If you’ve ever wanted to dispense with the regular cash-draining clamour to keep up with the latest version of your favourite games consoles, you could be in for a pleasant surprise. Whilst aficionados of online gaming often claim that the response time is too sluggish – you push a button on the remote only to find that nothing happens for an unnerving moment (it’s called ‘latency’) – the new, venture capital-backed company Playcast insists that it has overcome this difficulty: its new technology has cut the response time to an undetectable 100 milliseconds. You won’t need a games console – all you’ll require is your existing cable or TV network set-top box.
Playcast aims to deliver games as a subscription channel, to be available on pay TV providers such as Virgin, Sky and BT in the UK and Cablevision in the US. If you’re fed up with re-runs of Desperate Housewives you can flip through on your electronic programme guide to Playcast’s on-demand games portal, which will appear like a channel. Yesterday, the company gave a demonstration of its product to the general approval of the attendees, offering a range of top console titles with results indistinguishable from those you’d expect from an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3console.
The company plans to launch in Israel in January or February and the UK a little later in 2010, initially offering a range of 15 – 25 titles covering a broad repertoire of tastes. If you like brain teasers or heavy duty, split-second action like Call of Duty, top quality titles will be coming to a set-top box near you very shortly.
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It’s an interesting idea. By limiting your audience to technology that only pay tv viewers can access, you are limiting your audience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyeemtS1jII