Dr. Dobb's Journal July, 2004
As you might expect, we were feeling slicker than a three-dollar nickel with the publication of "Gameboy Advance for Non-Gaming Applications" (DDJ, May 2004), an article that explained how to turn the game console into a spectrum analyzer. After all, any feature that scares up a letter from the long-lost David Betz (see page 8) would have to be instructive, useful, and flat-out fun. Not to be outdone, the folks at Ahead Games (http://www.aheadgames.com/) announced yet another of their crafty Gameboy Advance modifications—this one is an overclocking trick that lets the device run at twice the regular clock speed. Why? Well, it seems that the SNES Advance Super Nintendo emulator (http://exile90.com/~snes/) needed more horsepower to drive graphics and sound for playing older games. And while you might normally expect overclocking by 2× would be a better dead-of-winter project when you need to keep your hands warm, Ahead Games reports no problems with heat or battery life.
Meanwhile, the crew over at the XBox Linux Project (http://www.xbox-linux.org/) continue to turn XBox game consoles into $150 Linux PCs. Not a bad deal, considering you end up with a computer that sports a 733-MHz Celeron CPU, 300-MHz Nvidia Geforce MX3 Graphics, 64 MB of RAM, an 8- or 10-GB hard drive, a DVD drive, four USB ports, and a 10/100-mbps Ethernet port. Once you install Linux (http://www.xbox-linux.org/docs/howtoswprep.html), what you have is (take your pick): a game console you can connect to a TV and use for Internet access (e-mail and web browsing); or a Linux-based desktop computer, with keyboard, mouse, scanner, printer, webcam, and DVD burner, connected to a VGA monitor; or a Linux server for HTTP/FTP/SMB/NFS, serving MP3/MPEG4/DivX data; or whatever. No matter how you slice it, $150 is cheap for a PC with those capabilities.
Alas, there is one thing you can't do with a Linux/XBox—play massively multiplayer games over the Internet via Microsoft's "XBox Live" service. Ahh...actually you can, if you're up to yet another modification. By installing the Cromwell BIOS (http://www.teamxecuter.com/cromwell.htm), you can boot Linux and still use the XBox Live network.
In truth, access to massively multiplayer games is a big deal, both in terms of big business and lots of fun. Assuming you have a game console (like an XBox or PlayStation2) and broadband access, you can join a game at just about any time of day or night for a few relaxing hours of murder and mayhem. According to reports, Microsoft has more than 750,000 players who use XBox Live, each paying $50 a year. For its part, Sony claims to have sold 2.4 million $40 network adapters for PlayStation2 connectivity. Of the 920,000 copies of PlayStation2 "SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs" (my current favorite ) that have been sold, about half are being played online. On the other hand, "The Sims Online" from Electronic Arts has attracted only about 80,000 subscribers, far from the company's goal of 1 million. Currently, about 50 PlayStation2 games support online features, with 100 more expected by Christmas. Likewise, Microsoft has about 100 games that take advantage of XBox Live.
According to market-research firm DFC Intelligence (http://www.dfcint.com/), there are 50 million people who play online games (using both PCs and game consoles) worldwide, a number that is expected to grow to 114 million by 2006. Moreover, DFC expects that more than 40 million gamers worldwide will be going online with game consoles by 2008. In dollars and cents, DFC sees the worldwide market for video game hardware and software growing from $23.2 billion in 2003 to $33.4 billion in 2008. In the short term, however, there's a bump in the road, with revenues projected to go down 9 percent in 2004 and another 14 percent in 2005 before turning around in 2006. These projections have born out: Sony, for instance, recently revealed that its game division suffered a 40 percent profit decline in 2003-2004, due mainly to falling demand for PlayStation2 game consoles.
Of course, a big part of the problem is that a lot of games simply stink. Taking a bad concept and hiding it behind 3D graphics, realistic sound, and real-time action leaves you with, well, a bad concept. The TV and movie industries—which are trying to dominate the video game industry—haven't been able to figure this out. It's no accident that more than half of last year's top 20 bestselling PC games didn't require 3D video cards. This, in part, explains the ongoing fascination with emulators like SNES that let you play old video games—a lot of them were based on good (albeit simple) concepts and were downright fun to play. And when you stop and think about it, the premise that you can't hide a bad idea and poor craftsmanship behind a flashy GUI applies to all software, not just games.