INSIDE GAMES & ENTERTAINMENT UPDATE Volume 2, Issue 61 - Late Issue 3DO & Matsushita: SEND MONEY Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. provided $40 million, in what could be described as a financial band aid, to the 3DO Co. (www.3do.com). Matsushita signed a licensing agreement in December 1995 that agreed to pay 3DO a total of $100 million. $60 million was plunked down in December at that signing. The final amount paid, $40 million, enables Matsushita to license 3DO's 64-bit M2 technology. M2 is the code-name for 3DO's next-generation game technology, which is designed to process graphics and data in 64-bit chunks. As part of the licensing agreement, Matsushita has the rights to use the M2 technology in consumer electronic equipment, including video game equipment, digital videodisc (DVD), players or interactive television set-top boxes. The white flag has now been extended from 3DO to both Sega Corp. and Sony Corp., essentially conceding the game machine market to these two companies. Wanting to remain in the electronics arena, 3DO, in September 1995, announced a product diversification strategy that would expand its business beyond the game machine area to the Internet and personal computer market. America Online: COMIC CAPERS Several months ago, America Online (AOL) initiated a new program for the commserv that was designed to assist folk who wished to create innovative content for the online community. Called The AOL Greenhouse, a number of successful online ventures were created, one being the highly-acclaimed The Motley Fool. Now another infopreneur as made the climb from development to offering on AOL. This is ZMedia, Inc., and they are producing an original, multimedia comic strip that is called Zombie Detective. The offering presents textured graphics, original music, sound effects and animation that let you actually appear as extras within the strip. You can also act as an informer and role-play in a number of situations. The interactive comic strip has an anti-authoritarian theme and a number of offbeat characters and is delivered five days each week. To obtain the most entertainment from this strip, you should check in each day to explore another piece of the story. You must click on hot spots in each frame to get your info. AMERICA WEST OFFERS FLIGHT SCHEDULES Want to know the comings and goings of flights for America West? Now you can investigate the schedules running for 330 days out, including the company's codeshare flights, at http://www.americawest.com. Customers simply enter their departure city, destination city, date of travel and preferred time of day. They then receive a listing of America West flights that meet their criteria. Additional information, such as aircraft type, is also available. Apple: COME TO FRUITION The ability to ease the development cycle for games is crucial for Apple Computer. Already reeling for lower unit sales, the company had to do something that would enable developers to create new entertainments for Macintosh OS-based machines. More than 4,000 developers worked with Apple's preliminary software development kit, called Game Sprockets, and over the past nine months, submitted reports to Apple on this kit's viability. Finally, Game Sprockets Version 1.0 has been released. Now, games that operate on Macintosh OS-based machines can offer 3D sound, I/O device and monitor control, real-time 3D graphics, Internet support and speech recognition. Version 1.0 can be downloaded directly from Apple's WWW Game Developer Site at http://dev.info.apple.com/games. These APIs can be mixed and matched by developers to best compliment and enhance their titles. Game Sprockets include DrawSprocket, an API for multiple buffering and display control; InputSprocket, an API for digital joystick and input device control; NetSprocket, an API for multiplayer gaming and Internet connectivity that uses Open Transport; QuickDraw 3D RAVE, an API for fast, multiplatform 3D graphics; SpeechSprocket, an API for speech recognition; and SoundSprocket, which is an API for 3D Sound and Sound Manager operation. AST Computer: THEATER GAMES The Hunchback of Notre Dame has received a variety of mixed reviews, although the company is definitely headed toward yet another profitable animated feature film. Accompanying the apparent success of the move, AST Computer has joined forces with Walt Disney Pictures and will be positioning their AST Advantage! 