The handheld consoles were first popular when the game boy was first released in 1989, with this the game ‘ Tetris’ was by far the most popular for the handhelds, and this lead to the puzzle genre becoming more popular for the handhelds. A downfall of the handheld is that they are 1-2 generations behind in graphics, also in the popularity of handhelds they have to be small to be portable, meaning smaller screen and smaller controls, this means handhelds lack in having lots of controls and cannot be complex, for some this maybe a good thing because some people don’t like games that are complicated so they can grasp onto the game quickly and they can enjoy it as much as someone else can that are playing on a more complicated console like an Xbox 360. With the controls being noncomplex and the lack screen size, this leads to lower time people spend on handhelds, hence why they are quick and short to complete. On the handheld platform people prefer games to be more complex (Puzzles and strategy games) whereas games genres such as first person shooters, RPG and adventure aren’t as popular, but for some people this could be a limitation because, if they buy or are given a handheld console (for example a DS) they may be disappointed with the lack of games such as shooters and RPGS, where they will find some genres of this kind but they will be short and to the point, also some people might not like the lack of graphic developments in the handhelds. On non-dedicated gaming handhelds (mobile phones) rather than the game being the highest priority it is more important for the person using the device to know they have an incoming call or a text, so this will disturb the play session, the limitation of this is that if somebody is playing a game and getting into the game, and something disturbs them then they can lose their data if they haven’t reached a checkpoint or saved the game, they may be reluctant to start again, also using a mobile phone as a gaming device, this takes up lots of battery because they aren’t really designed for being used for gaming, this can be an annoyance if you are traveling long distances and they don’t have a charger they can plug into somewhere. Some handhelds can be linked to some consoles for example the Gameboy could link up to the GameCube in the game Sonic adventure, you could link up the Gameboy to the GameCube and play with the chaos on the game on sonic that you have adopted and transfer them to the Gameboy. The downside to this is that people may feel left out if they have a Gameboy but not the GameCube to be able to use this feature, also this becomes more expensive even if you already have the two consoles, because you then need to still buy the cable, which for some people can be a lot of money or they may not be able to get hold of one anymore. Handhelds are easy to take around when traveling, so they can easily slip into a bag or be put into your pocket, so you can play with friends or by yourself, but the disadvantage of them being so small and easy to carry around is that they are easy to lose, they can slip out of your pocket or bag and fall onto something and you may not even get it back, and there is the chance that somebody might see the handheld poke out and might try to steal it, then that will be a waste of money for you and you won’t ever get it back. Handheld Graphics and sounds: On a handheld console the graphics aren’t as good as graphics on a console such as a PS3 or an Xbox 360, the reason for this being is because handhelds are commonly 1-2 generations behind in graphics, if they were up to date like consoles then they would be more expensive and would be hard to run on a small handheld, another reason for this being is because where handhelds are so small they need less so run them or they would be heavy, this would stop people from buying them because, when people are walking around with their Nintendo DS in a bag or in their pocket, they wouldn’t want to be weighed down from the weight and furthermore struggle with sitting down and playing it as it would hurt their wrists, hands and arms. Another reason for the fact that handhelds are delayed 1-2 generations is because they need to be charged, and if the graphics were up-to-date then there would be the problem of that the charge would run out quickly, as handhelds are sensitive to using up the power, even if you just turn up the brightness on a handheld it will have the problem of running out of charge quickly. On the other hand the reason for low graphics is because they would lag with higher graphics, as it would have to speed up dramatically to work and handhelds can’t take on doing too much at one time, the reason for this being they are only designed to take on one task at a time, not 2+. In late 2004 the Nintendo DS was released, so even though people were impressed with the Gameboy graphics, people were unbelievably ecstatic about the new touch screen system on the DS, that there were over 3million pre-ordered, and in June 2005 Nintendo announced to their statistics they had sold over 6. 65millions DS handheld consoles, this gives you an idea of how many people were truly impressed by the touch screens. The sound on handhelds aren’t really good, the reason for this is because handheld consoles (For example the Nintendo DS and the PSP) are small, therefore need small speakers and speakers that are light, this leads to them being not up to the standard that people would like to hear from their handhelds, but to solve this problem people plug in their headphones/ ear phones so they can hear the game much clearer that what it would be to be played out loud. Also the sound on video games that are developed for the handheld consoles are usually just music that is put into the game and can get repetitive over time, this can become an annoyance and can lead the player into just turning the sound off, this becomes a further annoyance because if there is dialog in the video game that is being played, they will need to turn the sound back up, or keep it on and this can over time become irritating. Also commonly in games on the handheld they can have a lack of speech, and without the speech there will be subtitles replacing this, this can be a problem for some people because you can get some people that play video games on their handholds that are dyslexic or cannot read the text, so they will either sell the game on because they don’t know what is happening or they will just avoid playing games with text in them altogether, so the company’s lose out on money just for the reason that they don’t have voice actors in the game, this is a common problem with games on the handholds, but if every game on every game had voice actors the prices for games would go up as voice actors are quite expensive.
