Intel’s® Atom™ processor CE4100, Gametree.tv and Online gaming, goodbye to consoles?

Intel recently unveiled the Intel® Atom™ processor CE4100, the newest System-on-Chip (SoC) in a family of media processors designed to bring Internet content and services to digital TVs, DVD players and advanced set-top boxes. Also, Intel has invested $500K in TransGaming a Canada based company which is launching an on demand gaming service called Gametree.tv. If successful could this eliminate the need to buy separate consoles like a PS3 or Wii?

I have in the past paid for subscription services like Netflix and Blockbuster for movie rentals. This makes sense if you are an avid movie watcher and get the convenience of renting by mail, locally or watching streamed. The thought has often crossed my mind on why something like this is not available for games. The current model where you buy a console and then are limited to games for that console only seems too heavy and “unstreamlined”. And if you have a family with teenagers you can relate to having 3 current game consoles (I have a PS3, PS2, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Gamecube, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS and all previous versions of Nintendo consoles) you have to wonder why we can’t have a service that combines these so we don’t have so much hardware to store (except maybe handhelds where the usage model is different).

Also take into account that you buy a game for $40-$50 vs a subscription service that offers a multitude of games seems like a win win for the consumer. Now how about the game companies and publishers?

Granted that each publisher and console company wants their share but maybe by combining their games in a subscription pool there can be cost benefits by getting games to audiences that may have never played their game due to the cost of buying yet another new game. This should be an attractive option to smaller game publishers to get their games to a large audience without having them buy a lesser known game.

We are moving towards an era of consumer electronics that move away from the linear model to a multi streamed internet model with a wide variety of choices like internet, 3d gaming, social media to complement the TV. An online gaming subscription service seems to be where we will be in the future.

Your thoughts?

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Visualize this! Building the future Virtual Worlds

Hello and welcome to another episode of Visualize this! where we talk about topics relating to Visual Computing. I am Arti Gupta, community manager for Games Development on the Intel Software Network.

Our guest today is Robert Adams, a research engineer at Intel. Robert will talk to us about the research happening at Intel in the area of Virtual worlds.

Download link to a high quality MP4 video file of the show (about 150MB)

Community News :

– The Intel Atom Developer Program was announced at IDF last week. Where developers can signup and start developing apps �V check it out

–Videos from the Intel developer forum held last week in San Francisco are now becoming available. One of interest to game developers is Paul Lindberg (Smoke optimization with Intel tools) which I mentioned in my talk with Paul in the last show. You can watch the video at the url on the screen, I will also include this in my show notes
Fanning the flames to really make it burn

�VIntel has invested $500,000 in TransGaming, a Canada-based company focused on bringing PC games to other platforms like Mac, Linux, and — eventually — television sets as an "on-demand" service. TransGaming is developing GameTree.tv, which will allow players to instantly load up a wide variety of games to play using their television sets but instead of using cloud computing it will do game rendering client-side, using Intel&aposs own "system on a chip" architecture. Intel separately announced today that those compact, graphics-oriented chips would be integrated into forthcoming HDTV sets.

Read the story here

Show Questions :

–tell our listeners about your role, what do you do?

Conference as Catalyst: CGI Promotes Connections, Compels Action

I was at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting last week and as I reflected on my time there, two experiences stand out. One is the power of the event itself. CGI brings together people from corporate life, from government, from non-profit organizations, from Hollywood. These are people with a common interest in making change happen. They’re not at CGI to talk in theoretical terms about pressing global issues; they’re there to get things done. They bring their respective resources to the table — whether that’s know-how or contacts or proven programs — and figure out how they can work together to improve lives.

I think CGI members realize that no single company, country or organization can achieve significant change by itself. Making a big impact requires a multi-stakeholder commitment. It’s the kind of commitment our Emerging Markets Platform Group (EMPG) made at CGI this year to help Kenya advance its educational system, working with USAID, Microsoft, Cisco and Kenya’s government. This project is typical of CGI’s action-oriented focus. We’re pooling our resources to make change happen now, and we’re thinking about how we can provide better opportunities for the next generation in the changing 21st-century world.

Seeing organizations and people come together like this is inspiring. And the whole spirit of the conference is just infectious, because it engages you not only professionally but also personally. It makes you really think about what you can contribute to make the world a better place.

The second thing I found personally meaningful at CGI was the focus on girls and women. In one panel discussion I attended, the speaker talked about how women do two-thirds of the world’s work, yet they make just 10 percent of the world’s income, and they own only 11 percent of the world’s property. Another CGI event, which focused on maternal health, noted that every minute, a woman dies in childbirth. When I’m told these facts, it reminds me of the disparity and the challenges that exist today. But it also tells me that, as a community coming together, we need to consider the empowerment of women as we invest in making the world a better place.

Those investments could include making micro-loans to women business owners, closing the education gap, teaching women sustainable agricultural development, or just providing them with clean water. We can make all sorts of simple changes that will have a positive impact on women, and in turn, on their families and their communities.

After CGI ended, I headed to Wash., D.C., where we’ve been meeting with government officials this week. Our talks centered on the results we’ve seen from Intel’s interactions with governments around the world, and sharing what we’ve learned around job creation, educational impact and economic development. I’m on my way to the Middle East now, where I’ll spend time with family along with doing some Intel work in the areas of healthcare and education. Watch this space for follow-up observations on EMPG projects in Lebanon and Egypt in the days ahead.

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