What a week it has been for game players, music lovers and others excited about the ever-increasing entertainment opportunities coming out of our tech gear.
On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. unveiled the Xbox 360, the long-awaited second-generation game console from the maker of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel as well as Microsoft Dungeon Siege 2 and Microsoft Forza Motorsport.
The splashy Xbox debut–on MTV, no less–eclipsed two other major events on the binary beat.
On Wednesday, Yahoo Inc. began a beta release of a sweet, low-cost music scheme that provides superb streaming audio and lets users rent songs from a library of 1 million titles for $7 per month. The songs play as long as one remains a subscriber, and subscribers can permanently own any song title for 79 cents–a 20-cent per song discount over Apple’s popular iTunes Music Store.
The rental offering through the company’s Yahoo Messenger software is dramatically less costly than other services such as Sonic Solutions’ Napster, Real Network’s Rhapsody and Yahoo’s own Musicmatch. It’s at http://music.yahoo.com. Apple does not offer a music rental service.
On Tuesday, Time-Warner Inc. began offering free e-mail to any and all comers willing to sign up for the company’s America Online instant Web messenger service, called AIM. An address like [email protected] comes with access to AIM and 2 gigabytes of e-mail storage, which matches Google Mail’s free storage offering that just a few months ago seemed amazingly generous.
These three developments–new games, more music and free e-mail–tie together nicely. For instance, more people are using instant messaging tools to create text messages on digital cell phones, swap files, permit video phone calls and even handle online music purchases.
The IM connection was underscored with the strange debut of the Xbox on MTV rather than the familiar press gala with Bill Gates on some stage wearing a goofy sweater while dry ice-generated fog swirls away to reveal the POTM (product of the moment).
So a lot of grownups may have missed the fact that if they pop for this tech toy, their kids’ game machine will be a far more powerful computer than Mom’s laptop or Dad’s desktop.
Under the Xbox hood are 3 IBM PowerPC microprocessors, each operating at 3.2 gigahertz, which is about the speed of a high-end computer right now.
Together these chips deliver 1 trillion calculations per second, which puts it in the same teraflop category as the supercomputers of just a few years back. This massive amount of data crunching generates so much heat that the Xbox has a water cooling system like an automobile’s radiator.
The “toy” comes with an upgradeable and detachable 20-gigabyte hard drive capable of holding thousands of downloaded music cuts or hundreds of movies, as well as a great many games that can be acquired through Web servers.
It has three USB ports that permit one to plug in things like a digital camera, an external hard drive, a camcorder or a keyboard.
Yes, a keyboard. The kids may need it to exchange text messages with other gamers or to send text messages to Dad’s cell phone.
All this indicates that the long-expected convergence of computers, televisions, music players and cell phones may take its shape in today’s equivalent of those arcade boxes of the ’70s and ’80s where kids clamored to play Road Racer and Tetris.
We use our desktops and laptops to communicate not just with e-mail but with text messages and even audio or video chats using the various IM tools built in to computers, cell phones and, now, game consoles.
More Top Picks Best Commercial Treadmills
The Yahoo music scheme uses Yahoo’s IM software to sell and play tunes from that huge song library.
The America Online free e-mail comes through AIM, that company’s IM offering. The Xbox 360 bases much of its game plan on using Microsoft’s Windows Messenger IM service to link game players with competitors worldwide through Internet connections.
A great many parents already have found themselves communicating with their children using the text message features of cell phones in lieu of vocal chords. The new Xbox can pop up IMs on the screen–perhaps a new channel for parent/offspring communication.
A so-called Media Center PC Extender lets users acquire high-definition video from other computers and display it on widescreen television in the 16:9 format that slowly but surely is replacing the familiar 4:3 boxes in the world’s family rooms.
A built-in, progressive-scan DVD player can be used to show programming and games in HDTV as well as play movies and music–in 5.1 Dolby stereo clarity. The DVD drive also burns music CDs, adding to its features beyond being a mere game box. Likewise, the USB connections talk to iPods and other mobile music players.
While Microsoft declines to give a price, it is expected to be within the $150 to $300 range for current game consoles.
Analysts see in Xbox a bid to go beyond the young crowd of gamers and court, of all things, grown-ups.
After all, the top games are about war. Call these new developments the IM Wars: The Battle for Eyeballs.
———-
Binary beat readers can participate in the column at chicagotribune.com/askjim, or e-mail [email protected]. Snail-mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.