828 multimedia PC in 150 theaters in the top ten markets in the country to demo Disney Interactive's GameBreak! The Hunchback of Notre Dame Topsy Turvey Games offering. (Phew, that's quite a title!) This is the first time a PC manufacturer has teamed with Disney to offer a sneak-peak of the game while families are actually at the theaters. The game is expected to debut on August 14th. AT&T: FREE OLYMPIC CONCERTS AT&T will provide a 17-day program of free performances by various entertainers at the summer Olympics at the AT&T Global Olympic Village in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. AT&T's Global Olympic Village, a 21-acre park, is recognized as the crossroads of the 1996 Olympic Games. At AT&T's Global Olympic Village, there'll be concerts, acknowledgments to the medal-winning athletes, T-shirt auctions for Olympic Aid, multi-sensory video spectaculars and interactive street theater, all starting on July 20. Among the premier entertainers scheduled to perform are Joan Osborne, Ray Charles, Travis Tritt & Marty Stuart, Santana, Sounds of Blackness with CeCe Winans and Shirley Caesar, Jon Secada, Wei Wei and the American Jazz. These concerts, as well as the entire entertainment program, will be produced by Cossette Productions, which has produced the Grammy Awards for the past 26 years. ESPN: RADICAL CHILL Sports--enormously popular and gaining in ratings each day. However, the normal sports fare is being expanded of late, as folk become dissatisfied with the egos and the salaries of the baseball and basketball players, and younger folk demand more radical action. Due to this interest in more radical sports, ESPN this summer introduced the Summer X Games, taking place in Rhode Island, featuring such sports as in-line skating, acrobatic skydiving, and street luge. The series has been quite popular. Naturally, then, ESPN has decided to intro one and all to the Winter X Games which will run at the Snow Summit Mountain Resort at Big Bear Lake, CA, from January 30th through February 2nd of next year. There will be five extreme offerings: ice climbing, snow boarding, snow bicycling, super-modified shovel racing and cross-over competition. The latter sport is actually snowboarding that is combined with bicycle stunts, in-line skating and skateboarding--a highly interesting combo. More than 150 athletes are expected to compete for over $200,000 in prize money. Excite: BIG--AND GETTING BIGGER Search tools are, without a doubt, the most highly accessed information on the Internet. These folk are all full of marketing bravado as they continually reiterate that millions upon millions of users are entering their areas to find the URLs of interest for specific subject matter interests. Now, Excite, Inc., has signed a binding letter of intent to merge with The McKinley Group Inc., the creators of the Magellan On-Line Guide. This joining of forces will create the second largest Internet search and directory service, merging the two largest editorial staffs in the industry. Once this merger has been completed, Excite will be able to offer more than four million pages per day and reviews of more than 100,000 WWW sites. Excite is located at http://www.excite.com. Fractal Design: RAY DREAMS ON TO A NEW VERSION An upgrade for Ray Dream Studio, verison 4.1 for Windows(TM), is available from Fractal Design Corporation. This latest version 4.1 for Windows(TM) offers support for Microsoft's Direct3D(TM) that includes both software and hardware acceleration when used with appropriate hardware. This results in faster on-screen rendering. And version 4.1 works with Apple's QuickDraw 3D(TM) standards, bringing faster on-screen shaded previews to improve user productivity--hardware acceleration is also supported. Other new features include visible motion paths, new levels of anti-aliasing, and the ability to use the QuickDraw 3D (3DMF) format on both Macintosh(R) and Windows platforms. Additionally, version 4.1 offers Internet support, including a direct VRML export filter and support for GIF and JPEG file formats. VRML 1.0 export filters allow users to easily integrate navigable 3D environments into their World Wide Web pages. Version 4.1's ability to export directly to VRML provides end users with the ability to create interactive sites directly in Ray Dream Designer or Ray Dream Studio without additional, costly software. Garfield: NO CAT NAPS FOR GARFIELD ONLINE The clever humor of Garfield cartoons seem to bridge the gap between cat lovers and cat haters. That wacky humor is now available online at Garfield Online (http://www.garfield.com). Here folks will participate in activities and enjoy clever content