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Nokia's Linux Based Xbox Competitor
Gerhard F writes: "FinancialTimes reports 'Nokia to use Linux system.' 'MediaTerminal will compete against Microsoft's Xbox video game
console and UltimateTV digital TV recorder.'
'We have made the hardware an open design so anyone else can
make a clone or compatible product,' said Mr Nelger. "We would
rather have a small part of a large market than a large part of
a small market if we had used proprietary technologies.'" I'll believe it when the vapor dissipates, but here's hopin'.
I work as a developer on the project and therefore have pretty good knowledge about it. The hardware is mostly standard PC hardware with some custom bits for the digital tv stuff. If you want to know more about the software in the box, take a look at the fresh developer community site at: http://www.ostdev.net
At some point, a 3D scene has to be converted to 2D to display on your monitor. One part of the graphics pipeline that enables this is a Perspective Projection. Basically, a projection is a transformation that moves from a k-dimensional space to a k-1 dimensional space. What can get fucked up when this happens is the texture mapping on objects in the scene. When you do the (interpolated) texture mapping in image space rather than scene/world space, it turns out to look a lot better. I'm not sure what they really mean by "perspective corrected" though.
Mip-Mapping is a different type of texture mapping. If you want more info on this, go to some graphics dev sites that talk about it. It's pretty standard stuff
A method for determining the colors on a polygon by linearly interpolating (weighting) certain pre-specified colors (such as those at the vertices of the polygon). Again, standard stuff
Method for handling transparency by blending together layers of generated images together with specified opacity (alpha) values. More standard stuff
Well, fog. Not sure what they mean by it being able to handle fogging though.
The standard method used by graphics accelerators to draw stuff in the scene. Basically, when you draw stuff, you only want to draw the stuff closest to the camera, because the other stuff behind the closest stuff is blocked.
3D graphics libraries such as OpenGL and Direct3D, but ones for Linux instead of Windows.
I don't see anything very special about the above features... It's pretty standard stuff that you'd want to see in a GeForce 2 or so nowadays. If it's not all hardware-implemented, it's not impressive at all.
I don't see anything really awesome like Vertex and Pixel Shaders, along with the other new features that are implemented by the GeForce 3 / XGPU in hardware...
I'm sure I made a mistake above.. Maybe someone else can correct me.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Is Tivo sold at a loss? Sure, this is true of consoles, but this seems more like an appliance of sorts, no?
Nokia Launches Independent Website to Support Open Source Developers. From the article: "Nokia (NYSE:NOK) today announced the launch of a new website, ostdev.net, dedicated to supporting developers in the open source community as well as the promotion of collaborative development of the OST."
You do not have to wait for 3G. GPRS will deliver pretty good always-on general-purpose Internet access for GSM and IS136 (used by AT&T in the U.S.). This will drive replacement of existing handsets, for, probably, at least two subsequent product generations. Mix in EDGE, which doubles GSM and IS136 capacity, and you can wait quite a while before needing 3G. And this type of mobile access has the potential to support mobile gaming quite well, especially if they can figure out how to do bandwidth prioritization such that low-value apps can be priced flat-rate.
I wrote parts of this stuff
... at least, not to compete with X-Box/PS2/Gamecube/whatever. That market's way too crowded already and Nokia aren't nearly stupid enough to go for it. Maybe far off in the future, if this thing gets enough dev work on it, but certainly not now.
The games they're thinking of are the sorts of things you see on websites or interactive TV - silly but fun Shockwave games, Minesweeper, that kind of thing. It's icing on the cake rather than a major feature drive.
-- Yoz
Is here: www.ostdev.net
It's really nice. TONS of docs about the way the system works. An SDK to download. Some example code. Still some holes (no tutorial up yet) but I'm sure they'll get filled if this thing takes off. The only major omission is the hardware spec.
-- Yoz
Firstly, Indrema was a perfect example of shotgun marketing, absolutely terrible. It's an MP3 player! And a games console! And a chocolate! And a surprise! And a toy! There was no way that thing was going to fly, however good.
