A new battle in an ongoing war between game console makers is expected to break out at a leading videogames conference that opens in Los Angeles tomorrow.
Typically a stage for new blockbuster titles, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) this year will also be an arena where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo duel with motion-sensing controls for rival PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii consoles.
“Motion controls are by far and away going to be the talk of the show,” said Scott Steinberg, head of videogame consulting firm TechSavvy Global.
Microsoft has planned a set of high-powered events to debut “Project Natal” technology that lets players control Xbox 360 consoles using natural gestures such as the wave of a hand.
Natal boasts facial recognition capabilities that enable consoles to distinguish between players.
“The big story of the year is going to be motion controls for Xbox 360,” Game Trailers editor-in-chief Shane Satterfield said.
“Nintendo sort of broke the mold for the videogame industry with Wii and everyone else has been trying to capture lightning in a bottle ever since,” he said.
At a game developers conference in San Francisco in March, Sony unveiled a hotly anticipated motion-sensing Move controller that it hopes will fuel new interest in its PlayStation 3 (PS3).
Movement wands that synch with eye cameras on the consoles will hit the market in time for the year-end holiday shopping season, as will Natal technology, which will be renamed before it heads for store shelves.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are expected to reveal rich line-ups of videogames they hope will win players to their consoles and motion-control systems.
“It’s going to be a big battle between Sony and Microsoft,” Satterfield said. “On the heels of that, Nintendo has a big show planned. It is going to be tough to topple Nintendo.”
A shift to downloadable content will be among the trends on an E3 show floor renowned for action-packed trailers displayed on giant screens, demonstrations of coming titles and models dressed as popular game characters.
Videogame publishers use downloadable content to deliver gaming software as well as virtual items such as outfits or weapons to consoles via the Internet. Popular titles can be kept alive by selling new missions or sequels to original games bought on packaged disks at real-world stores.
Downloadable content has a dark side, tempting videogame makers to hold back on content in the original package so they can sell it to players later. Knowing that glitches can be fixed with patches available online can also result in premature releases of titles.
“[Downloadable content] has already been abused,” Satterfield said. “It’s a slippery slope for developers. Sadly, it looks like that is the direction it is going.”
Downloadable content also opens up opportunity for independent game makers to sell titles from Web sites and for games to be adapted in real time based on feedback from players, Steinberg said.
For example, Bethesda Softworks resurrected the main character of Fallout 3 who died at the end of the original title, but was brought back to continue the adventure.
E3 remains, at its heart, a showcase for top-shelf blockbuster videogames. Hot titles on the expo horizon include Rage and sequels to popular franchises including Halo, Call of Duty, Little Big Planet, Civilization, Fallout, Mafia, Mario, Fable and Portal.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to