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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."
IMHO this is just further proof that gaming is the Prime Evolutionary Factor in all technology. ; -)
Don't read this!
This could lead to LAN party type events in which you get the speed of LAN, but can still sit at home challenging all of your neighbors, I want this.
In other news, Microsoft has announced extensions tothe protocal for use in their XBox. The new extensions are not compatible but according to MS sources offer better value to the consumer.
This would be great till someone tries to use the 2.4 ghz cordless phone, or fires up a WiFi laptop, or for that matter cooks some popcorn in the microwave. Not to mention the fact that you probably can't play it around grandpa because of his pacemaker ;)
Correct, but they're not really "working together" in the same sense. The article states that Motorola is developing the technology based on input from Sony, Nintendo and other developers. So it's more like the game developers are working together with Motorola.
...which is better than the title suggests, because just the thought of Nintendo and Sony working together makes me queesy.
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- Strong Bad
From the article:
[But the multiuser gaming market required a very low latency network where traditional packet-collision problems precluded use of 802.11, [[the corporate vice president of Motorola]] said.]
Is TCP-like packet checking inherent in 802.11 (versus "UDP-like")? If not (and even if so -- I wonder what kinds of savings we're talking about), this sounds like a pretty sorry excuse for coming up with a new standard, and one that sounds like it might be closed.
I've played Quake online with a cable modem via 802.11b and the pings weren't too shabby at all! I wish Motorola would spend more time making something new than tweaking something old for profit -- they make great products and traditionally provide great support, but I'm not so impressed at first glance here.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Xaotik Designs
Thankfully I grew up with two brothers, but what if you're playing your wireless gamecube and all the sudden your sister starts talking on the 2.4Ghz phone? Man that would suck. Talk about video games causing violence...
~ now you know
Well, they are both contributing input to Motorola on this development, but the article states nothing of any alliance between the two companies, or even any intent to introduce cross-platform networking compatibility to their systems. From the vagueness of the technical descriptions in the article this might end up being a feature in the next-gen consoles, but whether that means you'll be able to play Quake 4 on your PS3 versus your buddy across the street on his Nintendo is not at all clear yet.
"Because the network is intended for streaming, near-real-time traffic and does not have to use LAN contention methods, developers of such systems will not have to worry about packet collisions with home networks based on 802.11."
Am I misreading this? Could this be the begining of something bigger and better the current LAN and 802.11 standards?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
That and a someone particularly mallicious could create a DoS attack by broadcasting junk packets at high power.
-Irony Irony ha ha ha
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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> My question here is, why are they reinventing the wheel?
Because they want to lock you into their own proprietary technology, of course.
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Now instead of getting into sensitive corporate data, I'll be able to erase someone's saved season of Madden 200X! w00t!
Lots of petrified grits
All they need now is a wireless video adapter
Or a video display built into the console unit.
and a wireless power supply
That's called Batteries(tm).
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No, it's from "iso" meaning "the same" and "chronous" meaning "time". So packets are sent at the same time. That's how the network achieves low latency, by scheduling time slots for each node, as it were. Otherwise you get packet collisions and the like which adds latency.
Got friends?
i sure hope it works with phantasy star and FFIX. if it works with pahntasy star il buy it.
I want 2D games back.
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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Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Think "TDMA", or, for real old-timers, "Slotted Aloha".
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).
You've never spent much time in Japan, have you?
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When I was a kid, we'd lug our Nintendo over to someone's house if they didn't have a Nintendo (granted, this was a theoretical use after a few years) as well as games.
We would also move from room to room. When I had friends over, we'd get kicked across the house to not disturb my parents. With this tech, your friend could bring their Gamecube over and you could play that way.
While Slashdot users will have no problems with cross-over cables or Network hubs, that seems like more of a pain. Besides, while 20-something gamers that LAN party may be able to put the TVs nearby, most kids are stuck with the TVs in place.
I certainly can think of times we'd have used TVs in nearby rooms but couldn't run a network cable.
Remember, Console gaming isn't about tech, its JUST about fun. The tech can enhacne the fun, but don't expect people to read manuals.
Hell, games explain the controls inside the game now, as people don't read the manual. You want them to setup a TCP/IP network?
Alex
i don't know all of the specs on beaming power around, but would you really want that much energy in radiation form flying through your living room.
120 volts at any useful wattage is a whole friggin lot of energy.
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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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"You've never spent much time in Japan, have you?"
Umm... are you saying that the entire Slashdot community takes summer trips to Japan?
Ya might as well complete your thought. I can't believe I'm the only one that has never been there.
"Derp de derp."
My WiFi is supposed to do the same thing, but more often then not I get some nice digital static on my cordless (which is also supposed to frequency hop).
"Isochronous" means that there are fixed time guarantees for packets within a stream. That is, you can reserve a stream with a particular bandwidth, with guarantees that your packets will be delivered within a specific amount of time.
This is not, as some have suggested, the same as "synchronous," which means that a fixed time slot is reserved for a particular host. The problem with synchronous networking is that the host has tiny window of opportunity to broadcast, and if the host doesn't use it then the bandwidth goes unused.
FireWire is another example of an isochronous protocol. It's also common in telecom networking protocols.
What's interesting to me about this is that it's an isochronous networking format with a mesh topology-- presumably hosts get added on an ad hoc basis, with real-time guarantees extended to streams that need to be forwarded.
Okay, maybe porn drives CD-ROM, VCRs, VGA--but where are they on the faster CPUs/ fancy 3d cards side of things? In other words, WHERE IS MY SUPER-INTELLIGENT REAL-TIME GENERATED CYBER FRIEND?
I've been playing a wireless game for years: it's called Frisbee.
/me ducks incoming barrage of spinning NICs
Doesn't anyone realize that FF6 doesn't really scale up to a MMORPG? Unless by "FF6-like" you mean 3/4 overhead perspective with 2D graphics.
Well, maybe if the game world was hundreds upon hundreds of times bigger, and they got rid of the story arc so you could keep playing forever, and made all the quests reset after you complete them (so others could have their turn), and removed personality from the party members in favor of character customization (can't have everyone running around as Terra, now can we?)
See? Not so hard. But is it still FF6? Would it even fit on a GBA cartridge?
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Clearly if you took a flashlight and added solar panels in the only even remotely logical way, they would recharge the batteries during the day so you could use it at night.
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It's been established that the next-generation consoles will do more than just gaming, they'll also become hubs of your entertainment center. At the very least, they'll probably have PVR capabilities, and probably will be able to handle music libraries and Video On Demand. With the addition of a high speed wireless LAN capable of reaching the neighbors, that potentially could give you access to your neighbor's resources... and if configured for a neighborhood mesh network it could reach far further. Advanced P2P filesharing and a common archival framework (sharing drives prevents duplication of files and allows more efficient use of the total space).
I should note that all this ties in nicely with the recent slashdot article about Playstation 3 Grid Computing. It practically demanded a high speed network... might as well be a local one.
I doubt Sony would actually do something that the MPAA disapproves of so strongly, but modding your console is not out of the question... of course, a virus or worm might help such capabilities along.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
If my GBA is powering some sort of transmitter which lets me game with someone across the country, I think the MMORPG will have to have a discussion with the Energizer Bunny about whose soul, exactly, it belongs to.
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