In hopes of stealing a piece of the online gaming industry, Hewlett-Packard's gaming unit "Game On" (part of the company's Technology Solutions Group) is currently developing a gaming technology in its research centers. The company plans to incorporate the interactive gaming experinence into next-generation personal computers with the aim of competing against the surge in popularity of console games. The number one PC-maker has demonstrated prototypes of gaming technologies including computers with curved screens allowing a gamer playing a race car game to see the track they're driving on ahead and to their sides and a touch-screen computer built into a coffee table so players can sit on all sides and participate. HP also played a video in which a teenage boy walks through a big city with his handheld game player. He points the device at a portion of the city's skyline; the device scans the outline of the buildings in view and creates a game scene from that image.
Rahul Sood, chief technology officer of HP's global gaming business unit, who came over from VoodooPC, sees HP offering a premium line of gaming PCs priced higher than its current line of HP and Compaq branded PCs, but lower than VoodooPC's custom-made models (HP recently acquired VoodooPC), which can sell for $8,000. If done right, HP can create its own niche of the gaming market, away from all other competing PC makers. On the other hand, the gaming industry is already very saturated and the risk is definitely there.
News source: InfoWorld
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