that also includes comic strips, downloadable screen savers, wallpapers and coloring book pages. Folks can send electronic postcards, enter their pet (or person) in the Garfield look-a-like contest, take a Garfield trivia quiz, and communicate with other Garfield fans via Proxima, Inc.'s discussion group software, Podium 2.0, and QuickTime videos that allows visitors to take virtual walks through the studio where Garfield is created. GT Interactive: LOSE DOOM, GET THE DUKE Two of the leading twitches ever produced for PCs were id Software's DOOM and DOOM II, followed by their third hit, Hexen. The distributor of these titles was GT Interactive. However, the relationship 'tween id and GTI came to end with Quake, which id is handling for themselves. To be doomless was not a comfortable position for GTI, which then went after another leading twitch, none other than Duke Nukem 3D from FormGen Corporation. Now, GTI has acquired FormGen, with one million shares of GTI common stock being exchanged for all of FormGen's outstanding shares. If you'll recall, last week GTI glommed onto The WizardWorks Group who developed and produced software that is aptly named "value-priced." Kesmai: FLYING ONTO MAC One of the most popular multiplayer, online flight sims of all time has been Air Warrior from Kesmai Corporation. This company is one of the leading developers of multiplayer, online gaming and they have now announced that this extremely popular title will be developed for Macintosh TCP/IP technology. Already at work on a Windows version, the Macintosh version will appear, exclusively on America Online's Game Channel. The Mac version will feature real-time, multiplayer, online play with over 27 W.W.I and W.W.II and Korean War fighters and bombers. All of the planes are modeled after authentic plane performance characteristics for their time period. The adjustable levels of play ensure that beginner and vet air combat sim'ers will enjoy their flight experience. More info is available at http:\\www.kesmai.com. Mpath: QUAKE THAT SITE The Quake(TM) flood continues . . .this hugely popular twitch continues to garner impressive sales figures. This, in turn, leads others to wish to join the Quakin' that's goin' on. So be it--Mpath Interactive has now signed with id Software to bring Quake to Mplayer, the company's WWW-based, interactive game service. A limited beta test will be conducted prior to going live. Not only will the WWW site offer Quake, but Mpath is also working on a Windows 95(R) version that'll work across TCP/IP networks. MTV: A REALITY CLEANSING Soap operas have always held sway during the late morning and early afternoon time slots on television. MTV is one of those networks that is attempting to bring soaps to prime time, and have been working away at this task with their reality-based soap opera entitled The Real World, now entering its fifth season. The series concerns five Americans, oneCuban-Ame rican and one native of the USSR, all sharing the same house and trying to start their own business. This season, the series is set in Miami, Florida. The network will premiere the first two episodes of this soapy series on July 10th at 10:00 pm. NBC: BASKETBALL BETTERMENT? Having already inked a $750 million deal to broadcast the NBA next year, NBC is now also the first TV network to televise the new Women's NBA (WNBA)...even though there are no players and no teams! The network will (hopefully) broadcast one game a week through 2001, with the first game to be televised June 21st, next year. There is competition, however, as the American Basketball League already has eight teams and has assigned 16 star players to those teams. No up-front rights fees were involved. NBC & Intel: INTERACTIVE MURDER A new technology, called Intercast technology, which allows you to receive broadcast WWW pages that are related to programming on TV or cable, is being expanded by NBC and Intel Corporation. The leading chip maker is going to sponsor Homicide: Life on the Street as an Intercast broadcast, as well as one news and one sports program, all on NBC. Additionally, Intel is an NBC on-air sponsor of the programs for which it will be the Intercast sponsor. Definitely in the line of TV and computer convergence, you'll be able to access an Interactive Crime Lab where you can comb through suspect and fingerprint files, coroner's reports and other materials that relate directly to the episode being broadcast. What's cool is that these materials are only for Intercast access--TV viewers will not be able to see this