Nokia actually know how to build and market consumer products. They have ins with all the major retailers, especially in Europe. Half of the mobile phones over here are Nokias.
Secondly, don't confuse this thing with a games console. Game apps are going to be much more like Shockwave games than Quake 3 - they're aiming at little bits of fun in between TV shows rather than PS2 competition.
-- Yoz
Captain Tacky forgot to mention that Nokia is doing this in partnership with CollabNet, a very cool company based on community development, which also used to operate sourcexchange.
The
press release from Nokia themselves. I really hopes they come out with something good. Think about it if they let anyone play. This might make this the "next big thing" since anyone can use it and make games for it this will allow more games and with more games more people will be likely to buy.
Remember that there are different divisions in Nokia. Nokia Mobile Phones isn't all that open, but even they're considering the implications of open source.
The MediaTerminal is, I think, produced by some emerging division currently under Nokia Ventures Organization. This means that if it doesn't sell, they'll just drop the issue and count that venture as one of the failures (and they can drop a project at 100s of MEURs deciding it was RnD that went nowhere). However, the new ventures are more open towards open source community.
Regarding Linux and Nokia.. In one open source seminar someone (forgetting names) from Nokia talked about embedded software and open source. They had actually had Linux running on (forgetting details, I think it was ADSL modem) but in that case it wasn't stable enough and they dropped it in favour of some other OS (don't remember which one).
Oh yes, if I remember correctly, MediaScreen was running Linux on some PPC chip. Had quite a lot of flash and RAM, big screen, embedded GSM modem and DVB-T receiver, was video conferensing ready, and so on. I wonder how much that'd had cost should it have made it to retail.. Just a showpiece, though. Of course I don't know if they considered it as a product or a prototype.
Remember back when the PS1 came out? I for one was a bit surprised to see Sony release a console, but in 20/20 hindsight it made a lot of sense. They had the experience in producing consumer electronics, and - perhaps more important - marketing it, and getting it out in the stores. A well established brand name certaintly didn't hurt either. Honestly: Did any of you expect Sony to become a major player in the console market, eventually pushing Sega out?
Now consider Nokia. They have a lot of experience designing, producing, marketing and selling consumer electronics in this price range. In fact, they are just about the only major mobile phone manufacturer that has managed to make a profit in the last year, and - let's be honest - it's not because their phones are technologically superior to the phones from - say - Erichson.
The only catch is that the mobile phone market - at least GSM phones - is just about saturated. In Scandinavia, where we have consistently been a few years ahead of the rest of the world in the mobile phone market, almost everyone, including 12 year old school kids, now have a GSM phone.
So far it has seemed like Nokia would gamble on 3G making people switch phones and convergence in PDAs and phones as their future market, but actually a console would make a lot of sense as an alternative revenue stream.
People buy phones for much the same reasons that they buy consoles. Think about it. It's not all about capabillities - it's about design and marketing.
"We would rather have a small part of a large market than a large part of a small market if we had used proprietary technologies."
Honestly.. that must the the most transparent attempt at sucking [in|up to] the open source crowd that I've ever seen.
You could read that as "We're L337! Help the underdog!"
It's not open source that will sell Nokia's game box, it's games. Without a nice library of games in the stores when the console is released, that box will amount to an open source graphics engine.
Trolling is a art,
And your point would be ... ? I don't think you can say that the PC is not a successful game platform, can you?
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Nokia is a pretty darned big company doing what it does, but in the US what it doesn't do is a whole lot with computers. It has decent name recognition in cell phones, but its other computer-related offering, monitors, doesn't garner much attention.
Obviously Microsoft is going to spend a bundle on promoting the Xbox. I doubt that even if Nokia came up with a higher performing system they could make any kind of a dent in Microsoft's sales. After all, if performance made a difference, then we'd all be watching Betamax instead of VHS and listening to DAT instead of cassettes.
