Journal Entry 01.13.09

I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon

• I see each day stetching out before me
• I can see new friends waiting for me to arrive

These lines are possible divergences from a line in the poem The Layers by Stanley Kunitz

Topics

6 titles you might want to write about:

1. On Snowstorms & Suburbs
2. On Roleplaying Games
3. On Game Development
4. On Where You Want Your Life to Go
5. On Space
6. Pn Equestrianism

6 titles you don't want to write about:

1. On Girlfriends
2. On Vegetables
3. On

6 titles where "On" is a pun:

1. On Lightbulbs
2. On Vacuums
3. On Computing
4. On Game Consoles *
5. On Air
6. On Route 66

6 titles you don't know anything about:

1. On Skydiving
2. On Medicine
3. On Artistry
4. On Geology
5. On Manufactory
6. On Religion

On Game Consoles: Free Writing

Game consoles have an intersting history in the world of games, as an alternative to the PC or board games. When the first consoles were made, such as the Atari or the Amiga, they were much cheaper than any PC you could buy. So, if you wanted to play video games, they were the obvious choice. Today, consoles such as the Xbox 360, Play Station 3, and Wii are still cheaper than the powerful "gaming rigs" that some players of PC games boast of having.

The console is also more reliable avenue for the developer, with one single hardware configuration to build for. Though a PC may be more powerful than an Xbox, other PCs will be much less so, and PC developers must build for as many PC configurations as feasible.

However, most consoles are very difficult to get permission to build for. The Xbox 360, for example, requires that a developer purchase a $10,000 Xbox Development Kit from Microsoft. Additionally, in order to actially publish a game on a console, the developer must pass their game on an exhaustive list of rules, call the Technical Certification Requirements for Xbox, Technical Requirements Checklist for Play Station, and I don't know what Nintendo call their version of the same, only that they have one.

The other disadvantage of consoles is also their ficed hardware. A PC user can just upgrade bits of hardware as they need, while a console player must buy an entirely new console to play the new games at all - a PC that isn't upgraded can probably still play the game at a lower resolution or framerate.