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Motorola, Nintendo, & Sony Towards Wireless Gaming
WeekendKruzr writes "CommsDesign is running an
article
about how
Motorola
has partnered with
Sony
and
Nintendo
to work on bringing 2.4Ghz wireless LAN tech to the console gaming community. They're calling it an "isochronous network" and it is "intended for streaming, near-real-time traffic..." with production scheduled for later this year."
Wow, this must be the first time Sony and Nintendo have more or less worked together since the SNES CD! Or would someone like to step in and correct me :)
Wonder if this will be supported in PS2 Linux. Can you imagine TuxRacer on one of these babies?
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That and a someone particularly mallicious could create a DoS attack by broadcasting junk packets at high power.
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If your microwave does in fact interfere with your wireless lan equipment, I'd invest in a pair of shielded underwear ASAP.
The GBA is what needs wireless gaming. Imagine sitting in your car on a road trip playing GBA games against other players in their cars on the other side of the country. Now Imagine a FF6 style MMORPG, that you carry around with you. Yeah, the MMORPG would eat your soul, BUT at least people wouldn't be sitting cooped up in their house playing everquest, they would walk around, go places, and just play in the meantime.
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Frequency hopping and CDMA are how you avoid this - the Motorola tech probably uses both to some extent, it certainly does the former.
Well, if there is one thing that Nintendo has been tight lipped about, it is online gaming. This might be there plan though. They have always promoted multiplayer/party atmosphere's with there games (think Mario Party). This would be an amazing technology for a lot of there stuff. I can see it now, 16 people over on 4 TV with 4 Cube's playing Mario Kart with 16 Wavebirds (cause we might as well have our controllers be wireless too!).
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When Nintendo unveiled the GameCube at their Spaceworld event in Japan in 2000, one of the technologies touted was Bluetooth. I was there - they had it projected up on a big screen (along with a list of their technology partners - ATI, Panasonic, IBM, etc.), and when prompted in a Q&A session about it, stated vaguely that they were investigating various forms of wireless gaming. So they've been working on this for quite a while and always intended it to be part of the GameCube system. It's only natural that Sony would offer their input as well (and please, read the article - Nintendo and Sony aren't working together, they're offering their input individually to Motorola). What's surprising to me is that Microsoft doesn't seem to be involving themselves at all in wireless network gaming. Considering the reported $1-$2 billion investment in Xbox Live, you'd think they'd be heartily working on a wireless option. In the end, MS may be the one looking like they're stuck in the stone ages - seems like Sony and Nintendo's plans are a bit more forward-thinking than most people thought (even though Nintendo's plan, at least, was really revealed 2 years ago).
is this such a smart idea?
It seems smart to me. If wired networks haven't historically suceeded, maybe game companies are actually learning from other's past mistakes.
If you were going to buy one networking periphreal in the next few years, which would you prefer: something to connect you to a wired network that costs a fee and may or may not go down the crapper (as Sega Channel did), or something that at the very least lets you connect wirelessly to your friend's PS2/GC instead of messing with an i.Link/other link cable, and at best creates a point to point network spanning the nation (or globe?)?
Seems to me that this is a good console answer to PC LAN parties, and if enough people buy into it, a great solution to network gaming because companies wont have to worry about building their own networks. Not sure what that would mean for MMORPG-ing, though.
Isn't 2.4 GHz getting a little crowded? This is just what I need. It's bad enough that Bluetooth interferes with 802.11b, but now my PS2 is going to be messing shit up, too? Great.
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