Marketing is king...name recognition drives marketing and Microsoft has that in spades.
Bummer.
-h-
Since Slashdot saw fit to post the story they did rather than my submission :-) I'll put the link here:
From The Register: Nokia calls on Linux coders for set-top box apps
Nokia has reiterated that it is turning to the Linux community to ensure that its Media Terminal set-top box, due to be launched later this year, has plenty of applications from the word go.
In particular, it wants games developers to get coding for MT, based around what Nokia is now calling its Open Source Terminal platform.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Yes, of course to some extent they'll get good press because they use Linux (and certainly they make a point of mentioning it because of this). But ultimately it seems like they just want to do something that will get them in the market fast and you'd be hard pressed to find a better choice in that regard.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The direction is increasingly the media and content business.. in the future, Nokia, Microsoft and Sony will compete for the same customers even more than today. The winner is not determined -- but keep this in mind: Nokia is one of the very few companies that has a realistic chance of competing successfully with Microsoft - and vice versa.
So it sounds like it's in the late stages of development at least...
--
Poliglut
Pretty funny acctually.. A game console called cheese. :)
-henrik
The problem here is almost so obvious that it is being overlooked by most people: this can't work because of the pricing mechanics of the game industry.
In order to produce a product at a competitive price you have to LOSE money on the sale of the hardware to make it up again on either the license fees from software sold or from the SDK. It has been estimated that it will cost Microsoft about $425 for each XBox but they have to sell them at $300 or less for it to sell against the PS2.
Now if Nokia has an open design then no one will clone it because they would have to lose money from the sale of their hardware with no way to get the money back from any sort of licensing, and by using a GPL operating system, Nokia has no practical way of recovering their loss on the sale of the systems. The best they could do is have a binary-only kernel module which they charge software developers to use, which breaks the whole idea of using a GPL system in the first place.
So, by producing an open hardware console with an open hardware system, Nokia (by my reckoning at least - feel free to correct me) are going to be heading down the long road to a failed project. There is simply no way for them to make money, even if they capture the entire market they are only guaranteed to lose money!!
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
While I think this is great coming from such a large name such as Nokia, I have consernes about this project going the way of Indreama or that this is an empty promise since it is projecting a very short time line.
Just for the sake that it's true, going open source for the OS and having open architecture is a very nice touch that is sure to attract attention and hackers everywhere. Marketshare will have to depend on who they attract to write games for this system (part of the Indreama's problem).
All in all this sounds great but I will wait to see this thing in cold hard plastic and in a store near me before I start reaching for my wallet.
Even still, I find this to be an odd move for Nokia to try and break into this market suddenly.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
I think is misjudgment to see this just as an game console. Nokia is doing something else here. Games are just one feature to of this concept.
If I understood Nokia's press release correctly, idea is to do open platform for home inforteinment (spelling intentional) box. This includes games but applications are much wider. This is like having an option to write programs to your TV, Stereo, Digi-TV setup-box etc. You name it! All these things are combined under same platform (OST).
Second, this year is a very bad year for releasing a console system from a company new to the console market. Sony Playstation 2 is huge, Microsoft Xbox looks very strong, even Nintendo has a strong following (though Gamecube looks rather weak). And Nokia plans to release a game system this year against that competition? Good luck.
// TODO: fix sig
But then, set-top-boxes and game consoles are intended for the masses, not for hackers. Why use a console (and develop for it) when you can play the Linux games on your PC? However, the hardware (digital TV card) and special applications (DVD player, etc.) might create some temptating possibilities.
I am guessing that if they had any of the following important features, they would have said so:
Without these, this console is not going to be able to compete as a game console.
------
Now, this may be quite different than a lot of slashdot readers, but it's not too different than a lot of other people. I know my mom hates the computer, but she does send email. I know a number of people like that.
What might be better is a bare bones system that can send email and surf, with a basic small OS that gives net connectivety and email use - you know, something any brain dead person could use, with two buttons: email or web. Can't really go wrong, there. But then give the ability to upgrade to make it more useful. Add a word processor and printer.
