Scientific-Atlanta Mulling Video Game Set-Top Box

NickNiel writes "According to Yahoo, Scientific-Atlanta (a digital cable set-top box manufacturer) is 'planning to develop television set-top boxes with high-performance video game capabilities, which could compete with game consoles such as Nintendo's GameCube and Sony's PlayStation 2.' My favorite quote, from CEO James McDonald: 'I can give (game players) the same performance you get out of those game boxes," he added. 'There is no question that games is one... market we will be in.'"

Comments

I call vaporware!

[MonkeyCookie]

I can give (game players) the same performance you get out of those game boxes

Details? It takes quite a bit of effort and expense to produce a good, fast, modern gaming console that is as good as currently existing ones. I'm rather skeptical that a cable box company will follow through on such a plan.

I can see them making a gaming box that plays simpler less resource-intense games, like solitaire and tetris, but a console to match the current top consoles? I doubt they'll get that far. With the lack of details, I'm pretty sure they haven't even reached the phase where they begin the actual engineering of the box. It's just an idea in the head of some executives right now

I predict vaporware

Re:I call vaporware!

[MBCook]

Well, that statement shows that he doesn't know what he's talking about (at least thats what I get out of it). It's all well and good to have a powerfull system, but that doesn't mean anything as the 3DO and other systems have shown us.

It takes GAMES. The power isn't all that important. The GBA is far and away the best selling system out there right now, as the GameBoy was before it. Both are ludicrously underpowered compared to everything else on the market, but one of the major reasons they are successful is that they have great games. If there is one thing that companies (should have) learned by now, it's flashing graphics don't make good games. If the game looks half decent but plays great, it's a great game. There are plenty of games that really don't look that great that are amazing (Animal Crossing comes to mind).

It doesn't matter if he puts a one of the most powerfull comptuers in the world in every subscriber's house. If the games aren't their focus, it's doomed.

If they really mean it...

[clausiam]

it would be time to dump those Scientific-Atlanta shares (if I had any).

There's just no room for a new player in this area right now. Starting up from scratch with no game support, no previous industry experience and no real synergy from other product ranges (the cable set top box is a bit peripheral), not to mention probably not with the cash reserves to carpet-bomb the consumers with marketing and ads. This is either vaporware or the downfall of SciAtl.

/Claus

Endless possibilities, but I doubt the success

[almaon]

I could forsee this company being able to make a competitive (but not superior) game platform modeled into a cable box.

Take the xbox for example, when it comes down to it, it's nothing more than a glorified PC with some proprietary bits thrown here and there with the dashboard frontend. I could see these guys at least being able to come up with some nvidia/x86 based guts to put in their cablebox.

You could get even more ghetto, go mini-itx, linux frontend and the rest of the digital cable crap in there for good measure. I think it could be easily done...

What I don't believe is that they'll be successful in launching this fabled platform and get games developed for it. Which is kinda a bummer, I believe that digital content delivery over broadband is gonna happen, but I just don't think these guys are gonna be the ones to pull this off.

Sega had a testmarket for SegaTV out of Chattanooga, TN, a little different, but similar in some ways. Had a gizmo that hooked up to a Sega Genesis and you could download games off of the cable straight into the box. At the time, it wasn't that cool cause you were limited by the number of titles and the cost. A good model is gonna have to be in place to pull games-on-demand off, but before then you'll need the games. Titles people are going to want to play, that's the biggest hangup I see.

Software can be such a risk, a lot of time, money and capital invested in the hopeful success, taking a risk on a flakey positioned product like a game/cable box to me, sounds dangerous. Especially with matured platforms from Sony/Nintendo/MS have proven theirselves to be safe markets.

Who knows, that's the fun thing about the future. You can sit back and arm-chair analyze it to death, but you won't know till it's done and over with. God bless 20:20 hindsight.

Not such a bad idea - if they keep it simple

[lightspawn]

I'm sure many non-console-owning cable customers would just love being able to play solitaire and bejeweled on their television - and remember these kinds of software take a very short time to develop. How many people would actually pay $5 a month for 20 games or so? I'm not talking specifically about you or the people you know, but the normal cable customer base.

