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

Whatever they pay him, it's too much

[NSash]

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

Now here's a man who sounds like he knows what he's doing!

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!

[Overdrive_SS]

I don't know. I remember being in a hotel and having the original super mario bros and a few other games available to play on demand. I assume the cable box was responsible for the emulation, but I can't be certain. If it was and this company was responsible for that box or even has a similar offering (obviously wild speculation on my part), then I assume they have a few engineers working there with an idea of what it would take. Of course, emulating a nintendo is a far cry from creating a next generation console, especially if the emulation was all done by Nintendo, which I assume is also very likely.

So, I agree that most likely this will be vaporware or at best on par with a playstation or nintendo64, but I will at least give them the benefit of the doubt for now. More than I can say for the phantom anyways.

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

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.

Comcast

[hambonewilkins]

There's an ad in these parts (Maryland) which shows a guy tossing out all his home theater components (VCR, DVD, Receiver, etc) because he just got the new Comcast DVR system that allows you to "pause TV" now that TV is "at your command."

It's a moronic ad (obviously), but I'm curious Scientific-Atlanta sees a similar (completely wrong) future, where people toss out their Xboxes, Gamecubes, and PS2s because they now have this all-in-one unit.

It shows a complete misunderstanding of games and gamers. Unless you're in Japan, people I know don't have much interest in replacing two or three devices with one all-in-one, jack-of-all trades device (which is usually very expensive).

People like buying things modularly because it seems cheaper and also you can get the best of each modular component.

CEO James McDonald's comment: I can give (game players) the same performance you get out of those game boxes exemplifies his misunderstanding... performance is perhaps 10% of what is important in games (I'm talking frames per second, load times, etc). What this guy should be giving is the same games or experience.

Put this right up there with the Phantom for game decks we will never see.

Re:If it's anything like their DVR...

[CanSpice]

Jesus yes. I was going to say that if it's anything like their Explorer 8000 then this game console is going to be a pile of shit.

"Features" of the Explorer 8000:

- if you're watching a show that's being recorded at the same time, when the show stops recording you get dumped to live TV rather than continue to watch off the recording.
- live pausing only appears to hold for an hour and a half.
- no easy way to find out how much space you've got left without going through an arcane developer's menu.
- if you have a recording conflict and choose to not record a show that you've set a "season pass" for, it won't record any of that show ever again, even if future episodes don't conflict.
- no way to remove repeat episodes from "season pass" recordings. Especially annoying for things you know are going to repeat, like Adult Swim that repeats three hours after initial showing.

I've had playback quality issues a couple of times where the playback freezes for a second or so. Fast-forwarding sometimes freezes too, although I'm not completely sure if only the video output freezes, because when it unfroze it looked like it was a few seconds past where it froze.

And there are a bundle of UI problems, like the practically useless favourite channel list (oh boy, you get to scroll up through them, heaven forbid you should want to filter your guide to only show you your favourite channels!).

The only good thing (besides two tuners) about it is that it costs $5 a month over regular digital service. If it cost any more I'd be cancelling my service.