I know, I know, I just described a general purpose computer, which would be fine if given the utmost in simplicity. Most people that ask me for advice on buying a computer these days, when asked what they'll use it for, say "you know...email, surf the net..." Well what do you need a 1.5Ghz PC for? (well, the salesman at Best Buy might convince newbie that newbie needs it to connect to the internet faster...)
Stupid sexy Flanders.
But considering how badly this actually open company crashed and burned, I give this 2 months for Noika to play out the publicity potential and drop it.
Remember that Nokia got really big in the cellphone business. They don't sell many phones directly to the consumers, instead they sell them to phonecompanies, which then sell them to the enduser for a fraction of the price. The enduser has to sign a contract to use their services for a minimum time, like 6 months or a year.
They can do the same with the OST, maybe with cabletv and internet providers instead of phonecompanies, but in these days they are basically the same corporations.
All the hardware is in place, both the Hauppauge and ATI TV cards work fine under Linux using the bttv kernel module. There are several decent programs for capturing from the card, goto freshmeat and do a search. I prefer RealProducer Basic because I don't have to worry about Video and Audio sync, which I found was a problem with some others and fairly small file sizes. Setting up a cron job to do the recording at the proper time is easy as well. What this is missing is the TiVo's ability to download current TV listing and adjust recording times when neccessary. This could probably be done with a perl script which downloads the schedule from TVGuide.com, then searches for the programs you specify and/or present you with a menu of options, then update the cron job accordingly. Depending on the information TVGuide.com has you may even be able to look for a paticular actor or director.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
In the end, everyone will have a PC
I don't think this will be the case down the road, why would "Grandma" want to buy a full-fleged PC (with all the added hassels and costs) when all she does is send e-mail? It may seem cheaper to some people to buy a dedicated gaming device and a dedicated e-mail device and a dedicated (insert your favorite digital system here). Sure you and I would rather have the real thing, but it isn't necessarly right for everyone.
Lets say for example the kids want to play some games, and you want to write an e-mail, it is hard to share the same system (unless you happen to have an X terminal handy).
And with all these devices lying around with some CPU time to spare can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of all of them? (Not trying to troll here, I'm being serious) You could share the resources across all the devices, your e-mail device needs a little more power to decode a video attachment? No problem, ship off some of some of the work to the gaming console, or even the toaster! This is assuming that everything will be networked together, but I feel that every new device should support networking right out of the box, it just seems natural to the progression of the networked world.
Don't forget another thing, Nokia is based in Finland, a country with an already large and growing installed Linux base.
And then they're told it can play games too, many of which are free.
This is the sort of sales pitch that even I would take out my credit card for.
Bernie Mills, vice president of marketing at CollabNet, said, "Nokia has made an important vote of confidence in open source software development. It is a business model that has enormous value in speed to market, and the creation of a large number of software applications."
It'd be great if we could port current linux-based games to this unit. If this system can boost popularity of games written specifically for linux systems, will that also mean a huge increase in linux games for regular desktops?
--
See, whatcha do is download the TiVo source code and then figure out how to get it to deal with two video-in streams at once. Then you've got UltimateTV for Linux.
/Brian
I can't see how MS intends to get any serious penetration anyway -- is it still only available with a satellite dish?
/Brian
The thing is that you can plug Linux all you want but a cute penguin isn't going to be much of a selling point for Joe Blow in his dorm room (unless Mr. Blow happens to be a geek).
Nokia does, I think, have the clout to pull off what Indrema couldn't. They've got money and an immensely popular product (and one could say they're already in the electronic games industry -- how many expert Snake players we got here?). Here's what Nokia *could* deliver:
-A decidedly bad-ass game system with included crackability. I'd be amazed if the technology involved was radically different from the Xbox.
-A ready-to-network cheap processing node a la that PS2-ish thing that Sony's marketing as a cheap supercomputer (I'd love to see a... Oh, wait, it already is...)
