We've never quite been able to appreciate the phenomenon that is Second Life. Nevertheless, even the metaverse-averse like ourselves can appreciate the wizardry involved in our exclusive video demonstration of Second Life on a mobile phone. That wizardry is made possible by a startup called Vollee, which is capable of serving up games whose graphics and CPU requirements are more demanding than a typical phone can handle to the Vollee client which users install on their handsets. The folks at Vollee remap the menus and controls for each game to optimize them for the smaller screen and the limited controls. During a recent demonstration at Level Up HQ, we saw a PS2 board sports game running reasonably well on a phone. We'll have more coverage of Vollee in the weeks to come, as well as our thoughts on the implications of this technology, but for now, enjoy the video.

 

Beyond3D: Nintendo released no information about the Wii beyond codenames for the chips (Broadway for the CPU and Hollywood for the GPU) and the process node that the chips were built on (90 nanometer, the same as their contemporaries). Through some lengthy investigations, we can now say for certain that there was no major leap in either performance or functionality compared to the GameCube. Instead, Nintendo decided to define the Wii entirely by the new controller....To summarize, while the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are both at least an order of magnitude faster than their predecessors, the Wii has the processing power of one-and-a-half GameCubes with no noteworthy increases in functionality. This was done for two reasons: backwards compatibility with the GameCube and, more importantly, the very low cost. Developers have even told us that the transition guide (for GameCube developers moving to the Wii) is ten pages long and contains only very minor changes.

To read Beyond3D's analysis in its entirety, please click on the link below.

As our most loyal readers know, the staff here at Level Up will from time to time scrutinize the statements of videogame executives to determine their veracity. So when Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, disparaged the technical capabilities of Nintendo's flying-off-store-shelves Wii, we knew that our services would be required. eWeek asked Bach "So, is Nintendo disrupting things for you, or were you surprised to see them?" to which he replied:

I'm actually not--the product has gotten more broad-base [sic] acclaim that I would have expected. It's a very nice product, but it actually has a relatively specific audience and a fairly specific appeal, frankly, based on one feature, which is the controller itself. And the rest of the product is actually not a great product--no disrespect, but...the video graphics on it aren't very strong; the box itself is kind of underpowered; it doesn't play DVDs; there are a lot of down-line components [that] aren't actually that interesting.

Just in case that statement wasn't enough of a hit on the Wii, Bach quickly circles back around for the fatality:

The challenge they have is that third parties aren't going to make much money on this platform because Nintendo is going to make all that money, and their ability to compete with something like a Halo or produce an experience like Madden on their system is going to be tough. They don't have the graphics horsepower that even Xbox 1 had. So it makes sort of the comparison set a little bit difficult.

Those are the kind of statements that reliably set fanboys' tongues a-wagging. But how accurate are they? Back in February, we observed posters on various message boards speculating about how much power the Wii had under the hood. Nintendo, for its part, has steadfastly refused to release the Wii's technical specifications. So we approached two of our most reliable technical experts at third party publishers--both of whom spoke under the condition that they not be identified for fear of angering Nintendo--for an independent evaluation of the Wii's abilities.

Playstation Eye

What was the philosophy behind the PlayStation Eye? How did you and Sony decide on its feature set?

This is the LONG version.... :)

The basic idea for Playstation Eye was to create a device for interactive gaming and enhanced communication. It was designed specifically to be used with PS3.

We learned a lot of things from our experience with EyeToy. The initial design meeting for what would become Playstation Eye was called by Phil Harrison. It included myself and key designers and engineers from the EyeToy game teams of SCEE [Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.] We sought to address some of the issues of EyeToy, but also add some new capabilities as well, keeping in mind all along the PS3 as the intended platform.

For designing the camera portion, there were many, many, agonizing trade-offs. Resolution vs. light sensitivity vs. framerate vs. dynamic range. There are also field of view and bandwidth and compression issues. To guide us through this, we created several usage scenarios and scored the importance of each design criteria for that scenario. For the final design, the interactive gameplay and communication scenarios were weighted as the most important for PS3.

As I mentioned already, our previous experience with EyeToy was invaluable. Low-light performance was viewed as a key issue. Also, we felt a big factor of EyeToy's success was the responsiveness imparted by its 60 frames per second framerate, so we made that a minimum requirement. The compression block artifacts of EyeToy are visually unappealing, and they also limit some of our algorithms, so we pushed for uncompressed video. And finally, the many game ideas put forth by the designers suggested the need for two different fields of view.

What about the microphone?

For the microphone portion, we knew that to truly make a useful communication device, we needed a very good voice input solution. Also, speech recognition is a technology more and more games are incorporating, and this requires clean voice input. Following the EyeToy tradition, our primary consideration was ease of use; it should just work. My U.S. R&D colleague, Crusoe Mao, had already been working on research for voice input using microphone arrays, so his work was merged into the design. The hands-free voice input this enables may be the single most important feature of Playstation Eye.

But throughout all this, we universally agreed on one underlying design criterion: cost. Just as with EyeToy, we wanted to create an affordable device that could be accessible to all players and gain widespread popularity. We understood this was the key to allowing people to enjoy the many new experiences we were planning to create.