Gaming is seeing new technologies for both the PC and Console. And there is more to come

When Ralph Baer thought of building a game into a television set (this was way back in 1949), he had no idea what a hornet’s nest he was about to stir up. Though the idea was rejected, it’s the earliest recorded reference to the "crazy little thing" now known as a video game. Baer couldn’t fulfill his dream till 1967 when he developed two games. By then, however, others had taken the initiative away and it was Willy Higginbotham of Brookhaven National Laboratories, New York, who is credited with developing the first video game—a table tennis clone played on an oscilloscope.

That was 1958 and 42 years down the line this "crazy little thing" has grown into a multi-million dollar global industry. Games are as popular in Timbuktu as they are in Bangkok or Moscow or LA. Anyone who’s ever used a computer has played games (at least Solitaire, if nothing else). Broadly speaking, the gaming market is now divided into two sections—games for PCs and for one of the many consoles available.

Gaming on PCs

This year has seen a number of interesting technologies. nVIDIA, which introduced its GPU (graphics processing unit) chipset—the GeForce 256—for display cards last year, has come out with much better chipsets this year, the latest being the GeForce 2 Ultra that even puts the first GeForce to shame. This has given a new dimension to gaming on PCs. Graphics cards based on GPUs allow faster gaming even at very high resolutions, and graphics quality doesn’t suffer either.

On the software front, Microsoft released DirectX 8 in November this year. The latest version of these multimedia APIs (Application Programming Interface) for gaming is supposed to provide improved graphical performance. It’s also supposed to improve multiplayer gaming and provide for better audio effects. The year also saw the release of sequels to popular games, which topped the sales charts for many weeks running. Some of these were Diablo II, Age of Empires II, Quake III Arena, etc. Perhaps the most improved (in popularity and otherwise) was Unreal Tournament, which was a darling of the masses and the media around the world.

India also climbed the gaming bandwagon with the release of Yoddha, the first Indian 3D game by Indiagames.com. Though it leaves a lot to be desired if you compare it with counterparts like Quake or Doom, it’s a good first step, nevertheless. Hopefully, the future will see better versions of the game emerge.