FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
Home Game Consoles
A home game console is usually set up in the living room or a bedroom. The player sits or stands holding a dedicated controller 3 to 6 feet away from the television that serves as its display. Although modern high definition digital televisions are a great improvement over the analog sets that the early consoles used, the player is still too far from the screen to see small details or to read fine print conveniently. This means that games designed for the home console machine are seldom as intricate as the typical personal computer game. The graphics have to be simpler and bolder, and the control method and user interface must be manageable with the controller provided. A mouse can point much more precisely than most controllers, even ones with analog joysticks. Still, you are guaranteed that every machine ships with a standardized controller, which means you don't have to do the large amount of configuration testing that games for the PC require.
Because several people see the television at once, and because all consoles allow for at least two controllers, console machines are excellent for multiplayer games in which all the players look at the same screen. This means that every player can see what every other player is doing on the screen, which is something you need to consider when designing some games.
Nothing has changed the home console landscape more in the last few years than the arrival of the Nintendo Wii, with its revolutionary motion-sensitive controller. Many casual players find the vast array of buttons and joysticks on the traditional game controller daunting. The Wii has made video games intuitive and easy to learn, with the result that Wii machines are being used in all sorts of unexpected ways—as therapy for injured, disabled, and elderly people, for example.
Generally speaking, hardware developers create a much larger variety of input devices for console machines, such as the Guitar Hero controller, than they do for the PC. Because the console manufacturers rigorously test any device with their logo on it, you can be confident that these devices are compatible with their machines. PC manufacturers cannot prevent third parties from creating additional hardware for their machines, so you cannot be as confident that off-brand input devices will work correctly with your PC game—you will simply have to test them. Chapter 8, "User Interfaces," addresses designing for a variety of controllers in more detail.
Home consoles tend to have graphics display hardware of comparable power to the graphics hardware in personal computers but slower central processing units and less RAM than personal computers. Because consoles sell for $200-$400 once they
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 console 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 capability 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.
