1. Technology

My chosen technology is gaming and the video game industry. I will be researching both consoles and PCs.

The technologies are marketed to the gaming crowd, ranging from casual gamers to hardcore gamers. The average age of a gamer is 30 years. Gamer marketing is aimed at both males and females as roughly 50% of each spend time gaming.

There are lots of companies that provide the gaming audience with games, as well as the companies that supply the games consoles. Some of the major businesses that publish games are EA, Activation, Nintendo, Ubisoft and Microsoft Game Studios, all which rank in the top 10 for publishing games. The three main companies that make games consoles (of this gen), are Microsoft who made the Xbox 360, Nintendo who made the Wii and Sony who have made the PS3. This differs with the PC as not one or more companies provide PCs, because they can be built by the user with parts from different companies.

Prices can range anywhere from £140 - £1500 depending on whether a console or PC is bought and which model/specification you decide to buy. The higher the price tag, the more extras you get. More hard drive space, wifi built in, better graphics card etc.



Gaming is a pull technology and is a cold media. This is because in many games there is a storyline to follow the player is allowed to go about it at their own pace and complete the objectives how they wish. Multiplayer games are a lot more interactive as the goals are less defined and every player is a user able to interact with the virtual world and players in the game. Games like Second Life take the cold media to the limits. The user in Second Life is literally able to do anything. Anything they can imagine they create, build and play with. Creations can be shared and even bought online. A booming community and network is being born from this game, and it is ever expanding.

Gaming is an old media and has been around since 1972 with the invention of the first games console, The Magnavox Odyssey. Few people know about the Odyssey (I didn’t till I started this research project) but it was the world’s first games console predating the more popular known Pong by 4 years. The games industry has however undergone rapid changes and transformation from 1972 to the present day. Games consoles and the games themselves are becoming more advanced, better looking but necessarily more fun to play. Some classic games are still fun too! There are now loads of different genres of gaming, a few example of these are FPS, RPG, MMORPG and RTS. With different styles of play to suit to different players.