material. You'll also obtain tips on upcoming twists in the plot. Plus, there will be character background info. You'll get exclusive access to the Evidence Bank and Case Files. Here is where past Homicide cases, solved and unsolved, are available for your reference. You'll be able to chat with other fans about the current issue as well...while it is in progress. The show was the winner of the 1995 George Foster Peabody Award for dram series and presents a realistic portrayal of a homicide detective's life. The show can be viewed on NBC Friday nights at 10:00 p.m., ET. NBC: TAKE ME OUT TO THE CYBERSPACE BALL GAME, TAKE ME OUT WITH THE CROWD The All Star Game on July 9th will offer interactive coverage on the Web through the team effort of NBC Sports, Major League Baseball and Instant Sports. The game will be broadcast on July 9th at 8:00 p.m. (EST) on the NBC television network, and simulated on the World Wide Web from the Instant Sports Web site (http://www.instantsports.com), with additional access from the NBC Sports (http://www.nbc.com/sports) and MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL (http://www.majorleaguebaseball.com) Web sites. Nielsen Research: CABLE CONFIDENTIAL--NOT The top 10 cable network programs for the week of June 10 through 16, according to Nielsen Research, are: 1. Movie: Coming to America (Saturday, 5:30 p.m.), USA 2. Rugrats (Sunday, 10 a.m.), Nickelodeon 3. World Championship Wrestling (Monday, 9 p.m.), TNN 4. Nickelodeon Sports Theater (Saturday, 8 p.m.), Nickelodeon 5. World Championship Wrestling (Monday, 8 p.m.), TNN 6. Movie: Chasing the Dragon (Wednesday, 9 p.m.), Lifetime 7. Rugrats (Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.), Nickelodeon 8. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters! (Sunday, 10:30 a.m.), Nickelodeon 9. Movie: Beverly Hills Cop II (Saturday, 3:30 p.m.), USA 10. Movie: Malice (Sunday, 5:30 p.m.), TNT PC Meter: WEB STRETCHES FROM HEAVY USAGE World Wide Web use is growing faster than commercial online services, according to PC Meter whose recent survey that involved 4,000 households. The top ten sites were: America Online (37.5 percent of total audience); Yahoo! (35.6 percent); Netscape (35.5 percent); WebCrawler (33.9 percent); Prodigy (18.5 percent); Infoseek; Lycos; Excite; Global Network Navigator; and CompuServe. Psygnosis: SPOT THAT BALL European soccer fans have enjoyed, for years, a game of skill that appears in newspapers called Spot The Ball. The object of the paper-based game is to look at an action photograph and pick the spot where the missing soccer ball should be located. This soccer fan appeal is now going to be leveraged online to help Psygnosis leverage their new adidas Power Soccer title for Sony's PlayStation console. This new WWW site, at http://www.psygnosis.com, will have you testing your ball spotting skills as you look at action screenshots from the game itself. Those who correctly identify the ball's location will then be entered into a random drawing whose winners will receive free copies of the game, sportswear and other prizes. Plus, a print version of the ball spotting game will be handled by Psygnosis. The game, developed by Psygnosis' French studio, is expected to release this September and features four game modes and two-player support on a single PSX. If you use the PlayStation link cable, four folk can play simultaneously. SEGA'S TRAMPOLINE WILL BOUNCE BACK BIG BUCKS Edutainment software targeted at children from pre-school to age 12 will now be available from SegaSoft, Inc., the independent video game developer. Entitled Trampoline, this new brand joins another new element, the formation of a strategic alliance with software developer Media Station. Both moves are designed to create a foothold for SegaSoft in the growing edutainment market segment. Reports indicate that entertainment and home education categories continue to lead the personal computer software market. North American retail sales in the two categories totaled more than $1.22 billion in 1995, compared with $1.02 billion in 1994. Sierra: VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF...GAMES When you have solid content, albeit somewhat old, as long as the material remains interesting, there's a good shot at remarketing the material for today's audience. Such is what Sierra On-Line has done with their new SierraOriginals value line of software. Each of these packs contains six CD-ROM titles from Sierra's library of products. The Family Pack contains Classics Fun Pack, Mixed-Up Mother