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Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The Best In The World: LIVE! in Hyderabad at Sun Tech Days
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The Future Of Videogames
Michael Noer, 02.11.08, 12:00 PM ET
The numbers are startling: According to videogame tracking site VG Chartz, Nintendo has sold an astonishing 20.9 million Wii game consoles worldwide, while Microsoft has sold 16.9 million Xbox 360s and Sony has managed to move just 9.8 million PlayStation 3s (PS3).
Yet before the PS3 launched in November 2006, many respectable gaming pundits were convinced Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) would retain its decade-long domination of console gaming. Sure, the PS3 was expensive, but it was loaded with features, like high-definition DVD playback and a hyper-fast 3.2 gigahertz processor.
Nintendo's (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ) Wii, on the other hand, was so pathetically underpowered that it couldn't even display high-definition graphics. Sure, it had an innovative, motion-sensitive controller, but to a lot of people, that just sounded gimmicky. Before its worldwide launch in November 2006, lots of smart people thought the Wii would be a niche product, appealing primarily to young children.
Predicting the future is never easy, and it's particularly difficult in the fast-paced world of videogames. But the runaway success of the Wii highlights some trends that will be very important over the next decade, as the gaming industry matures and becomes more mainstream.
First and foremost, expect the demographics of the average videogamer to change significantly. The Wii's motion-sensitive controller has gotten a lot of credit for being technologically innovative, but its real genius is that it opens up gaming for people who wouldn't normally play videogames.
You don't have to read a 30-page manual and memorize 17 button combinations to play "Wii Sports." If you know how to swing a tennis racket or throw a baseball, you're good to go.
Low-time-commitment games are also going to be huge. While it is generally true that middle-aged women won't fire up an Xbox 360 for a hair-raising session of "Bio Shock," older women definitely play puzzle games like "Solitaire" or "Bejeweled."
Shrewd entrepreneurs are already taking this to a new level, offering so-called "casual games" specifically targeted at an older, female audience. Winster.com, for instance, is focused on creating cooperative, social games that particularly appeal to this demographic.
The smartest game makers are also "thinking outside the screen." In 10 years, mashing buttons to control on-screen avatars will no longer be enough. Gamers will insist on being able to "feel" a game, or to "move" realistically within it. We already have force-feedback steering wheels, guitar-shaped controllers and pressure-sensitive dance pads. In the future, expect much more.
Videogame graphics will continue to grow richer and more detailed. But don't expect that photo realism alone will be enough to sell a game. Sony's face-flop with the PS3 proves gamers aren't obsessed with hyper-realistic graphics to the extent that game designers are.
Most gamers don't require characters that look exactly like actors in a movie, and don't care how realistically blood splatters; they want to play great games. Chess isn't any more or less fun in high definition; it's the game that counts.
PC games are going to grow in importance, especially for older, more educated gamers. After being widely dismissed as dead (or irrelevant at best) only five years ago, PC role-playing games have made a tremendous comeback.
Going forward, expect multiplayer online games to merge with each other and with social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. The result will be a virtual meta-universe where your dragon-slaying, 67th-level Paladin from "World of Warcraft" will be able to seamlessly cross an electronic bridge and end up in a suburban kitchen worrying about the dirty dishes in "The Sims Online."
And as the young people who grew up playing these games embark on their careers, they will begin to establish business and social connections through the same networks. Don't be surprised if, within a decade, you find yourself jetting off to Singapore to meet with members of the "Dark Brotherhood" and close a business deal.
Another bold prediction: Within 10 years, guilds formed on "War of Warcraft" or other online games will become offline political forces. Especially in Asia, look for these groups to start agitating for social change.
This is a role traditionally reserved for university students, but in many ways, online groups are better suited to challenge the status quo. These tight-knit, hierarchical groups are dispersed geographically, and they're used to playing specific roles--for example, casting healing spells or printing 1,000 posters.
In short, the instigators of the next Tiananmen Square could very well not be students from Peking University, but members of the "Chinese Nathrezim Finger Guild."
Saturday, February 9, 2008
OpenOffice.org offers cash prizes to boost innovation
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND: The OpenOffice.org Community, home of the free software alternative to Microsoft Office has announced details of a major new initiative.
The OpenOffice.org Community Innovation Program is a contest open to all Community members, designed to foster community development and innovation. There are six broad categories for entries: Technical, Community, Tools, OpenDocument Format (ODF), Documentation and Special.
Community Manager Louis Suarez-Potts described the scheme to potential entrants: "What are we looking for? In general terms, we are looking for superlative work that is useful to the Community; work that is challenging, that is non-trivial, and that furthers the Community as much as the software. You can enter alone or in a team; and if you are eligible, you could win a lot of money."
It is expected that the contest will generate keen interest among current Community members, and bring a surge of new members to the Community. The Community welcomes software engineers, testers, translators, authors, support people, artists, marketing people.
The contest has been backed by $175,000 of prize money from Sun Microsystems - part of a $1m investment in open-source community development announced last December.
©CIOL Bureau
Reuters selects Sun Java RTS software
The Sun Java Real-Time System (Java RTS) is a software product that provides a high-level development platform for creating applications which require absolute execution predictability.
Compliant with The Real-Time Specification for Java it uses the power and scalability of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) and the flexibility of the Java platform to provide the environment necessary for the growing demand of predictable computing applications in industries such as financial services, aerospace, industrial automation and scientific research.
“Reuters Group has a wide range of systems that use Java technology as part of the solution to deliver core services to our customers. We wanted a Java technology-based solution that could address our demanding, and growing, requirements for predictability and low-latency, as well as enable us to leverage our existing code base and Java technology expertise. We look forward to working with Sun as we deploy the Sun Java Real-Time System as part of our market-facing projects,” said Andrew Cunningham, global head of transactions platform group, sales & trading division at Reuters. “
“We're very pleased to have Reuters as an early adopter of the Sun Java Real-Time System,” said Jeet Kaul, vice president, Client Software Group at Sun, “Reuters has long been recognized as a market leader in the financial markets information and technology space, and it's no surprise that they recognize the power and value that the Sun Java Real-Time System can bring to their business. We look forward to a strong and ongoing relationship with Reuters around Java technology-based predictable infrastructure.”
