Renderers are very important in games because without them you wouldn’t see anything. They use up 50% of the CPUs processing time so it takes up a major part of the users processor

APIs are 3d accelerator card, API stands for Application program interface

It is harder to make a renderer for the pc because the PCs hardware is constantly improving so the developers don’t usually know the spec of the PCs the players are using

It is easier to make a renderer for the a console because the consoles hardware stays the same until the next console is out they are a ‘frozen snapshot in time’

So they know the specs and what they should aim for

Vertices are 3d objects stored as points in the 3d world these points make up the things in the game like chairs guns dinosaurs and other things

They are all points that have a relation with each other kind of like a vector but 3d

In big complicated games like half life 2 they have thousands and thousands of vertices

In a good games engine the renders are replaceable so that it is very easy to make ports of the game to play on other platforms like releasing a game on Xbox ps3 and pc