Points Of Interest: Gaming, Student Interview, Music, Mobility,
Entertainment and Leisure is a massive industry today. People may use entertainment for relaxing a hobby or even a professional carrier. People can use technology in various ways for entertainment and leisure perhaps using a computer for gaming or just listening to some music on their mp3 player for leisure.
Technology over the years has massively helped revolutionize entertainment and leisure. It has helped expand the industry so almost everyone has some use using technology for entertainment and leisure.
The industry only really ever started to take off in the 1980’s with common arcade games such as “Pac-man” and “Asteroids”. People used to travel to arcades to play these games on purpose built machines. Through the early 1990’s the industry started to show signs of expansions. There were people using portable cassette tape players from such popular brands at the times such as “Sanyo”. Arcade machines also started expanding offering for of a variety for people with machines offering new popular games such as “Sega Rally”. The big change came when entertainment became more available in the home.
Early games consoles such as “Sega Mega drive” offered people the chance to play arcade style games in the leisure of their own home. Instead of people have perhaps a social gathering at the local arcade; they could instead stay indoors playing on a games console instead.
Please click here to listen to an interview with a fellow student regarding gaming. Play
In the late 90’s, the mobile phone phenomenon really started to take off. People were now in fact able to take a portable phone around with them that was so small it could fit in your pocket. The idea of listening to music “on-the-go” also was continuing with such devices such as cassette tape players and even portable CD players.
The turn of the 21st century saw the entertainment and leisure industry revolutionize. Technology was expanding ever more offering developers and end-users almost endless possibilities.
Games consoles are a prime example of what has developed since the 80’s. Technology has enabled developers to make more powerful and more realistic consoles. Games consoles are now offering an incredible variety of games for almost everyone from sports to perhaps 1st person shooters. Thanks to hardware advancements the quality of the games has also rapidly improved. Instead of perhaps watching a few “stick actions”, now games offer a lot more 3D user interface. Often characters or even models are 3D and the users are practically in control of them. Consoles are now even able to take advantage to the feature of HD (High definition) gaming allowing users yet even more of a realistic experience. However gaming is not the piece of entertainment and technology to change.
The whole idea of being able to use technology not necessarily in one place (on-the-go) is something most companies are targeting. Portable versions of games consoles are being made available for the on-the-go market such as Sony playstation who in late 2005 released a portable version of its successful playstation series called the PSP (Playstation Portable). However the music industry seems to be making full use of the on-the-go idea. From CD players now people are offering portable mp3 music players allowing users to upload their digital music from their computer to an mp3 device and then simply listen to it. MP3 players can now offer users the chance to have from 100 songs to 15,000 songs all in one device. But not only can people listen to music on-the-go the can also watch video content. Video content may vary from user defined content such as a user perhaps downloading a video and watching on the portable device at a later date to simply watching a live stream of a television show.
Another big feature for on-the-go technology is the facility to access the internet from almost anywhere. Feature such as GPRS and even G3 allow users to connect to the internet from anywhere in the world. Many cafes and restaurants and airports now offering “WiFi hotspots” which enable users with WiFi enable devices such as laptops to connect wirelessly to the internet. For entertainment and leisure this may merely provided something to perhaps waste a little time but from a business point of view wireless services at of the home maybe be critical as they can carry out important task such as replying to their emails.
However as entertainment and leisure expand the problems expand to. In regard to video gaming there are numerous reports on exactly how much time people are playing them. Many people in fact argue that children today are spending far too much time in doors playing on a console with little social interaction.
It is very much apparent that entertainment and leisure is an industry that most companies want a piece off. It is something that as grown vastly in the last 20 year and more and more companies want to be part of the development in the next 20 years.
Using my Xbox 360 I can play all my latest games in HD and also play against anyone from around the world at any time using the internet. When playing the HD I find that I can notice such minor details such as the names on the backs of footballers. A few years ago, I would have never imagined that games would have been this high in quality. Also, with my iPod I listen to it everyday on the bus before I come into school and then simply charge it up over night for the next morning. My iPod now includes every CD and every song I have ever downloaded and it still isn’t even half-full! Having such a wide array of music on one device allows me to flick through thousands of songs depending on my mood.