Mobile
Mobiles are also known as hard phones but in America they are commonly known as Cellular phones and Cell phones. The first mobile phone was first demonstrated by Dr Martin Cooper from the company Motorola in 1973, but in 1983 the DynaTAC 8000x was the first mobile available for the public to buy, and to use mobiles you need a network to be able to send calls and send text messages and from 1990 to 2011 the subscriptions grew from 12. 4 million to over 5. 6 billion, with over 70% of the world buying a mobile and being with a network. Being with a network is the only way you can make phone calls or send texts, for example you can be with O2, Orange, Tesco, etc. The limitation of being with a network is that people go with what seems at first glance the best network, but then in the future the price could go up or it could not be what people were expecting, then you have to pay more money to move to a different network and it can be a long process. A big limitation of mobile phones is that when you are driving you cannot text or make calls, this can be a problem for some people because if they are in need of an emergency call they have to rush around to find a space to park just before the person calling has given up, but at the same time this is the safest way to do things because other than this there would be more car crashes and more people being run over in the street, on the other hand there is an alternative to this you can get Bluetooth ear pieces where you can answer the phone without using your phone, but in some cases this can still be a distraction. Also on the topic of using mobile phones while driving being against the law, this also is the same for cyclers, they aren’t allowed to use mobile phones (unless hand free) on the road or even on the pavement, if people cannot follow these rules they can be punished with points on their licence and a fine for £60, although £60 doesn’t seem all that much for some people, but if they decide to take things to court then the fine can be a maximum of £1, 000 and a disqualification from driving, and if you’re a bus driver or drives a goods vehicle you can face a fine up to £2, 500 and also a disqualification from driving any vehicle. On mobile phones you can listen to music on it, you can download it from an app off of the mobile network or you can get it from somebody else via Bluetooth, but the disappointment with this is that mobile phones have such limited memory space, people will only have around 2-5 songs on their mobiles, but the alternative you can use for this is you can buy a memory card to go into the mobile phone, but this will cost a bit more money and although for some people it may not be a problem to spend extra money on a memory card, for other people it is a problem because they need to use their money on other things, and in the long run it would be cheaper to buy a MP3 because you get more space on it and you don’t have to spend lots of money on the mobile phone and the memory card. Mobile phones are easy to carry around so you can easily just slide it in your pocket or in your bag, but there are restrictions of having a mobile phone with you is that in some places it is illegal to take them into public areas, places like public toilets and swimming pools, the reason for this law is because mobile phones have built in cameras in them, so people may use it to take pictures of people or take videos, and this is invading in people’s privacy. Mobile Graphics and Sound: The graphics on mobile phones very good at all, the graphics are suitable for games such as; Tetris, snake, etc. But the reason for them not being as good as what people would like them too be is because mobile phones are designed for gaming, it is obvious what they are used for and therefore graphics on gaming isn’t top priority, games on the mobile phone (Cell phone in other uses) are just an extra for the consumer to play when they are bored, but games on the mobile do take up a lot of battery, this is one of the reasons why graphics on mobile phones aren’t very advanced, because if they had graphics like the graphics you see on consoles such as the Xbox 360 and the PS3, then the memory on a mobile phone would have to be much larger, but the only problem with this is that mobile phones would become much more expensive, the best phone for indie games are phones such as the IPhone, and the prices range around £699. 99, so if all phones had these huge graphic cards and bigger battery then all phones would range around this price, so this will lead to less people being able to own a mobile phone, because at the moment prices for a normal mobile phone that makes the simple phone calls and text messages with a couple of games and the internet is £14. 