« The Year of Thinking Dangerously | Main | Flickr: Museum of the future? »

09 January 2006

Video Games and the Evolution of Microprocessors

I've just returned from this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. CES is a veritable festival of microprocessors. There were 28 football fields worth of microprocessor-driven gadgets. As exciting as it was to see thousands upon thousands of high definition televisions, the biggest crowds formed around Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360.

I suspect there's no better way to appreciate the incredible advancement in microprocessors over the last 25 or so years than to compare the video game consoles of yesterday and today.

In 1977, the Atari 2600 was the state-of-the-art video game machine. It had such exciting games as Asteroids (which you can play on this blog by clicking on the Asteroids image above), Pong, Centipede, Missile Command, etc. This holiday season, I bought my kids an Atari Flashback 2 -- for $30 I was able to buy the complete console and the 40 best games from the Atari 2600, all built into a single machine.

As nostalgic as it was for me to play Missile Command, I was absolutely astonished at how primitive the graphics, game play and sound were. In stark contrast, the sound, graphics and game play demonstrated at CES on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were mind blowing. Video game consoles are now able to produce images on the fly that only a few years ago took animation render farms hours to create.

Video game pundit and game developer extraordinaire David Perry will be speaking at TED2006. He's been developing games for the last two decades and has taken full advantage of the increasing power of video game consoles. A quick look at screen shots from games from the Atari 2600 (Combat) and Perry's latest game for the PlayStation 2 (The Matrix: Path of Neo) and you can more fully appreciate the incredible evolution of the microprocessor over the last quarter century. I look forward to hearing where Perry thinks it's all heading next.

Atari2600

Ps2

 

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c4e5853ef00d83459505869e2

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Video Games and the Evolution of Microprocessors:

» Remember Asteroids? from wake up!
This was once my favorite game: bbwrite('http://www.bunchball.com', 'em545521138507080234', '4caae0afb97598c470a0b8162077e3059238451085888919ca15f1a5243fbb6850a42f41a8c3689b0055bf355692ce143cba980c5c84a1ae68f6f7def38709a5', '', 'T', '400', '300', 'Mova... [Read More]

Comments

Thank you very much for this information.

sohbet
muhabbet
mirc

We specialize in laptop battery,laptop AC adapters. All our products are brand new, with the excellent service from our laptop battery of customer service team.
the most convenient and cheap replacement battery online shop in uk. We specialize in laptop batteries,laptop AC adapters. All our laptop AC adapters are brand new, with the excellent service from our customer service team.
the most convenient and cheap battery online shop in uk.

http://www.batteryfast.co.uk/toshiba/p30.htm toshiba p30 battery,

http://www.batteryfast.co.uk/toshiba/satellite-1905.htm toshiba satellite 1905 battery,

I have a GPS system on my car bought from car gps and it really has helped enormously in finding new locations. I found this blog most interesting as I didn’t realize all of the wide range of applications out there today for GPS technology

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Tools for TED.com

Subscribe to the TED Blog's RSS feed >>
Get the free TED Miro player >>
Get TED and Ideo's Big Questions widget >>
Join TED on Facebook >>
Follow TEDTalks on Twitter >>


News about TED2009

Find all TED Blog posts about TED2009 >>
Follow TED2009 on Twitter >>
Follow TED@PalmSprings on Twitter >>
See TED2009's Flickr stream >>

NEW: Watch TEDTalks from TED2009 >>

Tips? Comments? Contact us.
See a glitch in a TED video? Report a bug >>


Get the latest news on the TED Prize on TEDPrize.org >>