This past week saw videogame developers, retailers, publishers, and innovators congregate to showcase ideas and technology at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). This yearly event is often more informative and in a way more important for the industry than the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). While E3 gets all the coverage and the big advertising it is really just a venue to showcase commercial products – not to innovate in any way. GDC on the other hand is often the site of non-commercial announcements, showing off new physics engines, new uses of motion control and tactile user input. Tech demos are one of the most common means of developers to showcase their designs – these are basic demos with extremely preliminary graphics and music. Tech demos allow developers to showcase the cutting edge technology that they are developing, without being badgered by people complaining that the trailer was pre-rendered or the game doesn’t run at 60 frames per second. I think GDC should get the same amount of support as E3 does, as it is often the spot where you learn much about your most awaited games. There is only so much you can learn from a trailer, especially live action or pre-rendered trailers, but when the developers sits down with the media and hands them a controller – now that is a good source of information.
So, off of my GDC rant and on to some actual news. As GDC is more focused on the technical showcase of products that is what most of the news is about. On the PSP/NGP front, Sony has apparently decided to abandon the internal memory used in the PSP Go, in favour of external memory. Games will be released on either 2 or 4 GB memory cards, with 5-10% of the space open for saved games and patches. It is great to see that Sony is finally abandoning the UMD format entirely. For being a Universal Media format it wasn’t really that universal; the PSP was the only product to ever use it. Whenever a company manufactures their own media format they need to consider the costs of manufacturing that product over the entire life cycle of the product. Early consoles used proprietary formats. Obviously, the cartridges from a lot of early consoles come to mind, but Microsoft and Sony abandoned that way of thinking with their consoles by adopting CDs, then DVDs, and now Blu-rays. Nintendo, of course, stuck with a somewhat proprietary format for the Gamecube by using mini DVDs, but have now jumped on the band wagon on replicating more common formats. Using a widely manufactured format for distributing your games can drastically cut down on the manufacturing costs of the game – you only need to imprint the data on the disc, not manufacture the disc itself. Another benefit to the NGP data storage plan will be the ability to expand the memory with larger memory cards. There was an unofficial attachment released for the PSP which mounted a miniature external hard drive (100GB) to the back of the PSP with a cord running to the standard MS slot – vastly increasing the storage space for movies, music, and pictures. Sony will also be implementing a single certification process for all games on the NGP, allowing publishers to release the game both on a physical memory card and digitally without having to go through separate certification for both versions.
Over to Nintendo, where there wasn’t much announced at GDC. In Japan, however, Nintendo has been enjoying the launch of the 3DS portable, which sold out its initial production run. Interestingly, some companies in the West have encountered issues with the 3D system. The 3D effect works by displaying images based on the natural difference in viewing angle of your eyes, so in order to use the device you need to have the screen the perfect distance from your eyes – or else you just see a jumble of mush. Using the slider bar on the system allows you to change the optimum viewing depth, fine-tuning the system until the image meshes and the 3D effect becomes visible. Of course, losing that optimum depth means you lose the effect and need to retune the system again. Another issue has been headaches experienced by some people after prolonged usage, with Nintendo even stating a safe limit per day. Some reviewers are saying that while the 3D effect is great, it doesn’t make the 3DS an industry changing system, if you already have a DS then the upgrade isn’t really that necessary.
On to Microsoft, which also didn’t have any huge reveals at GDC, but is showing how much they are embracing the homebrew community. The Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) will be released as a free download for non-commercial use by academics and enthusiast communities (Microsoft’s way of saying hackers), with a commercial version to follow later. Linux-based drivers already exist, based on early hacks of the system, but this Windows version will be fully integrated with a starter kit style approach to get people working with the motion tracking camera. Some amazing creations have already been created for the Kinect, showing the benefits of allowing community modification of established games. Valve is an excellent example of a company that has embraced the homebrew community, releasing their game code online for user modification. This has led to alternate maps and skins being created, all the way up to new games. Both Team Fortress and Portal were created by hackers, and the concepts were subsequently purchased by Valve and turned into full commercial games, while their designers were hired as full employees. Who could be better at designing a new gaming experience than the gamers themselves?
Sony has just announced recently that an SDK will be released for the Playstation Move system as well, allowing similar development to what Microsoft’s peripheral has seen. I’m interested to see how this will be used, as the Move is an interesting system, but not exactly ground breaking. Most of the hacks that have been created for the Kinect so far have utilized either its gesture recognition capabilities, its full body motion tracking, and its 3D depth perception. The Move on the other hand has so far been utilized mainly as a more accurate Wii controller, with the Eye camera adding spatial tracking. The move doesn’t have the ability to do either gesture or full body motion tracking, or the 3D depth tracking of the Kinect. To be honest, all I foresee for this SDK is more game development like what we have already seen, not the wide uses in technology, education, and innovation that the Kinect has been used for.
That is it for this issue, keep on the lookout for new announcements for the NGP and the North American launch of the 3DS. Once those SDKs are released we should also see some innovative new uses for Microsoft and Sony’s newest peripherals. Until then, Keep On Gaming.
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