Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Another week, another NPD chart detailing the best selling PC games in the USA for the week ending January 5:

1. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Activision

2. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard

3. The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts

4. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard

5. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade - Blizzard

6. The Sims 2 Teen Style Stuff - Electronic Arts

7. The Sims 2 Bon Voyage - Electronic Arts

8. Crysis - Crytek/EA

9. Half Life 2: Episode 2 The Orange Box - Valve/EA

10. The Sims 2 Seasons - Electronic Arts

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Electronic Arts has announced plans for a new business model which provides free online games.

‘Play 4 Free’ will launch in the coming months with Battlefield Heroes, a cartoon-style online shooter which will be free to download and play.

The game is based on EA’s existing Battlefield franchise, and will generate revenue through advertising and micro-transactions.

Gamers will still have to pay small amounts for new outfits, weapons and other custom features.

“Online gaming garners a massive audience,” said Gerhard Florin, executive vice president of publishing for the Americas and Europe at EA.

“With Battlefield Heroes, EA brings its first major franchise to North America and Europe with a new distribution model and pricing structure adapted to the evolving way that people play.”

Unlike previous Battlefield games which have focused on high levels of realism, Battlefield Heroes has been designed with cartoon-style graphics and gameplay that caters to players of all skill levels.

“We put a different twist on this Battlefield game with cartoon-style graphics and gameplay,” said Ben Cousins, senior producer at EA DICE which is developing the game.

“There is something here for all types of players, be it core Battlefield fans or casual gamers.

“With the new online model, we will continually add new content to keep the game fresh and keep players engaged, while integrating player feedback in real time. As a game developer, it is such a cool new way to make games.”

Battlefield Heroes is due for the PC as a free download this summer.
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Pangfua Her, right, a senior sales planner with the Reactrix Systems Inc., demonstrates on the Reactrix WAVEscape on Samsung’s large-format LCD display at the Consumer Electronics Show(CES) in Las Vegas, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2008. By following consumers’ every gesture, movement and motion, the display captures consumers’ attentions even in the most heavily trafficked areas by reacting to their movements and changing graphics as they come closer.
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Nintendo Corp.’s Wii game console is a breakout hit in large part because users control the play by waving around a motion-sensing wireless controller.

Many new gadgets are taking the idea of such an intuitive interface several steps further. Soon, you may be able to control computers, television sets, even cell phones with hand gestures alone.

In one demonstration by 3DV Systems at the International Consumer Electronics Show here this week, users stood in front of a large screen and controlled a Windows computer with hand gestures: thumb left to go left, index finger right to go right, victory sign for Enter.

JVC, also known as Victor Company of Japan Ltd., demonstrated a prototype TV with controls based on the same idea: gestures and sounds like snaps and claps turn the set on or off, control volume or change the channel.

The prospect of never again having to search the sofa for a remote is sure to be welcome in many homes, but the traditional fight over the remote could become worse: imagine two kids engaged in a sign-language duel to control the set, with the picture and sound changing frantically to keep up.

In another demo, when a 3DV employee did boxing motions an avatar on the screen in front of him mimicked the movement of his entire upper body — quite a step up from the boxing game of the Wii, which only senses the movement of the controllers.

A particularly popular Wii game is bowling, where the user swings the remote as if it were a ball. Two phones that hit the Japanese market in May include bowling games that work the same way, but without the Wii: Swing the whole cell phone and you launch the ball down the lane shown on the screen.

The motion-sensing technology in those phones comes from GestureTek, a Sunnyvale, Calif., company. While the Wii’s remote uses a combination of tiny mechanical springs and a camera to sense motion, GestureTek uses only cameras — quite conveniently, since most cell phones and quite a few laptops already come with cameras.

GestureTek’s technology is already found on some Verizon Wireless cell phones, which contain a game were the user can roll a ball through a maze by tilting the phone. Another application is the EyeToy for Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 2, which lets you play simple games by moving in front of the camera.

The technology isn’t just for fun: it can be healthy too. Francis MacDougall, GestureTek’s chief technology officer, said the company has run studies of stroke patients playing a snowboarding game by moving in front of a camera and found it improved their balance. Wiis also have been used for physical therapy.

To take these relatively simple applications further, GestureTek and 3DV are looking at adding a third dimension: depth. A regular camera produces a two-dimensional picture. Two cameras together can sense how far away an object is, just like two eyes enable humans to perceive depth.

MacDougall demonstrated a prototype of the Airpoint, a foot-long bar with an upward-facing camera at either end. When MacDougall held his finger above it, it sensed the finger’s angle and position, letting him control a cursor on the computer screen by pointing.

Reactrix Inc. makes commercial displays that you may have seen in movie-theater lobbies: an image projected on the floor that reacts to people walking on it. For instance, one of its Sprint ads let passers-by kick a football.

At the show, Reactrix demonstrated a depth-sensing system consisting of a display with a sensor and camera array above it. The system can sense and react to people up to 15 feet away waving at or pointing to objects on the screen. It will be on the market for commercial clients this summer.

3DV has another and quite exotic way of sensing depth, that works with a single camera. The lens is surrounded by a ring of diodes emitting pulses of invisible infrared light, up to 60 per second. The light bounces off whoever is standing in front of the camera, and the camera measures when it comes back. Light reflected by closer objects returns faster.

3DV plans to make its camera available to consumers by the end of the year, for less than $200, but it’s lacking a big-name manufacturer to build it into screens or bundle it with game consoles.

Oh yes…playing a game will be more fun and more healthy
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