Growth of the Gaming Industry

Description:

The games industry has been growing enormously over the last few years. From the moment you could own and play a game-console type machine in your house, such as the Amiga, it has taken off. However, only recently has the games industry grown sufficiently large that it can now start making multi-billion dollar investments and expect to earn that back. This has given the industry an enormous momentum, and games hardware & software are now on the cutting edge of technology. In fact, the games industry is on the brink of overtaking 'normal' computer technology with the newly announced Cell processor, a joint venture between IBM, Sony and Toshiba. What makes this processor so special is not only the fact that it can do more calculations then an average Pentium4 processor by a factor of 100, but the Cell processor has multiple cores, and each of these cores communicate with each other to form a grid. Moreover it can automatically search for other Cell processors on a network and will form a distributed grid with them.

Enablers:

- The increasing number of people playing games all around the world have made these investments possible, - Additionally, people are increasingly demanding their leisure time, instead of working. This leisure time will in some instances be translated with gaming (directly or indirectly through playing with their children), - Technological advances in graphics and processor technology.

Inhibitors:

Inhibitors at the moment seem to be few and far between, as the industry is booming. However bringing games-technology into the mainstream might prove difficult.

Experts:

IBM, Sony, Toshiba

Web Resources:

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-948493.html?tag=fd_top

http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.html