Let's continue our discussion of game technology hardware. Let's talk a bit about storage. The computer can access cache and RAM the fastest, but this type of memory is what is called volatile memory. When we turn off the power, all the data is lost. Between executions, the programmes and data need to be stored someplace that is non volatile or persistent. Meaning that it continues to exist, even when the power is turned off. Further, we need some way to distribute our games. For both of these purposes, the computer needs some sort of storage device. Early game systems like the Odyssey had integrated circuitry, that was non changeable, that is everything that ship with the hardware is what you got. There was no saving of game state, no new games, no game updates. The instructions were built into the hardware. Read Only Memory is a way to store computer programs or data on a chip. The information persist, even when the power is off. Therefore, ROM often the stores things like the computer firmware. Which often includes the initial instructions on how to boot up, when you first power the computer on, like the name implies, this sort of memory is read only, meaning you cannot save data to it. However, modern ROM chips are often programmable so you can do firmware updates for example. As discussed, with the Atari 2600, early game consoles shipped their games on cartridges. These cartridges were literally a pluggable ROM chip, that you could buy at the store to add games to your console. Since they were ROMs, you could not update the games once it was written to the Cartridge and shipped. So any bugs that shipped with the game were there forever. Early personal computers often had cassette or floppy disk drives, where you could read and write data to a magnetic medium. This often had limited storage, which meant you had to constantly change disks or even flip them over to access the other side. Games at this time would chip on several disks, the disks were relatively easy to copy, which led to the rise of piracy in the game industry. The CD-ROM was a popular form of storage in the 1990s. It contained 650 megabytes of read only space. They were cheap to manufacture and easy to distribute, and could be encrypted to help prevent piracy. All of this additional storage meant that game developers could fit a lot more graphics and audio content in their games. The original PlayStation chip was a CD drive. The CD evolved into the DVD in the early 2000s, which typically held 4.7 gigabytes of space. Are more than six CDs worth of content. The PlayStation 2 and Xbox shipped with a DVD drive. After the DVD came the Blu-ray disc, which held at least 25 gigabytes of space, or five DVDs worth on a single disc. The PlayStation 3, 4, and 5, as well as the Xbox One, and Xbox series x, all shipped with a Blu-ray drive. One interesting thing is the form factor of the CD, DVD, and Blu-ray all remained consistent. The Secure Digital card or SD card is a proprietary, non volatile memory card that was originally developed as a storage device for mobile devices and cameras. It has evolved over the years growing and storage capacity while reducing in physical size. The SD card can be read write or can be set to be read only, the Nintendo switch uses a Micro SD card for its game cards, sold at retail. Personal computers and consoles typically include a larger capacity storage device, in the form of a hard disk or solid state drive. The trend has been to move from the magnetic based hard drive to the faster and more reliable solid state drive during recent years as the price of SSDs become more competitive. And last but certainly not least, using a net based server or cloud servers on the internet as a form of consistent storage has also become a popular approach. The amount of storage can be virtually limitless. The main barrier is the speed of the internet connection. Overall, most game platforms typically use a combination of storage devices and approaches. Let me conclude my discussion of game technology hardware, by mentioning that there is often a difference between development hardware and playback hardware. We often develop our games on high end professional computers. With a fast CPU, lots of memory, a high end GPU, possibly a dedicated audio card, lots of storage, and a large and perhaps multiple displays. Since we are working in many applications, building and testing games for a majority of the day, we often can rationalize spending more for all the bells and whistles. But our players may not have the luxury. You need to make sure you test your games on a variety of hard work configurations, particularly if you're targeting the PC market. Where our players' hardware specs can be all across the board, from eight year old low end hardware, to the latest greatest souped-up gaming PCs. Also realize that for certain platforms, you may be developing on a high-end PC, but your target may be a mobile or game console. For mobile development you often can simulate the device on the PC, and something like the Unity device simulator. But you really need to build and deploy to the actual target hardware for more accurate testing. And once you're ready to deploy your game to your players, you often need to submit the game to the distribution channel owner, such as Apple or Google for certification and signing, for external beta testing, and ultimately, for distribution. And when developing for console, you often must have what is called a devkit that you purchase from the platform owner, such as Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony. You usually still develop on a PC, but then you build and deploy to the devkit for testing. The devkit if often a modified version of the consumer console, sometimes with additional features for debugging. It generally is not possible to build and deploy to a consumer console directly, you must use a devkit. Once you're ready to deploy the game to the consumers, you must go through the platform manufacturer to get your game certified and signed for playback on consumer devices. Take a moment to think about your ultimate game development work station, pause the video and fill in this table. Including the platform, specs on the CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage. Also think about the displays as well as other hardware you would like to include, you can also think about brand and ultimately cost. Pause the video now to do this. Here are the recommendations I get my students at Michigan State University, when they asked what to buy as a student in our game major. These are just suggestions not requirements, as you can make games on almost any level of hardware. But of course, the hardware is only half the equation. The other half is software and that is the topic of our next video. [MUSIC]
