Let's continue our brief history of game technology. Running parallel to the game console systems is the personal computer. Many point to the release of the Apple I in 1976 and the Apple II in 1977, as the birth of the personal computer. Apple focused on the home hobbyist and education market, while IBM focused on the small office and home office, with the release of the IBM PC in 1981. The early personal computers had very little memory, primitive graphics and sound, primitive storage in the form of a cassette tape drive, and later the floppy disk drive, and eventually the hard drive. The early PCs ran what was called a disk operating system or DOS. The original DOS for the IBM PC was created by Microsoft, which was their first foray into developing operating systems. The 1984 release of the Apple Macintosh popularized the graphical user interface and the mouse, and was dubbed as the computer for the rest of us. Microsoft later copied many of the elements of the MAC OS and the development of their own graphical operating system that they called Windows. While most of the game companies were focused on the arcade and home consoles at this time, games on the personal computer really started from more of the hobbyist culture. Small teams made games and basic or assembly, initially just to share them and show off what they could do. Over time, the games advanced in quality and were packaged up and sold in stores. Sierra Online, Origin, Serotek, Broderbund, MicroProse, and Electronic Arts were early PC game companies that helped define the PC game market. Of course, Electronic Arts has persevered and grown into one of the largest game publishers today. Just like the Console Wars, there has been a similar battle in the marketplace across the years with many PC platforms coming and going. Today the primary PC platforms are Windows, Macintosh, various flavors of Unix, such as Linux, and Chrome OS. We can also view the web itself as its own platform running within the browser of the personal computer. The history of mobile devices is also a long and storied one. From a technology standpoint, mobile devices are a convergence of many other technologies. From the personal computer to the telephone, to the camera, to the clock, to the GPS, to handheld games and beyond. Personally, I view the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 as one of the biggest milestones in this technology convergence. For the first time we had a singular mobile device that could do all these different things, including playing games. Mobile games have had a profound amount of growth since the launch of the iPhone. In fact, mobile game sales made up nearly 50 percent of total game revenues in 2020. Today in the mobile game space, there are two primary platforms or operating systems that you target. iOS on Apple devices, including the iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, and Apple Watch, and the Android operating system. This diagram adapted for Ernest Adams' Breaking Into The Game Industry book shows how various gaming platforms have emerged over time. The diagram depicts a break between PC gaming and arcade gaming platforms back in the 1970s, and the subsequent diversification of platforms with web and VR games coming out of the PC games and the Home console and handheld games spawning out from the arcade games, amongst others, such as gambling machines and location-based entertainment. Once again, mobile games are shown as a convergence between PC games and handheld games. Today however, while there are more and more platforms to play games on, I think there's actually a convergence when it comes to game technology. That is, the dividing lines between platforms is becoming a bit less clear when it comes to the underlying game technology. It is easier than ever to develop a game for one platform and then move it to a new platform. As we look at the past and consider the future, the one thing that we know will be constant in terms of game technology is change. As a game design challenge, pause the video and take a few moments to think through your game history. What was the first game you remember playing and what platform was it on? What is the most recent game you played? What was the platform? Now create a timeline from first to latest. Try to mark milestone dates where you got or at least played on a new platform, as well as list a few of the games you remember playing on that platform. Pause the video now and do this. In the next video, we'll discuss modern game technology concepts, starting with hardware.
