The video game industry met at the Electronic Entertainment Exposition (€3) in Los Angeles last week for the first round of what promises to be one of the biggest technological punch-ups in entertainment history.
Sony, Sega and Nintendo will not only take on each other, but the personal computer, television and telecommunications industries with their next generation of super-consoles.
Back in Dublin, an Irish company, Telekinesys is playing its part in the battle by building a software program that will take Sony games a step closer to reality. Meanwhile, Sega has a group of 20 developers working in top secret in Dublin to produce the next generation of online Dreamcast games.
While everybody is agreed that the Internet device is the wave of the future, nobody really knows what that device will look like. The telecommunications industry is betting on the Webphone, the PC industry on the low cost personal computer and the television industry on the Web-TV.
Bah, say games manufacturers, next years' super-consoles will include a 128-bit processor (Pentium is only 32-bit), modems for online gaming and Web-browsing, and if you're interested in TV perhaps we'll throw in a digital TV decoder and Digital Video Disk movie player. All that and blazingly fast 3D graphics for between $200-$400 (€146-€292).
Computer and video games have come a long way from the first generation of electronic eating mites in Pac Man. The industry grew 25 per cent last year to $5.5 billion in 1998. Nearly 200 million games were sold in the US and not just to teenage geeks. More than half were adults and two thirds were women, according to Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA).
"In the past video games were just for little boys but with the convergence of the movie and games industry you now get little boys of all ages and even little girls of all ages," said Mr David Card, senior analyst with Jupiter Communications in New York.
The lines between the games, movie, music, and television are beginning toblur as producers roll-out epics that span all industries.
Take Star Wars, for example, LucasArts the games division of LucasFilm has invested an estimated $20 million in four games that will capitalise on the Phantom Menace phenomena. David Bowie and wife Iman will star in Eidos's new console game Omikron: The Nomad Sole. And the next game of Maxis, producer of the famous Sims series, is a soap opera. To speed up this convergence the games industry is going to have to undergo some serious changes. Until now, developers to get the very best graphics and to create the most realistic games, have needed to write code directly onto the microprocessor. This would be like asking a tailor to weave the material before cutting the suit.
As a result, cost of games development has ballooned to nearly $3 million a game. So resources that should be plowed into creativity are being sucked into technical development.
Both Sony and Sega are attacking this problem. Sega's Dreamcast, which will debut in the US in September 9th for $199, runs on Microsoft's Windows CE platform. Thus enabling games developers to use popular Microsoft software tools, which will in turn reduce costs. The money saved can be plowed into creativity.
For its part Sony, whose Playstation II is due for release next year for $400, will use what it calls "middleware" or specially designed software tools that will enable games developer get on with creative tasks and leave the rocket science to the propeller heads.
In a tiny office in Dublin's Dame Street, Telekinesys has its propeller heads working on a problem for Sony. How do you make a piece of software such as a ball behave like it is ball in the real world? Mr Hugh Reynolds, a former Trinity College lecturer has been working on the problem for six years but just eight months ago set up the company to sell his idea.
"We have been writing software that will apply the laws of Newtonian physics to software," he said. "This software can be used as a development tool to provide greater reality to the next generation of games." For example, if Super Mario decides to bounce a ball the developer has to tell the computer how many times the ball will bounce before coming to a standstill. With Telekinesys' software, the developer will just need to tell the ball to bounce and the physics will be worked out by the software program.
Back in Los Angeles, more than 1,900 games were released last week and Nintendo announced that it is going to take on Sony and Sega with a new console based on IBM's PowerPC chip. Code-named Dolphin the game will be released next Christmas and promises all the whiz-bang technology offered by Sony and Sega.
Analysts are predicting that the game is likely to pose a significant problem for Sega which only holds about 5 per cent of the market compared to Sony's 56 per cent and Nintendo's 40 per cent.
Still, there may be room for three players, especially if they manage to give the PC, TV and telecommunications industries a run for their money.
"If the games manufactures get Internet connectivity and DVD movie players into their next generation of players they will be very compelling products," said Mr Card. "Especially because they can afford to subsidise the cost of the hardware because they can make it back on the games."
