both the microprocessor (the heart of home computers) and the compact disc (the current mainstream source of audio) completed development. In addition the first home games console was released in America, the Magnavox Odyssey. Ralph Baer, its creator, dedicated several years of his life in his basement building what looked like an ugly, brown box. Little did he know that his home-made experimentation of technology would be the foundation for the future of games consoles. The Magnavox Odyssey only consisted of 40 transistors and 40 diodes, because microchips were so expensive at the time. The console had not been designed with sound producing components, however, this was something that could be deve

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Coming out after the Sony Playstation’s arrival you would think that the N64 would follow the trend and use CD based games but they stuck with the standard cartridges. Like the PlayStation 2, the console will be able to play DVD movies. All of the latest units utilise CD based games, and in most cases, double up as a DVD player.

In 1976 an American electronics company known as Fairchild released their contribution to the developing game console industry, the Fairchild Channel F. The SP (sound and graphics processor) and DP (pixel drawing processor) add an extra 62. This has a 600-MHz Intel Pentium III chip, 64-MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory, an 8-GB hard disk, a DVD-ROM drive and a graphics chip from Nvidia that is three generations beyond the company's current chip, the GeForce 256, which is already considered top of the line for desktop PCs. The Colecovision's Texas Instruments SN76489AN sound chip is not that different in comparison to the POKEY chip. Sony’s newest console, the Playstation 2 comes loaded with the 128 bit Emotion Engine as its processor. The initial release of the first console laid the foundation for the multinational, multi-billion pound industry which the videogame business has become. Atari made a desperate attempt to regain stability in the videogame market with the release of their Atari 7800. Sega tried to catch up Sony with their 32-bit Sega Saturn with 32 channels of sound but slipped behind the Playstation. The only drawback is that the noise channel has to borrow the 3rd tone channel, if it wants to play multiple frequencies instead of the 3 selectable pitches (for explosions, better drums or extra instrument). It had no video memory which meant that the CPU had to control the video chip with screen refresh. 79 MHz whereas the Master System had a Zilog Z80 CPU running at 3.

Approximate Word count = 2173
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

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