Can you provide a source for your statistic? According to the DOE, transportation consumes 68% (2006 report) of the oil we use:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html
See "Share of US Oil Consumption for Transportation" about 3/4 of the way down.
I like your thinking. Of late there seems to be more and more attempts at bringing gaming to tv. To me, this is the wrong approach. Why broadcast an interactive game on a non-interacive broadcast medium. Why cripple one medium and try to fit it in a lesser medium. Instead there should be a focus on bringing TV to gaming not the other way around.
In other words, turn gaming networks into interactive broadcast networks. For example, there are millions of players on XBox live every night. If you think about it, when you are speccing a game, you are actually a viewer on an interactive broadcast network. Of course games currently are more focused on the interactive side of things, but there seems to be some movement towards exploring the broadcast aspect with things like GothamTV in PGR3. And in some interviews Gates has talked about exploring the space between TV and gaming. This will be an important theme with the latest generation of consoles and I think that you will see the online gaming networks of MS and Sony slowly morph into full fledged interactive broadcast networks complete with a wide variety of daily programming including stuff like gameshow hybrids (halo meets jeopardy), machinima (red vs blue live spec broadcast), tournament coverage etc.
Some of this may sound kinda out there but I honestly think it will happen.
Live action content is expensive to produce. But rendered content is much much less expensive and its reusable. If you build a virtual set/prop it can be modified and used by someone else. Additionally collaborative work can be done by geographically dispersed teams.
Sure the image quality of rendered content right now is such that no one is going to mistake it for live action. BUT, when you take a look at what engines like Unreal Engine 3 are capable of and you extrapolate out a few more years then you can see where this is headed.
I believe that TV of the future will include much rendered content being produced by small independent teams or individuals using the machinima approach.
I agree. I foresee iTMS morphing and becoming an entertainment hub of sorts, the place to go for all your digital entertainment needs. What is more, I see them having the opportunity to create a thriving user community and branching off into lucrative services such as online dating (iTunesMatch?).
I'm convinced that the consoles are the future of TV, interactive TV that is. Passive TV will not be going away, but the next gen consoles with the help of the internet based gaming networks will I believe usher in the interactive era of TV. There are a number of things being done in the gaming community that hint at what is to come, Red vs. Blue and machinima for example, also shoutcasting and Epileptic Gaming by the ITG people.
Several years from now:
-You pop in your Halo3 disc into your XBOX2 and log in to XBOX live.
-You are presented with the main HALo3 welcome screen. There is info on servers which you can join for some deathmatch or CTF action. The normal stuff. There is also a news section describing the latest happenings in the Halo3 community, ie latest tournament news, latest patch info etc..Then there is the Halo3TV section which provides info on the daily programming being broadcast on the various Halo3TV "channels". The content is being broadcast mainly as a spec stream with a little bit of video sprinkled in.
-You see that there is live coverage of the Halo3 World Championships being held in New York. You select that channel and watch a spec stream showing you the tournament action as it happens. You watch with people from all over the globe and you can chat with them a la IRC. At the end of a match, players are interviewed live and questions are fielded from the specs.
-You go back to the daily programming screen and select the machinima section. You see that the latest episode of Red vs. Blue is being shown (again as a spec stream). You watch that channel for a while.
-Next you check out the gameshow channels. Your favorite game show HaloJeopardy is on. You tune in. Tonight's lucky contestants are randomly selected from the viewing audience in real time. Players answer trivia questions to collect ammo/weapons for the final deathmatch round.
This is just an example. The console businesses of Sony and Microsoft will eventually morph to look more like media companies.
The gaming network is the media network. The game is the media platform.
Based on a quick perusal of the Xanga blogring, the UCSD student population is composed of 90% Asian women, of which 99% of them are quite hot. WTHail?
While performing on stage at Woodstock 2, Primus' bass player Les Claypool made the following comment while looking out across the sea of people in attendance at the gigantic music festival:
"I'm not that good with numbers, but there's a shitload of people here"
SED seems to be the darkhorse of the display technologies. It doesn't seem to have as high a public profile as OLED but the tech is very promising. Lower manufacturing costs than LCD or PDP (mainly silkscreen/inkjet processes some lithography), better image quality than LCD (true black, no backlight, CRT like response times), right around the corner for big screen sizes (production to start next year).
I absolutely agree with your comment about TV as not being the end-all be-all format. In fact I'll go further and say that TV as we know it today is going to be evolving in a big way in the near future. I believe gaming will be on the forefront of this evolution and IP based networks will be enabling it.
I will make a prediction that the online console gaming networks of Sony and Microsoft will eventually morph and they will look more like media networks with daily programming schedules and that a large portion of the revenues will be derived from advertising. First they will start out with ESPN like interactive coverage of things like Halo3 tournaments, but then the programming will become more varied covering everything from machinama to interactive game-show hybrids (think Doom4 meets Jeopardy or Everquest3 meets Survivor). Remember when MTV was just music videos?
What's interesting is that all the main pieces are there to pull this off. Its just that no one has tried to tie everything together. Good quality video is expensive to broadcast over IP networks currently. The people trying to pull off interactive TV in the mid to late 90's found that out. BUT a spectator stream from online games is very light weight with good image quality that improves with each generation of graphics hardware. So the media/gaming networks will initially be broadcasting spectator streams as opposed to video. Long term though as the pipes get fatter in the last mile, there will be a mix of video and rendered grapics.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you provide a source for your statistic? According to the DOE, transportation consumes 68% (2006 report) of the oil we use: http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html See "Share of US Oil Consumption for Transportation" about 3/4 of the way down.