99, you can already tell the huge difference between the prices. Games for an ordinary phone are usually games like Tetris, Snake, Pac man and Space Invaders. Before the 20th century, games were simple like these because of the lack of graphic system, the frames per rate is usually between 16-30, put the problem people suffer with when making a game for a mobile phone is that when they are planning what to do, all may come out well and they may have created a high graphic game for the mobile of their choice, but they are still faced with the problem of the graphics and/or frames per rate will eat away at the battery very quickly, and another problem is that they may be faced with is that the change over from scene to scene may take a while, and this may put people off of playing the game, because people have a lack of patience and want to play a game smoothly and quickly, this is why the graphics on mobile phones should be low and the frames per rate should be kept to a minimum. The sound on a mobile phone when it is playing out loud may sound fine when the sound is low or on a medium volume, but when the sound is turned up loud then people deal with the crackling of the music playing out, this can become an annoyance because people like to be able to hear their music loudly and clearly, but they can’t because of this problem, the solution to this is to plug in earphones/ headphones, then you can listen to the music as loud as you can without crackling, also another good feature about plugging earphones into your mobile phone, is that mobile phones can pick up the radio through a mobile phone, but the downfall of this is that it is easy to lose connection to the radio while walking around randomly and defiantly walking under bridges or anything, and as soon as the earphones fall out of the phone or you pull them out, they lose connection to the radio, but the upside to this is that when you disconnect from the radio nobody can hear it, this is good because some people don’t want people to hear, another downfall is that only two people can listen to the radio at one time, on the mobile device, not anymore number of people.
World Wide Web:
World Wide Web is commonly known as WWW. Before you type anything after (for example www. facebook. com) it will lead you the website you want to access, but the common mistake people make is that they think the World Wide Web is the internet, which it isn’t. The World Wide Web is a system where people around the world can access videos, text, social networking sites and any other types of mediaMost people in today’s society use the internet to access social networking site (such as Facebook, MySpace, etc.) this requires the user to enter their real name, address and all other details, this is so people can find them on the social networking site. This is a great way for keeping in contact with friends and family, and a lot of people use it to find old friends, but the downfall of social networking sites is that people upload pictures of themselves, family, friends and even their children, and with this on the World Wide Web anyone can access your pictures and may use it to impersonate them or for other reasons, but this is invading in your privacy and you may not ever know someone else has even used them, so when putting pictures on the internet or a social networking site, make sure the settings are on private and be careful of what you post. A huge disadvantage of the World Wide Web is that there is a huge rise in cybercrime; this includes identity theft, fraud, etc. Most commonly what people need to be careful of is online banking, because where cybercrime is at its heist, people can easily get you login and password for your online banking account, or even your PayPal account and take money out or buy items with it, then you are left with the bill after hand. Also people fall for fraud easily online, for example you could get an email from somebody saying they have cancer and not long to live, and they want to give you their money to you… but all you need to do is give them your bank details in order for them to give you there money, this story is easy to fall for, and with this it is a sad story but, don’t fall for this as many people over the past year have had the same email and fallen for it, some people just ignore it but for others they fall for the trap. But if you are careful online shopping and banking can be easy, defiantly if you lead a heavy lifestyle (People