These slides are presenting Netflix’s corporate culture. I like this though of a company being able to grow and maintain high performance and flexibility by stressing and developing those values in their HR process and in their daily management.
Definetly worth a thought!
That research dated from January 2008 definitely shows the path to where we’re heading with VR-WEAR,“Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision”
A few excerpts from the article:
Engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.
The prototype device contains an electric circuit as well as red light-emitting diodes for a display, though it does not yet light up. The lenses were tested on rabbits for up to 20 minutes and the animals showed no adverse effects.
Fredcavazza had a demo of the HTC G2 this morning and did a couple of videos amongst which we can see the new streetview mode to be embedded in the next release of Android
Use of the gyroscope to move around the 3D rendering of the street is just stunning, can’t wait to get my G-Phone updated.
This statement :
Virtual Reality is so 2008 - 2009 hype is Augmented Reality
Just saw this web page on Nokia’s own N-Gage site which gave ma good 5 minutes laugh. As you can say even Nokia has trouble supporting his own devices …
And the fact that an end-user is going to check his firmware version to see if he can use N-Gage is just a lot of fun to consider.
By the way I’ve tried using N-Gage for years and never got my mobile to let me create a username and connect to the service…
There’s a lot going on right now regarding gaming platforms, and yet while nobody really can tell what the future holds, a couple of patterns are emerging and need some explanations.
Usually crating a video game is pretty straightforward (aside from getting a good game concept and financing the full stuff) : you decide which your target audience is, select the appropriate platform i.e. Nintendo DSi or Wii for casual gaming or PS3/xbox360/PC/PSP for more engaged players and go buy the adequate game engine to serve as the ground basis of your game project. The most well-known game engine around is probably Epic’s UT Engine used in most AAA games including their own graphically mind-blowing Gears of Wars 2. The engine itself is worth about 1MUSD for a AAA game project.
But a couple of things are on the move. First of all, alternatives to those expensive engines are emerging, one of my favorite being Unity’s which is really full featured (including physics engine and a complete dev environment) and comes at an outrageously low price point below the 10KUSD mark. Funny enough this engine enables to create browser based games while retaining all the 3D graphics and experience of regular standalone games. This shift is getting more and more popular after Id’s launch last week of Quake Live which is a multiplayer-only version of their well-known Quake title.
What’s even more interesting is that game content is being streamed over the network. Thus we can suppose that copyright issues who have been killing the PC game market might be solved through that approach. If we follow David Perry’s thoughts that games will become multiplayer-only, we might be reaching by 2010 a new paradigm in gaming and the return of games to the PC world (which has been kinda devastated by World of Warcraft domination over the last couple years).
The underlying question here will be how game engine manufacturers will adjust to this trend, will they try supporting the wider platform range or will they specialize on their own market segments and games will be bound to exclusivity over which or which platform which is the kind of situation we are heading right now.
If you’re a casual gamer yet sometimes fragger addict you’re going to need a lots of hardware platforms if you don’t want to feel frustrated ! And game developers needing to port their work to various game engines to support all the available platforms is unlikely to happen outside of very high budget productions.
I’ve been nosing a bit in the mobile world again lately, and especially in the use of (mobile) games for brands, and working with a few communication agencies over that topic (gotta earn real money with stuff I know those days).
Mobile is a great opportunity for brands, and by targeting specific platforms such as the iPhone you can, if you are smart enough, create a real intimate binding with a community of users around your brand image. Yet, it’s important to understand the behaviors related to mobile apps usage, and as such the following slides (especially from slide 12 and above) are really insightful:
It’s all over the blogs, Microsoft might be looking to buy 3DV Systems for $35 million, the producer of a 3D webcam device that would be able to get plugged into the xbox 360 to compete with Sony’s EyeToy and bring casual games to the xbox 360 platform.
While I think this is a smart move for Microsoft as they definitely need to catch up in the casual games market which means enabling fun without the hassle of learning to master the so complicated controller they have, I must confess I’m not such a big fan of that kind of technology.
What mainly bothers me with that system, is that you have to remain in plain sight of the camera to be able to play, and in my personal case I’m never twice on the same spot. Also casual game means also multi-player games, i.e. 4 players at the same time on the same platform. The raving rabbits are just so much fun when everyone plays together and the portions where you lay alone on the Wii Fit kinda suck - and that’s the kind of experience that a dedicated camera can only provide.
Yet while I’m not such a big fan of the use case I’m really happy to see that Microsoft is feeling the power of accessories to deliver engaging gaming experience, which is also the main objective of VR-WEAR : mix immersive and interactive technologies to create a strong engagement in the game !
Microsoft, if you read me, I’m ready to sell for just a bit less than 35MUSD !
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