Happy Games Year

Gaming is seeing new technologies for both the PC and Console. And there is more to come

When

Ralph Baer thought of building a game into a television set (this was way back

in 1949), he had no idea what a hornet’s nest he was about to stir up. Though

the idea was rejected, it’s the earliest recorded reference to the "crazy

little thing" now known as a video game. Baer couldn’t fulfill his dream

till 1967 when he developed two games. By then, however, others had taken the

initiative away and it was Willy Higginbotham of Brookhaven National

Laboratories, New York, who is credited with developing the first video game–a

table tennis clone played on an oscilloscope.

That was 1958 and 42 years down the line this "crazy

little thing" has grown into a multi-million dollar global industry. Games

are as popular in Timbuktu as they are in Bangkok or Moscow or LA. Anyone who’s

ever used a computer has played games (at least Solitaire, if nothing else).

Broadly speaking, the gaming market is now divided into two sections–games for

PCs and for one of the many consoles available.

Gaming on PCs

This

year has seen a number of interesting technologies. nVIDIA, which introduced its

GPU (graphics processing unit) chipset–the GeForce 256–for display cards

last year, has come out with much better chipsets this year, the latest being

the GeForce 2 Ultra that even puts the first GeForce to shame. This has given a

new dimension to gaming on PCs. Graphics cards based on GPUs allow faster gaming

even at very high resolutions, and graphics quality doesn’t suffer either.

On the software front, Microsoft released DirectX 8 in

November this year. The latest version of these multimedia APIs (Application

Programming Interface) for gaming is supposed to provide improved graphical

performance. It’s also supposed to improve multiplayer gaming and provide for

better audio effects. The year also saw the release of sequels to popular games,

which topped the sales charts for many weeks running. Some of these were Diablo

II, Age of Empires II, Quake III Arena, etc. Perhaps the most improved (in

popularity and otherwise) was Unreal Tournament, which was a darling of the

masses and the media around the world.

India also climbed the gaming bandwagon with the release of

Yoddha, the first Indian 3D game by Indiagames.com. Though it leaves a lot to be

desired if you compare it with counterparts like Quake or Doom, it’s a good

first step, nevertheless. Hopefully, the future will see better versions of the

game emerge.

Gaming consoles

Moving to gaming consoles, the hottest selling piece was the

PlayStation2 from Sony. Even though it was released in September last year,

sales zoomed only this year. In Japan, where the product was released initially,

every time fresh PlayStation2 stocks were announced, hordes of fans lined up

outside the stores from three in the morning to well past midnight. The same

enthusiasm was visible in the US too. More and more PC games are being released

for PlayStation2, and many games are being produced exclusively for it.

Unfortunately, news has it that despite the grand success of the console, Sony

ended up making losses.

Cashing

in on its wave, Sony also released the PS one, a more portable version of the

PlayStation gaming console. The device, designed to be used at home or in a car,

is about one-third the size of PlayStation2 and must be plugged into either a

wall socket or a car’s cigarette lighter. Sony also has plans for GSCube, a

new real-time development system, based on an enhanced version of the

architecture found in PlayStation2. The GSCube will offer real-time graphics

power and capabilities. This system will provide content creators in film, TV

broadcast, and interactive entertainment access to a new means for digital

creation and distribution.

The success of Sony’s PlayStation2 hurt the market for the

other two major players–Sega’s Dreamcast and Nintendo’s Gameboy. Sega

recovered its market share a little by slashing Dreamcast’s prices. Nintendo

announced the Gameboy Advance and Gamecube in an ambitious attempt to fight

back. But, the strongest challenge for PlayStation2 promises to come from who

else but Microsoft and its XBox.

If XBox is what it promises to be (see Console Comparison

Chart), it’ll beat all competition hollow unless, of course, the competition

can come up with something better. nVIDIA has created two chips for the console–a

graphics processor and a second chip called the MCPX (which loosely stands for

XBox Multimedia Communications Processor). The MCPX, which will consist of two

controllers in a single, six-million-transistor, 0.15-micron chip, will handle

audio, USB, broadband, storage I/O, and other important functions. Besides the

MCPX, the XBox will contain two other major processors–a PIII CPU, and the

nVIDIA GPU.

Inside the MCPX is a pair of DSPs (digital signal processors)

that will control just about every facet of input/output used by the XBox. They’ll

handle communication interfaces (including Ethernet, cable modem,

home-phone-line networking, and 56K modem), control data transfer to and from

the XBox’s 5x DVD-ROM drive and 8 GB hard drive, and play host to the USB bus.

Furthermore, the MCPX will output DirectX-compatible 3D audio complete with

Dolby Digital encoding. Bandwidth to and from the MCPX will be extremely high at

800MB/sec. With all the potential that XBox displays, Microsoft is not taking

any chances–it expects to spend $500 million to market and sell the video game

console.

With such an eventful year behind us, I think the year ahead

promises to be a very exciting one. Have you got your GeForce2 Ultra yet?

Kunal Dua