-A system with easy wireless connectivity -- just patch it into your cell phone. No worries about Bluetooth or 802.11...
But they need to have a killer app for it, and a cell-phone base station won't be it. Since the system will be open-source, it's a safe bet they won't be making their money off of runtime licensing. They can't market it like an ordinary game console because they won't be able to loss-leader it. Ever. I think it can be done, but I'm not quite sure how.
But I'd buy one.
/Brian
If this thing is just a linux box then surely its not going to be hard to port or just install drivers for the games we have already.
They should ship this thing with Quake 3 or similar that would get some attention.
One thing that concerns me from the developer page
is that you cant gaurantee what hardware they may have.
and i quote "Oh yes. The OST platform is well suited for various applications. However, as it supports a number of input devices (keyboard, remote control, etc) you can't be sure that all game players do have a gamepad or joystick."
now this is going to be a major downside if a user has to buy a new input device for every game were as the PSX or PS2 all have the same game pad or compatible for every game.
It may seem a small amount for the controller but it can often turn people away if they have to buy extras to run things (just like a PC)
the idea of a console is to run EVERY game that is made for it out of the box and with no hassle.
we will just have to hope and see.
Devilish
www.sci-fact.com - From Fiction to fact -
Devilish
www.sci-fact.com - From Fiction to fact -
Your one stop science news and discusion site.
The difference between this and the andrema is that it is backed by a company with serious cash. Which means the project could stay fully financed the entire way.
But on the other hand... Nokia has a board of directors that can pull the plug at any given moment.
Its hard for a small-time company to break into the console industry, but Sony proved that a big corporation with a nice financial situation can do it (on the other hand, Sega proved that even a vet can loose in the industry).
Good luck to nokia, and grab as many developers to make games as possible!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
One of the strengths of writing for a console is that you KNOW that every unit is identical. This allows you to optimize exclusively for one CPU/Vid Chip/Drive Speed/Ram size, without worrying about driver overhead + incompatabilities. As an example, I've seen things on the Dreamcast that blow away a PC w/ 2x the specs.
Aditionally, there's the idiot factor. Almost anybody can understand the "put media in, hit power switch" idea, installing, uninstalling software, and maintaining the stability of the OS do require some form of skill/knowledge. (I have, in the past recieved money to 'fix' somebody's computer because they were 'out of RAM', only to find out that their HDD was full, and needed to have garbage deleted so that windows could make swap space...)
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
This article in The Register provides some interesting reading, quote :
Symbian, for those that don't know, is a joint company by Motorolla, Ericsson, Nokia and others that creates an OS for the next generation smart phones based on EPOC
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I don't claim to be enlightened, but I'll give it a go.
CPU seems a little underspecced, but that depends on the amount of off-chip processing available. For comparison purposes, the X-BOX will ship with a 700MHz processor, which won't touch the graphics pipeline at all.
Reasonable amount of memory. Be interesting to see if they adopt a unified memory architecture (again, cf. X-BOX).
Integrated video chip is definately the norm for consoles - no expansion required, therefore reduce costs and optimise data paths by putting everything on the same board. The feature list was bog-standard a couple of years ago around the time of the TNT(2). It's only a little up on the original PlayStation. I speculate that they may not be pushing this console as a direct contender to X-BOX etc. unless they have some pretty significant improvements to make graphically, since that is where, to an extent, the war is being fought at the moment. Current hardware is touting 'fully' programmable pipelines, along with a whole lot of cool features (cube environement mapping, per-pixel lighting, shadow generation in hardware, bump-mapping etc).
This would be a capable 3d machine a year or two ago. Now it could be considered a little dated.
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
How is this different from the info in this slashdot story from January. Even back then they knew it would run linux.
Maybe the Financial Times needs to start attending technology trade shows.
Do they really think people will shell out $200 to play Snake on their TV screens?
I'm reading through a couple of articles that talk about this "MediaTerminal", and I fail to see how FT.com got the impression that it was a competitor vs. the Xbox.