Goose, Hoyle Classic Board Games, King's Quest VI, The Even more Incredible Machine and The Island of Dr. Brain. The Kid's Pack has The Island of Dr. Brain, Spelling Blizzard, Kids Typing, Ecoquest, Hoyle Children's Collection, and the Incredible Toon Machine. This offering is suited for children ages 7 to 12. Then there's the Sierra Gamer's Pack which includes Red Baron, Leisure Suit Larry 1, Caesar, Quest for Glory IV, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, and King's Quest V. SierraOriginals will be priced at around $19.95 (street price) and you can find more info at http://www.sierra.com. SPA: APPLICATIONS ARE UP The Software Publishers Association (SPA) reported that the PC computer application software sales were almost $2.4 billion in the first quarter of this year. The number reflected a 12.3 percent increase over the first quarter of 1995. Also reported was that all categories experienced heavy growth except DOS software. Macintosh database shipments showed a considerably strong 210 percent increase in sales, with Macintosh desktop publishing applications climbing 89 percent. Sony: CLOSE COMMUNICATION Ahhh, Dick Tracy. Buck Rogers, as a matter of fact. Yes, both of these jaunty comic characters, in their time, revealed that most communication, in the future, will be transmitted via wrist or other hand-held devices. Apparently, Sony New Technologies and Farcast have folk within their folds who knew, liked, and understood these devices. They have now agreed to develop a new version of Farcast's electronic news service that'll offer new and stock quotes on Sony Magic Link and Motorol Envoy personal communicators. When this source of info becomes available, you'll be able to get your updates on an as-needed basis or at a specific time each day. Magic-Cap users will obtain unlimited news and other info at a flat rate of $9.95 per month. The news wires accessed will include the Associated Press, BusinessWire, PR Newswire, Newsbytes and United Press International. Plus, for those interested in company and industry profiles, the Reference Press' Hoover Guides will be available. Customized news service is, indeed, the future coming home--today! Symantec: TIMELY UPDATES Yes, the Internet is a super cool way to access the latest information on anything that is of interest to you. Yes, numerous companies--too numerous in number to even count--offer their technologies to you, whether in beta or final form, via downloads. Unfortunately, these companies' server are usually working overtime to process the requests for such downloads. Their queues seem to go on forever, and you find that 2:30 am using the mirror site in Helsinki is the only way to obtain the latest and coolest goodie for your web work. Symantec has an idea on how to make this process easier for your, and they call it LiveUpdate. This technology will appear as an icon on Symantec products in the future and will let you obtain those upgrades, updates, patches, and info quickly and easily. You will no longer have to hunt for the specific URL that'll gain you access to the area you need. Instead, LiveUpdate will launch a Wizard. This magic guide will ease through the update process automatically, from connecting you to the appropriate Symantec server through the download itself. What is specifically unique to LiveUpdate is that this puppy works in the background, enabling you to continue your primary processing project. More info is available at http://www.symantec.com. Warner Brothers: SLEEPLESS IN SYBERSPACE There are millions of us who laugh at sleep! We remain awake through the darker hours, enjoying our pastimes or our work during the time most others float upon their pillows. For those of us who engage in such nightly wakefulness, America Online and Warner Brothers have created Insomniacs Asylum. This program is available from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m, EST, exclusively on AOL at Keyword: Insomniacs. You'll find some truly original characters online, plus information from and about other online folk who enjoy the same hours as you. There's Cafe.Com, a cyberspace coffee house where you can discuss anything you wish; Club Rendezvous, where you can "look" for someone who could end up special to you; Gonzo's Comedy Shop for downloadable one-liners and tons of jokes; current news items and, yes, even a horoscope and offbeat news items from Club Dementia. Each room has its own cast of evolving characters, and there will be live events and themed. The site was created by Warner Brothers Online.