may have children and may not be able to go out and do the things they need). Another on-going problem with the World Wide Web is that people complain that it is too slow, and it has inherited the nick name ‘ World Wide Wait’ there is a big debate on speeding up the internet. The World Wide Web can be entertaining for children too, and there are plenty of websites that are free that children can play on and you won’t need to spend any money on video games for your children, but the disadvantage of this is that when children play games online the chances are is that they are talking to random people online and they don’t know who they are, the parents don’t know what their children get up to online because they don’t check, also they don’t understand how the internet or how the computers work, this results in children might be talking to somebody innocent, but chances are they might be talking to a paedophile, some children (most commonly teenagers) plan to meet up with their new ‘ friends’ and the parents don’t know about it because they hide it from them, this results in the teenagers/children being kidnapped, killed or anything else. World Wide Web Graphics and Sound: The graphics on the World Wide Web for gaming vary from different websites, for example there is a website called Runescape, the graphics aren’t very good but it still has over 135 million players online and the number is still expanding, the graphics are low so that more people can join and play as it will run on any computer/laptop/tablet, this is why so many people have joined up to Runescape and the reason why it still continues to be popular is because of the constant missions and the game seems to be never ending, but the downfall of this particular game is that they are putting updates on it, this means upgrading the graphics and everything they add is updating the graphics, the only problem with this is that some people can’t run the game on their computer or pc anymore or they become slow and begin to lag which over time can become annoying, so they may start losing players and losing money, the only other solution to solving the lagging problem and the problem on not being able to run it is to turn down the quality of the game but this still has its problems mainly because people don’t like to play on low graphics, defiantly with this particular game as the graphics to start with are poor, so lowering them for some people may become a problem, because some people believe that having good graphics make a good game and they like things to be smooth and easy to see, but some other people may not even care as their attitude is that you don’t need good graphics to make a good game. Some options the World Wide Web gives you is to download games for free, or to pay, the free games usually have a catch to them, for example World of Warcraft is free to download and it tells you this on the website and many others things, but really when you reach a certain level you have to stop playing, and to continue playing you need to pay money onto the account every year, but people will pay the fee because downloaded games usually run better and have much better graphics, rather than browser games. The sound on the World Wide Web consists of videos and music, a big example of both is a website called YouTube, this website lets is consumers type what they want to watch into the search bar and lets them watch and listen to what the please, but somebody else must’ve uploaded the video in the first place, a big asset of YouTube is people use it to listen to free music, but the sound quality depends on what the video, because you can turn up the video quality which then upgraded the sound of the video you may be watching/listening too. Game sound on Browser games usually consist of repetitive music and no dialog, this is because browser games are cheap and easy to make, this is usually because they are free to play so the game developers aren’t really making any money, or they could be by the advertisements on the game or pop-ups. The music on browser games depend on what genre it is, on RPGS you will find the music to be a piano song that is high pitched, whereas an action browser game will usually have rock music or rap music, also music on browser games people will realise is that it won’t have any lyrics, this is because the developers would have to pay for the song to be copyrighted or hire someone to sing the song, whereas it is just easier to make their own song or take a song already made and remove the lyrics, it is not only a cheap way of using the feature but it is also and easier way.
