Technology Info

The U.S. video-game industry remains on track to achieve a record year of more than $22 billion in revenue, as people are apparently turning to in-home entertainment to weather the shaky economy.

Store sales of video games and consoles in June soared 53% and 54%, respectively, from the same month last year, while revenue from software and accessories rose 61% and 25%, the NPD Group said Thursday. So far this year, retailers have sold $16.6 billion in video games, consoles, and related products, compared with $12.2 billion during the same period a year ago.

“The videogames industry continues to perform in the face of an ever-increasingly difficult economic environment as many turn to more in-home entertainment,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier, said in an e-mailed statement. “Even if growth slows over the back half of 2008, the industry is poised to achieve record-breaking revenues of over $22 billion for the year.” (link)

To address the growing consumer need for storage in the home, Seagate today announced the Maxtor Central Axis network drive, a network storage drive that can be used by the whole family. This latest drive from Seagate provides a terabyte of storage that every computer in the home can back up to. In addition to media streaming capabilities for video, photos and music, the new Maxtor Central Axis network drive also includes an easy-to-use remote access service that allows people to easily and securely retrieve content stored on their network drive through any Internet browser.

A concept once only reserved for the small business and enterprise space, networked storage is increasingly becoming a viable option for multiple-computer homes. According to Yankee Group’s 2008 Device Survey, of those who purchased network routers for the home, 75.9% did so with the intent of providing multiple computers with access to the Internet. The challenge of these multi-computer households is the ability to share and back up files from each computer. Maxtor Central Axis network drive allows for each computer in the home to be automatically backed up, so important files and precious memories are sheltered from virus infections or disc drive failures. Sharing files from computer to computer is easy when there is one repository for any file that you would like to share. Additionally, since the storage device is connected to the router and not formatted for an individual computer, files can be accessed and stored from both Mac OS X and Windows operated PCs. (link)

Trying to pass legislation that impacts how games can be sold or what has to be put on them is a popular and expensive way of sending the message that you’re concerned about the issues that affect the youth of today. Although every law attempted has gone down in flames, and has cost taxpayers at least $1 million through the years, politicians continue to line up to give it a go. The newest bill is A11717, proposed by Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, and it has already passed through the New York State Assembly. Now it’s on to the State Senate. It’s a familiar story, but in this case the New York government is asking for things the industry is already doing.

The legislation would require game consoles to include parental locks for mature content but, while this sounds good on paper, every current-generation console already has parental controls. Not only that, but the ESRB has done a great job of getting the word out on how to use said controls. The bill also wants to force games to show their ESRB ratings on the cover of the title, which is also something that is done industry-wide. Every game sold at retail has the ESRB rating on the front cover, with more detailed information on what content the game includes on the back of the box. Given that industry compliance on showing the ratings on games is already at 100 percent, it’s unclear what the law would achieve. (link)

The technological feats of the 3G iPhone are key to the coming pornucopia. To date, mobile porn has consisted largely of still images, racy text services and “moan tones,” which are sultry-sounding ringtones. In Europe there is an active market for video chatting; customers pay on average $50 a month to exchange dirty messages with actresses. But now, thanks in large part to the iPhone’s video dexterity, short clips are becoming a staple of the mobile porn business. The speed promised by the iPhone 2.0 is much anticipated. Google Trends, which measures Web buzz, shows a sharp increase over the past year in the popularity of the term “iPhone porn.”

Leading porn purveyors see the iPhone as a dream come true. Its relatively ample screen size, speedy Web access and ease of use are just part of it. The device’s miniaturized version of Apple’s Safari software simplifies mobile access and streamlines the process of tailoring dirty sites for optimal viewing on the go. “It’s by far the porn-friendliest phone,” says Devan Cypher, representative for San Francisco–based Sin City Entertainment. As evidence of the gadget’s rocketing popularity in California’s porn capital, the San Fernando Valley, numerous iPhone-specific porn sites have been launched in recent months. “There are a few hundred iPhone porn sites now in use,” says Farley Cahen, vice president of business development for AVN Media Network, the adult industry’s trade body. Many others are currently in the works targeting the iPhone 2.0, which goes on sale July 11. (link)

Injured athletes may find themselves playing Nintendo’s Wii Fit as part of their rehabilitation.

