Yet more ex-MS employees form game company

Posted on March 20, 2004 by Ron

In what was probably one of the most successful spamming campaigns yet (judging by the sheer number of “announcements” that hit the web) two ex-Microsoft employees – Herb Marselas & Chas (Charles) Boyd formed Redmond game studio Emogence LLC. If you are at all familiar with DirectX development then you know these guys have been in the trenches at Microsoft for years. Marselas is Emogence’s CEO and is a veteran who worked for game developers Ensemble Studios and Bungie Studios, both of which were acquired by Microsoft where he became a lead developer on DirectX graphics. Boyd was the architect of Direct3D at Microsoft for the last several years. Marselas is quoted as stating that the game is being designed to his and Boyd’s strengths, with an emphasis on advanced graphics technology. The two say they founded Emogence last September to create games that will take advantage of the latest, fastest technology, such as video cards and graphics chips. They claim that they want a shorter development schedule because graphics technology changes so rapidly they feel they can ship a game in 10 months – apparently by automating the generation of a lot of the content.

From the IGN Interview:

Jonric: Shipping this year would represent a much shorter development period than we’re used to seeing. How realistic is this? What are the keys to achieving it without undue bugginess?

Marselas: We wouldn’t have announced the date if we weren’t confident in it.

But the programmers, who run a “virtual company” that employs half a dozen artists across the country, have no publisher for their game, called “Grafan”,’ at this time. They plan to show the game at E3 this year.

 

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Half-Life 2 out this summer

Posted on February 5, 2004 by Ron

In an interview with CNNMoney, Valve’s marketing director Doug Lombardi stated that the company “is currently targeting this summer for the completion of Half-Life 2”. They aren’t going to reveal any more information till E3 in Los Angeles (May12-14). The article discusses the other games that were delayed along with HL2, those that are planning to use the HL2 engine. The article also claims that between the HL2 delay and the delay of id Software’s Doom 3, PC games sales are down due to gamers waiting for these games to ship before upgrading their systems. (Sales were down 14% from 2002) They also think that games sales will pick up once these title hit the shelves.

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Another ex-CEG’er, Kevin Bachus, ends up at Infinium Labs

Posted on January 30, 2004 by Ron
Infinium Labs reported that it’s hired Kevin Bachus as President and Chief Operating Officer. The Florida based start-up announced that his immediate focus will be the launch of the company’s Phantom Gaming Service, a broadband-based gaming system that will provide consumers with video games, games on-demand, game rentals, and other interactive entertainment services. The Phantom has caused the media to term it “vaporware” at best and at worst some sort of scam. It was supposed to launch in September 2003 and the demo at CES never actually had a unit powered up. Though one does note that they got another $US15 Million in funding recently. Infinium has also started trading publicly on the stock market (OTC BB: IFLB) earlier this month – through the acquisition of another publicly traded (but inactive) company – thus avoiding an IPO and a lot of the scrutiny that goes along with it. Though we note that Wall Street still isn’t the happy-happy place for IPO’s it once was. It gets weirder since the SEC filing was not only the first apparent mention of Bachus’ hiring, but also a stealth 5-1 stock split that still has the shares of the company wildly gyrating. This changes the outstanding shares from about 5 million to 25 million, with the two founders holding about 60% of the company. You can read more about it at the HeraldTribune article.

In an interview on GameIndustry.biz, Bachus is brutally honest about the problems of the “vaporware” reputation he’ll have to overcome and how he’s so new to the company he’s still got to find out who the target customers are. It’s a good read. However I still have my doubts about attempting to go up against Sony & Microsoft, particularly when they are poised to demo their new consoles in a GDC timeframe and, according to Bachus, the Phantom’s hardware specs haven’t been finalized yet even though they intend to demo a unit at E3 this year. Still, if anyone can steer the Phantom to production, Bachus probably has the experience. Good luck Kevin.

(For an interesting look at how the Xbox was created/launched, I recommend Dean Takahashi’s book, “Opening the XBox”.)
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ATI overtakes NVIDIA – barely

Posted on January 28, 2004 by Ron

Data released on Monday by Mercury Research shows that ATI edged out NVIDIA in sales for Q4 2003. The numbers were Intel 31.7%, ATI 24.9%, and NVIDIA 24.7%. ATI increased at Intel & NVIDIA expense. Most of the change was in add-in cards (vs. integrated chip-sets), where ATI has handily been beating NVIDIA. This was quickly followed by Goldman Sachs analyst Andrew Root questioning if NVIDIA can meet is revenue estimates, though he didn’t change his estimates for the company. NVIDIA’s stock price has dropped about 10% this year while ATI’s has increased about the same amount. NVIDIA will host a conference call to discuss its financial results for the fourth quarter and the fiscal year ending January 25, 2004 on February 12, 2004 at 2:00 PM, Pacific Time. The Company’s prepared remarks will be followed by a question and answer period, which will be limited to questions from analysts and institutional investors. To listen to the conference call, dial 706-679-0543; no password is required. The conference call will also be webcast at www.nvidia.com and www.streetevents.com.

