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Architecture of Consoles
- hnlmorg 6y agoJust had a quick look and for a guide that repeated describes itself as “in depth” it seems to only focus on the biggest 4 names in consoles: Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft and PlayStation. It even misses out Atari. Plus there isn’t even every console from those big 4 companies within the time periods it focuses on. It also includes portables with the home console generations and that’s not how people generally discuss portables. It starts off at the 3rd generation of consoles (there’s a whole era of gaming that predates the “crash”). And lastly it’s also very American specific (eg talking about “the crash” which was an American phenomena and didn’t affect Europe nor Japan). In short, it’s a good start but it’s a looooong way off being in-depth.
- flipacholas 6y agoSorry but please take a longer look: - The series is currently in the process, see the ‘roadmap’ at the end (along with an explanation of the current state of things). - The author is european and uses british english, ‘the crash’ it’s just a quick way to introduce that generation (have you clicked in any console?). - List is grouped by ‘generations’, not whether they are ‘portable’ or ‘home console’. Again, that’s not the point of the series... you only have to click on one console...
- hnlmorg 6y ago> List is grouped by ‘generations’, not whether they are ‘portable’ or ‘home console’. Again, that’s not the point of the series... you only have to click on one console... My point is that it makes no sense grouping the Gameboy with the same generation as the SNES. That's not how anybody classifies consoles. They have a home console generation and a handheld generation as two different evolution time lines. I accept your other points though. I might have been a little quick to judge. Sorry for that.
- InitialLastName 6y agoYou seem to be criticizing the page's breadth, not its depth.
- tracer4201 6y agoWhat was the purpose of this article? It was just a list of game consoles and some of their technical features. Was there something groundbreaking the feature provided? A new or better paradigm? Something even more basic?
- nemothekid 6y agoIt's not very clear, but you can click into each console and there are more in depth device breakdowns, render pipelines and software libraries in each article
- flipacholas 6y agoThanks for sharing, but please bear in mind that this, as a ‘series’, is currently in the process. For this reason, people have previously shared individual articles instead in hackernews.
- Villodre 6y agoI really love this series and have found them both useful and entertaining in understanding game hardware's evolution.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoSeconded. Really impressive series!
- Waterluvian 6y agoI've heard that the PS3 architecture is pretty wacky. I'm curious just how many games managed to actually utilize it to full potential vs. a more typical architecture.
- revjx 6y agoSome really interesting details in here, presented in a very accessible way. I wasn't aware of how earlier consoles used (effectively) pulses of static noise to create drums, although it seems obvious now I've read that!
- Const-me 6y agoImpressive! Looking forward to PS3 (the Cell CPU was really interesting there) and Xbox 360 (multiple innovations about GPU: GPU being a memory controller, unified shader cores, and eDRAM).
- britches11 6y agoI love this blog and I discovered it because of how frequently it's posted here on HN so thank you all!