This and other fitness-oriented video games have “great potential” for core strengthening and rehabilitation and may boost compliance with rehabilitation exercises, Sue Stanley-Green, a professor of athletic training at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, told Reuters Health.

“We are looking to incorporate Wii Fit into the athletic training room as far as rehabilitation, for example, on post-operative knees and ankles,” she noted in a telephone interview.

Fitness video games that have the user perform lower-body balance and weight-shifting activities could help patients with weight-bearing rehabilitation after an injury or surgery. (link)

Earlier this week XCM, developers of a wide range of multi-platform gaming accessories, announced the upcoming release of their new 1080p Mega-Cool VGA box. The 1080p Mega-Cool VGA box is a dependently powered gaming peripheral that converts an incoming component (YPbPr) signal to a VGA (RGBHV) signal, capable of being displayed on a computer monitor or VGA-enabled HDTV. The device’s output will support UXGA displays of up to 1600 x 1200 resolutions, and HDTV screens with resolutions up to 1920 x 1080. In terms of input sources, the device will accept 480i, 576i, 480p, 576p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p signals. Addtionally, the XCM 1080p Mega-Cool VGA box will support both NTSC and PAL color encoding systems, and feature motion-adaptive interfiled de-interlacing. (link)

Are you are tired of having to encode your HD videos in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format before uploading them on Youtube? Victor/JVC is here for you!

They’ve developed a new LSI chip for video cameras which allows them to simultaneously record video into two different codecs: MPEG-2 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Now videos won’t have to be encoded to your HD in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format before converting them to MPEG-2 in order to broadcast them on Youtube, or anywhere else! (link)

However, not only did she talk at a conference about digital gaming, she’s working on a project to create a video game about the court system, to try to make students more informed about the judicial system and some of the difficult decisions it makes. There have been many similar “civic education” video games out there, like the UN video game to teach kids about world hunger and, my personal favorite, a video game to teach kids how to gerrymander voting districts to get political support. It’s not clear how successful any of these sorts of games really are, but it’s nice to see a former Supreme Court Justice taking an interest in these sorts of things. Though, some might point out that this could be seen as something of a gimmick, and students might just be better served by adding a decent civics curriculum back into school (it’s apparently gone thanks to No Child Left Behind). (link)

Nvidia Corp on Sunday announced a processor line-up it believes will power a new class of fast, small devices with long battery life that can surf the full Internet, play high-end games and display high-definition video.

The graphics chipmaker is calling the Tegra 600 and Tegra 650 processors “computers on a chip” for highly portable, visual devices, and it is aiming squarely at a market also targeted by No. 1 chipmaker Intel Corp.

Nvidia hopes the Tegra chips, which also include its previously announced application processor APX2500 used in smartphones and handsets, will go into a broad array of computing devices. But it’s aiming first for an emerging category called mobile Internet devices, or MIDs. (link)

Microsoft’s musical reply to Apple’s iPod is finally coming to Canada.

The Zune digital music player will go on sale June 13, Microsoft Corp. announced Tuesday. It may not generate the same hype as the announcement that Apple’s iPhone will be available in Canada this year, but the Zune - available in the U.S. since late 2006 - has been redesigned and has new software.

Microsoft says it wants to give Canadian consumers a different experience from the iPod.

“Right now there is really only one dominant player, and with Zune coming to the market now, in June, it just offers people with another credible alternative where they can say ‘I actually get to decide which one is right for me,’ ” said Elana Zur, Microsoft Canada’s Zune product manager. (link)