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Half-Life 2 happenings…

Posted on January 25, 2004 by Ron

As you already know, someone hacked into the Valve offices and stole the HL2 code, prompting a 8-9 month delay in the publishing of HL2. According to some recent articles on Slashdot and HalflifeRadio, the FBI launched a raid on the San Francisco home of programmer Chris Toshok, confiscating various items of hardware and software. Toshok was also questioned by the FBI and Secret Service regarding his association with Hungry Programmers, his ex-house mates. While some of the source code has already shown up on the net, apparently a 2-disc pirated version has found its way onto store shelves in the Russian city of Novosibirsk this month, translated into Russian, but with some gaps in the game. This delay has really screwed up ATI’s million-dollar deal with Valve – particularly the HL2 bundle with the Radeon 9600XT. Many of ATI’s partners are pulling out of the deal, not providing the HL2 copy supposedly included with video card, or just covering over the HL2 mention on the box with a sticker. ATI says;

“Beginning in December board partners had the option of purchasing the bundle from ATI for a small fee with all RADEON 9800 and RADEON 9600 series products except the RADEON 9800 XT which continued to include the bundle without charge. So, there hasn’t been any change in the availability to our partners and they all have the option to continue with the bundle or not”

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CEG goes bellyup – Seamus goes to Hollywood

Posted on December 12, 2003 by Ron

In a somewhat quiet announcement (which is my excuse for not noticing it allure) Capital Entertainment Group closed its doors in October seemingly due to lack of interest from VC’s to further fund the company (to the tune of $US20-30 million). CEG was started by Mark Hood, Kevin Bachus, Seamus Blackley and Gene Mauro with the express intent of making it easier for game developers to get funded by acting as the middle man between developers and publishers by providing funding/expertise and taking a cut from the game sales. Read more about that here. The 2003 holiday season was supposed to be the delivery date for the first run of games from CEG. CEG supposedly had a deal in place with Sega for its first two games. Guess we won’t be seeing anything now. Dean Takahashi (San Jose Mercury News & author of “Opening the XBox”) seemed to be the only person who noticed CEG’s demise in this article.

“We came to the conclusion we weren’t going to close our round,” said Eugene Mauro, chief executive officer of CEG. “Our idea for a new kind of business model was good. But the timing was off for us.”

Kevin Bachus was equally obstinate.”There’s no question in my mind that this business model will appear in the games industry in the next three years. The demand is there. The challenge is finding investors who share the appetite for risk.”

Seamus Blackley continues to amaze me with his ability to come out of mediocre situations with interesting jobs. (I think he did an excellent job with XBox BTW, even though it’s a huge money hole for Microsoft). With the announcement of CEG’s shutdown was a nearly unnoticed announcement by one of Hollywood’s most powerful talent brokers, Creative Artists Agency (CAA) that they had hired Seamus as a talent agent where he’ll be scoping out new hires – (either titles or talent was unclear).

Wired also has an article about this in “Games, Movies Tie the Knot“. Gamespot has run an interview with Seamus that you can find here. It turns out that both Seamus and Kevin were at the Spike TV Video Game Awards.

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Creative continues marching though consumer space

Posted on December 5, 2003 by Ron

Coming up from off-screen, Creative Labs has acquired Sensura for $US6.4M, acquiring all of Sensura’s 3D sound IP and existing deals. Some of Sensaura’s consumers include Analog Devices, Audiotrak, Cirrus, Crystal Logic, C-Media, ESS, Guillemot-Hercules, VideoLogic, M-Audio, NVIDIA, Realtek, Terratec, Yamaha, Voyetra Turtle Beach, and VIA Technologies… in other words pretty much everyone that Creative already isn’t selling to. Seansaura was an interesting company since they didn’t make chips – they basically did 3D sound research – and did a very good job with their “digital ear” technology. Basically they were really good at creating sounds for reproduction in 3D environments – especially those reproduced by headphones. This is particularly interesting since folks like NVIDIA & VIA are competing directly with Creative through Creative’s 3DLabs subsidiary. I haven’t heard much from 3DLabs lately, and talks with NVIDIA and ATI show they are focusing on targeting the workstation market (traditional 3DLabs territory). It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

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DirectX Next

Posted on December 1, 2003 by Ron
DirectX Next – Oh Pleeeze!

The slides from Microsoft’s Meltdown 2003 are available here. I’ve not been a fan of DirectX’s piecewise distribution of shader technology – not so much for the hardware folks as for the consumers. When I’d chat with the folks who write shader code for a living (outside the Evil Empire) – I’d get hints as to the stuff “for the next release”. This was particularly annoying as I was writing a book targeting this audience at the time and you’d think Microsoft, at the very least, would want to publicize this stuff. The hardware folks, the top-tier game writers, they were all in the know. They’d let me know, generally, that there was more to be had. Even when they did come out and state what was going on, I, under NDA, couldn’t disclose what I knew. It was very frustrating. For all intents and purposes, Microsoft does indeed seem to want to disseminate this info. Unfortunately they don’t seem to speak with a single clear voice since Phil Taylor left for the warm arms of ATI. Sigh, instead of having someone spoon-feed this out to the public, you’ve now got to glean this stuff yourself. Let’s look at the recent Meltdown slides for example.

What’s new with DX?

  1. Completely new DDI – i.e. a new DirectDraw Interface. (It’s not all new, just some new bits)
  2. Model 4.0 shaders!?!
  3. All shaders will “compile”. However, some will be “slow” (i.e. run at < 10 fps @ 640×480)
  4. More General GPU I/O – that is – data written at GPU level won’t have to be passed through CPU to be read by GPU at a later stage.
  5. More support for Higher Order Primitives – a necessary feature – it’s easier to specify a surface mesh that a grid of vertices.
  6. Render to cubemap – in one operation!
  7. Frame-Buffer Access- lots of rendering and non-rendering applications here.
Posted in Conferences, DirectX, Graphics API, PC Graphics | Leave a comment