According to Nokia's MediaTerminal website, it's basically a PVR with Internet Access. There is a link to the Game Development section, and the FAQ states that it will play "a wide variety of games". But, looking at the tech specs, this piece of machinery doesn't stand a chance against the Xbox. Celeron 366? 4MB Video RAM? Seems a little too underpowered to me.
I used to be an avid follower of the gnokii project, which was/is an attempt to create open source drivers for various Nokia digital phones. I even wrote a completely portable driver for the 51xx/61xx phones by using gnokii as a reference. As I remember, Nokia would never help the team out with any technical information. The company showed promise at one point, but then never delivered. For the years that the project has been going, not once has Nokia given them any help. And now they are embracing Linux with this set-top box?
This is just wrong.
-Justin
This same 'open design' policy is what brought x86 platforms into the mainstream. Everyone cloned it, and a wonderful pricewar of 'who can make the best the cheapest' made owning a computer very affordable. If this goes through, I won't be surprised to see these boxes replacing Nintendos and Playstations within 4-5 years, and box prices around $80 a piece within 8 years.
While open hardware will keep prices low, you also get into the infinite hardware configurations situation. While the issues related to this have declined recently, it still is the bane of tech support everywhere.
Thankfully the PC has aged long enough to the point where this is a minor issue, and tied mostly to bargin PC's and hardware. Will new comers remember history or throw it out the window only to learn if all over again? Time will tell.
Perhaps nokia will do something similar to TiVo. You can get the hardware from Sony or Phillips, but it is pretty much the same hardware.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Expect this thing to feature a colorful interchangeable outer shell, not to mention annoying ringtones..
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
But, HOW they plan to make money DOES NOT MATTER. Nokia would not be doing this if they didn't have a way to make money off of it.
To make the obvious conclusion. If Nokia is going to make money off of this then everyone who codes for them deserves a share of that money. I don't see anywhere on ostdev.net where it shows how we get our share of the money.
Looks like they are just ripping off those of us who don't know any better.
Stonewolf
the X-Window Box, of course....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
ThinkNic (www.thinknic.com) turns a profit on a $200.00 box that contains about 80% of the hardware that is needed for a game console.
Throw a 700 megahertz Cyrix III (.13 mm manufacturing which doesn't require a heat sink and fan), a GeForce 2 MX, a smallish hard drive, and a couple game controllers, into a ThinkNIC box and walla, you have yourself a piece of technology that can do 90% of what the XBox does. And you didn't spend the billion that MS did on R&D.
Sorry guys - this one isn't the mythical Linux/Games ticket yet, either.
I mean - who's going to publish games for it? Open Source coders... well... look at the quality of homegrown games on the PC. I'm not saying they're not capable - I just wouldn't buy a system based on the promise of, well... what I see.
Nokia probably won't stay with this for long. Every console manufacturer looses money on every unit sold - they make it back on license fees per game sold. If its an open platform, they want to turn a profit on the console? How will they compete with the Big Three?
Homepage for this project is http://www.ostdev.net/
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Can an enlighten 3D guru comment on these?
btw. specs here (pdf format).
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
My guess is the Linux == Big Bucks approach. Any Linux-based system gets free advertising in web sites frequented by people who would likely buy them (this article is proof of that). And companies know that having a Linux product, no matter how proprietary the hardware, API, etc might be, means a chance at a huge IPO.
Sorry guys. I'm not buying it. Have there been any consumer device running Linux that have sold well to non-Linux users? Both the TiVo and i-Opener seem to appeal to the slashdot crowd, which in the latter case, seems to be a bad sign for retailers. I just don't think that Slashdot readers can make up enough of a market to justify all this hype. Maybe if the Yoppy has a successful launch things will change. I know it would change my impressions.
Makes me wonder... with so many gaming platforms... who is going win? Nokia and Microsoft are getting in so late in the game, its like... why bother.
In the end, everyone will have a PC, so why not just devote resources to that, and the cheaper home computer?