Pc:
PC is short for personal computer; the first PC to be made was made in 1965 and was called a ‘ desktop computer’. Compared to when the PC first was released only 48 thousand computer were shipped off to sell to buyers, whereas in 2001 125 million PC’s were shipped off, with 75% of people claiming that it was for profession or work, whereas the rest of the 25% were just used for at home use. Prices for computers in this day and age are around £300 to £400, depending on what one you buy if it is a gaming computer then you are looking to pay around £600 to £1, 000, the most expensive gaming PC I found was prices £1, 879. Although you may be getting value for your money and on a normal pc getting homework/work done and doing other things, it still has its disadvantages, if the screen was to break or the keyboard, they are really expensive to fix, because you will need to buy the new things to repair what has broken but at the same time you will need to hire somebody to install it as they know what they are doing, this will price around (to repair a keyboard) £95 for the keyboard and £50 for the repairman to fix it, so this will price around £145 just to fix a laptop/computer keyboard. And gaming computers are considerably more expensive to fix anything (Usually double what it would be to fix a normal PC) PCs are now mainly used so people can use websites such as Facebook and other social networking sites and games that children may use (that don’t require having a gaming computer) e. g.; Adventure quest, robolox, etc. So with these websites being just a click away, some parents have trouble getting their children to leave the house to go out with friends, but the consequences are the same when they go to school, they may find it hard because where children may spend most of their time playing video games on their pc and talking to people on these social networking sites, it reduces social skills in the real world, they may find it hard to keep a conversation going or start a conversation, this can lead to children having depression because they don’t want to leave the house to play these games, and people need direct sunlight to prevent depression, so if these children are playing on the PC all day they won’t be leaving the house or making new friends. Parents buy their children PC’s to do their homework on and to do revision on, this is a great asset to have because most homework now is online, for example MyMaths and teachers set the children’s revision online, for example BBCBitesize. But the downfall of this is that children are very sneaky because for example they can have the revision guide on one tab and have on another Facebook open and when the parents come in they can switch back to pretending they are doing revision but really when the parents leave the room they are back on Facebook and the parents don’t stay to watch. Although this can be a problem, some company’s like Sky have a system where the parents can go on their laptops and can an IP address in the household form using certain websites and from even using the internet, so if children are doing homework and the parents don’t trust them they can access this and block their children from using the websites, and after they can unblock the websites after the children are done doing revision/homework the parents can unblock the websites so the children can use them again. PC Graphics and Sound: The graphics on the PC vary from what PC you are using; it may be on a netbook which the graphic card is as shown: Graphics Card: Media Accelerator4500MHD, this will run near to none games, the only games it will be able to run is games such as Abe’s oddesy which is an old PS1 game but can now be downloaded on a website named Steam also you can purchase some PS2 games for the netbook, one game for example is: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the graphics need to be old to be able to run on a netbook, you couldn’t run a game like Skyrim, this is because the graphics are far too advanced for a netbook to handle. The one problem with this is that people may purchase a game believing that they can run it and then further down the line realise that they can’t this is alright if you brought the game on disc you can take it back to the shop you brought it from, whereas if you downloaded the game online (for example Steam) and paid your money and then play it and it doesn’t work, but people may try get their money back but they won’t be able to. If you want to upgrade your graphics then a graphic card can price around £81 to £170, this will let you play games that have higher graphics, for example before you might have only been able to play grand theft auto 3, and now you’ll be able to play grand theft auto 4 with the higher graphics, but the downside of this is that people don’t look at what they are buying and buy a cheap graphics card that is good by first glance but it may not be as good as you though, that is why people have to do their research on the product before paying out money for it, as most company’s wont refund the money, then you have to pay out the money for another one. Sound on a PC will vary in quality depending on what PC you have, on a laptop people may find that if you turn the music up to loud then the noise that is playing through the speakers (located at the bottom of the laptop) will start to crackle and sound like less good quality, this is more common when playing music out of the speakers. The sound quality on a PC’s with a tower unit usually sounds better because they don’t have built in speakers, they have plug in speakers, this generally sounds better but still will crackle if the sound is too loud, but you will find this with most speaker systems unless you are looking to pay around £249, this is for a good sound quality speakers, or if you were looking for something just cheaper to listen to music or hear sound on and don’t mind the cracking or they aren’t going to have the sound too loud, then you can look around paying £13-£20. You don’t need the internet to listen to music on a PC you can plug in a MP3 with a USB cord and play the music out loud, to as loud as you want, this is good if you want to just listen to music without typing in a song on any website for example YouTube, it will just continuously play, also this is good if you have people round and want to listen to music, you can just play it out loud. Nearly all PC’s no matter what type they are have a plug in compartment where you can play your earphones/head phones into and listen to what the consumer desires to listen too without needing to play it out loud or if they want it loud but can’t for any reason, for example if their parents are asleep.
