Console or computer?
Mike Revers
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In the past few months, the battle over where video games are played has become a heated one. The gaming world has seen a rise in competition between the rise in games for the computer and the anticipation of some new gaming consoles that are coming to the market. Until the recent explosion of computer sales, the debate on whether or not to purchase computer games or the traditional gaming console was pretty much a non-issue.
However, with more and more households purchasing a computer or multiple computers, the computer gaming world is expanding into the traditional games once reserved only for the gaming consoles from Nintendo and Sony. With this explosion, the converse has happened as well, with the big sellers from the pc crossing over to the gaming console. With this crisscrossing of games between the platforms and the computers, the battle over which will reign supreme is going to be a good one.
The leading front runners will be the Sony PlayStation II, due out in the fall of this year, the Sega Dreamcast already available, the Nintendo Dolphin due late next year and the X-Box from Microsoft, which is a computer based gaming system due out next year. Most of these have already caused a lot of fanfare, but the real story is over who will come out on top. The specifics on the game systems are listed below:
POLYGON POWER
X-Box: 100+ million polygons per second
PlayStation II: Around 20 million polygons per second
Project Dolphin: "As fast as our friends at Sony have," said Nintendo Chairman Howard Lincoln.
Dreamcast: Around three million polygons per second
Nintendo 64: Around 150,000 polygons per second
PlayStation: Around 360,000 polygons per second (lacks comparable effects)
MAIN CLOCK SPEED
X-Box: 600 MHz
PlayStation II: 300 MHz
Project Dolphin: 400 MHz
Dreamcast: 200 MHz
Nintendo 64: 93.75 MHz
PlayStation: 33.86 MHz
MEMORY
X-Box: 64 MB
PlayStation II: 32MB
Project Dolphin: Unannounced
Dreamcast: 16MB
Nintendo 64: 4MB
PlayStation: 2MB
With the specifics outlined above, it would appear that the X-Box is poised to take the gaming world by storm. However, Microsoft is neglecting one thing — time. The X-Box is not scheduled to arrive until the following year, and with the way Microsoft promises, I would look to see it in 2002.
Also, the trend in home appliances now is to incorporate all-in-one devices where the consumer can get more than one service out of them. The only company to really embrace that is Sony. The PlayStation is really a revolutionary system in gaming. Regardless of the upgrades to the polygons rendered which helps sharpen the picture, Sony has incorporated a DVD player and many other features that can make it even more than a gaming system.
The question over which console will reign supreme is a difficult one, but I am betting on the PlayStation II being a formidable competitor. The most appealing feature to me is the inclusion of backward compatibility with the old PlayStation games, so that the purchasers of the new system do not have to throw out their old games. With such fierce competition, the consumer will be the eventual decider — but I would look for a huge increase in the production of computer games and console games to be eminent.
However, when the PlayStation II is released in the fall of this year, my $300 will go toward its purchase, before I buy into the fanfare of these other systems.
All Scene Stories for Monday, April 10, 2000
