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It's play time, folks!
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New generation gaming devices are going portable and wireless, with memories that even PC owners will envy
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PLAY CAN seem like an awful lot of work — to those who create the toys. The Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3) held last week (May 12 to 14) in Los Angeles is an annual weathercock which points to future directions in the multi billion dollar computer games business.
Ever since the American company Nintendo introduced the Game Boy in 1989, the home gaming market has remained one of the most lucrative sectors of the computer business. Sony entered the field in 1995 with PlayStation, possibly the single most widely used gaming platform today. Microsoft followed with Xbox, but is still to catch up with the Japanese giant. If the prototypes unveiled at Los Angeles are to be believed, tomorrow's video game systems will be hand-held, will let you wirelessly browse the Internet or exchange messages, and will help you listen to music, take digital photos, and watch movies. All this is in addition to their primary role as game consoles, where one or more participants can match their wits against the computer.
Nintendo has announced a new machine called the NintendoDS (for double screen). This is a hand-held gaming gadget with twin three-inch screens which can be held in the palm and will provide two different views of the same game. For example, this will allow the player to have a first person view as well as an overhead map view. One of the two screens comes with a touch screen capability, allowing players to control the game by tapping the screen. The machine also features voice recognition technology. In other words, you can talk to it.
Sony has also untethered its PlayStation from the tabletop. The new PlayStation Portable (or PSP) is a hand-held games console whose main feature is a new kind of storage disk called Universal Media Disk or UMD. At 1.8 gigabytes, this new optical medium packs in almost three times more information than the standard CD of today. Sony hopes that movie studios and music companies will be attracted by this jumbo medium to create special video content for the young.
The third video games giant, Microsoft, did not have any new hardware advancement at E3, but they have persuaded a lot more third party dev elopers to create new software for the XBox.
The new machines from Nintendo and Sony are expected only later this year, and are likely to be priced internationally in the region of $150 to $250. That sounds like a lot of money to spend on fun and games, especially when you multiply the dollar prices by 50 and start thinking rupees. But clearly, this is something that plenty of young Indians are quite serious about — one has only to see the crowds in the Sony showrooms in major metros, or watch the hysteria when companies like Samsung sponsor gaming contests.
And let's not forget one thing. The global hunger for computer-assisted games is such that game consoles sell far more than boring old PCs and Laptops. And as a new crop of games machines unveiled last week's show, in technology too they could well be almost a generation ahead of what personal computer users can hope to get.
A. VISHNU
vishnua@hotmail.com
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