LOL, so true. Hehe. I bet you something along these lines will actually end up being a real game.
http://www.pulse-link.com/pr-oct16-2006.html
I like your thinking. Of late there seems to be more and more attempts at bringing gaming to tv. To me, this is the wrong approach. Why broadcast an interactive game on a non-interacive broadcast medium. Why cripple one medium and try to fit it in a lesser medium. Instead there should be a focus on bringing TV to gaming not the other way around. In other words, turn gaming networks into interactive broadcast networks. For example, there are millions of players on XBox live every night. If you think about it, when you are speccing a game, you are actually a viewer on an interactive broadcast network. Of course games currently are more focused on the interactive side of things, but there seems to be some movement towards exploring the broadcast aspect with things like GothamTV in PGR3. And in some interviews Gates has talked about exploring the space between TV and gaming. This will be an important theme with the latest generation of consoles and I think that you will see the online gaming networks of MS and Sony slowly morph into full fledged interactive broadcast networks complete with a wide variety of daily programming including stuff like gameshow hybrids (halo meets jeopardy), machinima (red vs blue live spec broadcast), tournament coverage etc. Some of this may sound kinda out there but I honestly think it will happen.
Sure the image quality of rendered content right now is such that no one is going to mistake it for live action. BUT, when you take a look at what engines like Unreal Engine 3 are capable of and you extrapolate out a few more years then you can see where this is headed.
I believe that TV of the future will include much rendered content being produced by small independent teams or individuals using the machinima approach.
I see a new era for the FPS genre ... ::wink::wink::
I agree. I foresee iTMS morphing and becoming an entertainment hub of sorts, the place to go for all your digital entertainment needs. What is more, I see them having the opportunity to create a thriving user community and branching off into lucrative services such as online dating (iTunesMatch?).
I bet that a subscription iTunes dating service would be a really big lucrative success for Apple.
According to this article, the protos are looking very good.
http://www.guidetohometheater.com/news/101804ceate c/
Admittedly there is a big difference between making a proto and making something in volume.
More info below. Its in Japanese but the pictures on the slides are pretty informative especially the one showing their production schedule.
http://www.itmedia.co.jp/lifestyle/articles/0409/1 4/news057.html
Several years from now:
-You pop in your Halo3 disc into your XBOX2 and log in to XBOX live.
-You are presented with the main HALo3 welcome screen. There is info on servers which you can join for some deathmatch or CTF action. The normal stuff. There is also a news section describing the latest happenings in the Halo3 community, ie latest tournament news, latest patch info etc. .Then there is the Halo3TV section which provides info on the daily programming being broadcast on the various Halo3TV "channels". The content is being broadcast mainly as a spec stream with a little bit of video sprinkled in.
-You see that there is live coverage of the Halo3 World Championships being held in New York. You select that channel and watch a spec stream showing you the tournament action as it happens. You watch with people from all over the globe and you can chat with them a la IRC. At the end of a match, players are interviewed live and questions are fielded from the specs.
-You go back to the daily programming screen and select the machinima section. You see that the latest episode of Red vs. Blue is being shown (again as a spec stream). You watch that channel for a while.
-Next you check out the gameshow channels. Your favorite game show HaloJeopardy is on. You tune in. Tonight's lucky contestants are randomly selected from the viewing audience in real time. Players answer trivia questions to collect ammo/weapons for the final deathmatch round.
This is just an example. The console businesses of Sony and Microsoft will eventually morph to look more like media companies.
The gaming network is the media network. The game is the media platform.
Based on a quick perusal of the Xanga blogring, the UCSD student population is composed of 90% Asian women, of which 99% of them are quite hot. WTHail?
"I'm not that good with numbers, but there's a shitload of people here"
SED seems to be the darkhorse of the display technologies. It doesn't seem to have as high a public profile as OLED but the tech is very promising. Lower manufacturing costs than LCD or PDP (mainly silkscreen/inkjet processes some lithography), better image quality than LCD (true black, no backlight, CRT like response times), right around the corner for big screen sizes (production to start next year).
http://www.eet.com/sys/news/showArticle.jhtml?arti cleID=47205034
I will make a prediction that the online console gaming networks of Sony and Microsoft will eventually morph and they will look more like media networks with daily programming schedules and that a large portion of the revenues will be derived from advertising. First they will start out with ESPN like interactive coverage of things like Halo3 tournaments, but then the programming will become more varied covering everything from machinama to interactive game-show hybrids (think Doom4 meets Jeopardy or Everquest3 meets Survivor). Remember when MTV was just music videos?
What's interesting is that all the main pieces are there to pull this off. Its just that no one has tried to tie everything together. Good quality video is expensive to broadcast over IP networks currently. The people trying to pull off interactive TV in the mid to late 90's found that out. BUT a spectator stream from online games is very light weight with good image quality that improves with each generation of graphics hardware. So the media/gaming networks will initially be broadcasting spectator streams as opposed to video. Long term though as the pipes get fatter in the last mile, there will be a mix of video and rendered grapics.