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Editor's Introduction
As we all have learned at some point in our lives, there is no such thing as objective journalism. Anything that you read has been written by someone and is therefore filtered through that person’s experience, good and bad, of the world in which they live. As such, all journalists can do is try to be as up front about this as possible. Thus, in editing this article, I think that it’s important to make my personal view on the industry known at the outset. Here are my three overriding attitudes about entertainment technology: 1) Content drives the market. In the wide world of interactive entertainment, hardware serves one function: it enables the creation and consumption of content. The most powerful and cost-effective piece of hardware ever designed is only as valuable as the software that it runs. Obviously, the two are interdependent. Great hardware can occasion the development of great software and conversely, really bad hardware can smother the best-intentioned efforts of software developers. I have the background and baggage of a content creator. I tend to judge hardware on its ability to enable great content and I tend to understand market behavior as a reaction to the quality and availability of content. 2) The glass is half full. It’s my experience that there are two kinds of people in the world, optimists and pessimists. The optimists think that the world is just beginning and that all of the wondrous new inventions and ideas of our time will ultimately and inexorably move us into a more complete, fulfilling, and perfect existence. The pessimists look around and all they see is the downward spiral. Each new innovation is a wrong turn leading us farther astray and cementing our ultimate fall into total chaos and destruction. In the world of entertainment technology, people’s views of platform diversity are a good indicator of which type they are. The pessimistic view is that we are in the middle of uncontrolled platform proliferation leading inevitably to war. On the macro level, Macs, PCs, cable television boxes, game consoles, smart cell phones, televisions on steroids, network computers, and gas pumps with interactive television displays all compete for consumer entertainment market share. On the micro level, each "open" platform mirrors this landscape with a diverse and incompatible collection of add-on cards and software-only solutions, creating an infinite number of "micro-platforms." In this view, each platform, or "micro-platform," is carving out a smaller slice of the audience attention pie. Each slice requires an expensive reformatting, or worse, reconceptualization and re-creation of the content. When one extrapolates this view, the cost of reaching a large enough audience to justify the initial creation of content becomes prohibitive. The optimist, on the other hand, sees the wide variety of platforms evolving toward a common functionality baseline. The Dreamcast runs Windows CE and DirectX, has a modem, PC-standard high-speed I/O ports, and is supplied with optional add-on peripheral devices. The Playstation 2 will have a DVD drive and be able to play movies. Sony is also opening up the Playstation 2 market to development tool vendors it expects will provide high-quality middleware solutions that developers can mix and match to customize the platform. In the past, this "open" quality and multi-purpose capability came at the price of a $3,000 PC. Today, PCs are being given away in return for ISP service contracts, and there are software-based Playstation emulators for Macs and PCs. Set-top boxes are appearing with high-powered CPUs, 3D graphics acceleration, DLS-compatible software synthesizers, and high-speed Internet access. Even DVD players, when equipped with, say, Nuon technology, are essentially just powerful game consoles that play movies. So optimistically, consoles are starting to look like small plastic PCs. PCs are now, at point of purchase, sometimes cheaper than consoles. Set-top boxes can browse the Internet, and DVD players can play games. As this trend continues, it will become easier to leverage content across multiple platforms cost-effectively. I am clearly an optimistic evolutionist. 3) Platforms evolve through standards. This consolidates and grows the market for content (and everything else). Widely adopted open standards are of great benefit to the growth of any new technology-driven, consumer-oriented market. Simply look at the adoption and growth rate of the Internet, MP3 music files, or CDs. Open standards occasion this type of growth in a three-step process. First, standards create an environment in which manufacturers can introduce new technology and then compete on the basis of price/performance, quality, and brands rather than on functionality differences. This in turn allows content creators to utilize this new technology to cost-effectively "author once" and leverage enhanced content to the broadest possible audience. As a result, an attractive and uncomplicated upgrade message is created for consumers. In other words, open standards foster sustained market growth and maturation in which all can participate in the upside. Proprietary standards and APIs, on the other hand, create winners, losers and confused consumers. There are two very important elements of the process of developing open standards that are not always well understood. The first is that good standards should be extensible and encourage continued innovation beyond the baseline. Jeff Roberts, one of the main programmers behind the hugely popular Miles Sound System API, summed up this idea succinctly: "We both support all of the critical standards, and innovate past the standards when necessary. We want our customers to benefit from the standards without being constrained by them." The second aspect of open standards is that extensions to the standards often become the basis for the next "level" of the standard. Consequently, this article looks at both emerging standards and technologies that push beyond the limits into new territory. Enjoy! ___________________________________________________ |
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Features
Editor's
Introduction