So the simple puzzle games may not be such a bad idea, and if you can port a Sega Genesis (say) emulator or even add actual on-board hardware to run Genesis software you have a library of hundreds of real titles. Pay $5, play Sonic for up to 30 days. Not a bad deal for some people. Again, not for you, but for some people.

Now, as far as modern games are concerned, there are two ways to go about it. Convergence (combo cable box + xbox + DVR) which may or may not make sense to some people (but not to us) and developing a new competing next-gen platform which is probably not such a good plan.

What ever happened to...standardization?

[b0r0din]

'There is no question that games is one... market we will be in.'"

The "..." stands for overloaded.

I think it's a good idea, but right now, you've got three pretty massive players in Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. If you ask me, that's already one too many. I didn't mind it when pretty much only Sega and Nintendo were there, but when these companies start making excellent games ONLY for one system, you aren't serving your clientele, you're forcing them to choose your product or another. This is sort of like the VHS. Remember the Betamax issue? In the end, there was only one format. This is not the case in video games. Instead of one standard, we're forced to use all these proprietary game systems if we want to play all the best games. If you think about it, most hardware manufacturers have standards. Everyone agreed on CD and DVD standards, and for the most part PC standards. (well, until it came time for DVD-R and DVD+R, but I won't even go into that.)

Yet none of this seems to faze the video game world. So now we're going to have yet another competitor, not even counting the Infinium Labs Phantom system, in the market. And Nokia with its N-Gage, and now Sony in the handheld market too? Wow, can you think of a worse time to try and enter a market? And this just pushes the whole ownership issue, with cable able to control the content it provides.

Any idiot can...

[BW_Nuprin]

Hell, -I- can give you the performance of a PS2 or Gamecube... I'll just build a tiny PC in one of those tiny Shuttle cases. The question that should be asked is will Mr. McDonald be able to woo Konami? How about Capcom? Hell, Activision? Any chump (Infineon) can make a PC in a case and call it a video game system, but its not about hardware, its about non-whack games. Of course, CEOs only see numbers, and its much easier to measure MHz than "fun".

This guy really knows the industry!

[andman42]

"I can give (game players) the same performance you get out of those game boxes," he added.

Right, because we all know that, historically, superior hardware performance is what sells game consoles.

I mean just look at how well Xbox is doing against the PS2! Or look at how well the NGage is selling compared to the Gameboy Advance. When the 3D0 Atari Jaguar came out, look what happened to the Super Nintendo's market share. And remember when Sega introduced the GameGear, a portable with a color screen to combat the inferior monochromatic Gameboy? Heck, don't forget how "poorly" the original NES sold compared to the technologically superior Sega Master System and NEC TurboGrafx 16.

While Sony and Nintendo fuss about games, Scientific-Atlanta will be boldly following in the steps of Atari Jaguar and deliver a system with more impressive hardware specs. I for one am excited!

Would you buy a console from Ford?

[KurdtX]

James McDonald: "I can give (game players) the same performance you get out of those game boxes"

Yeah, but as with the Nokia N-Gage, just because you can match the specs doesn't mean squat. Technical skill and ability get you only half way there - even Microsoft had a hard lesson to learn about usability (of the controllers) and content (C'mon, did anyone buy the X-box for a reason other than playing Halo?). And is he really dumb enough to think that trying to do a cable box that also plays video games won't prompt MS to come back with an Xbox that also does cable? I hate to say it, but Microsoft is actually really good at picking out (stealing) what others have done right and integrating those ideas. They'll never be the first out the door with anything, but once they get in, they'll market the crap out of anything until they own the market.

Maybe if they went after the market that is currently buying PSOne's they could do it. But for me, if Ford suddenly announced they were putting gaming consoles in their vehicles, I'd better see some non-Ford logo on the actual box if they want me to buy. And considering Ford charges $500 for a basic mp3 player (that doesn't even read ID3!), I'd seriously doubt if Scientific Atlanta could meet the console's price points.