FW: NYTimes.com Article: Sony Is Venturing Into Online Games for Multitudes

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FW: NYTimes.com Article: Sony Is Venturing Into Online Games for Multitudes

Friam mailing list
Another application for grid computing.

Belinda


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Sony Is Venturing Into Online Games for Multitudes

February 27, 2003
By STEVE LOHR






Grid computing, a concept that originated in supercomputing
centers, is taking a step toward the mainstream: Sony will
announce today that it will use the technology to
accelerate its push into the emerging market for online
games with thousands of players at a time.

Sony is teaming up with I.B.M. and Butterfly.net Inc., a
software start-up that will build the grid for players who
use Sony's PlayStation 2 video game consoles. The companies
plan to demonstrate the technology next week at the annual
Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif.

The move is an endorsement of grid technology, which links
many computers over the Internet to make greater computing
power reliably available to individuals. In the last few
years, scientists have used grid technology in fields that
often require immense amounts of computing, like particle
physics and genome research. Some companies have begun
experimenting with grid computing for tasks like designing
new drugs.

The collaboration of Sony, I.B.M. and Butterfly.net
promises to pull this rarefied technology firmly into a
consumer market. "This is a formal validation that grid is
ready," said Scott Penberthy, an I.B.M. vice president.
"Grid has arrived."

Games with great numbers of players present daunting
computing challenges. The market is just beginning to
emerge, and the game environments are frequently bedeviled
by technical glitches - sluggish graphics and long delays
for users who want to play. For online game enthusiasts,
grid technology could deliver the ideal of letting
thousands of simultaneous users enjoy fast, realistic
graphics, and letting them play either alone or with
friends in teams without having to wait.

Sony and its technology partners regard their approach to
these games as a distinctly different path from that
adopted by Microsoft, the company that Sony and I.B.M.
regard as their principal rival. Developers working on new
multiplayer games for PlayStation 2 can use a layer of
software that was created by Butterfly.net and is based on
an open-source software standard called Open Grid Services
Architecture.

That software layer, the Butterfly Grid for PlayStation 2,
runs on I.B.M. server computers running Linux, an operating
system that is the best-known example of open-source
software, which means that code is distributed free and is
steadily improved by a community of programmers. Microsoft
has identified Linux as a threat to its flagship product,
the Windows operating system.

Microsoft has begun offering online technology for its Xbox
video game console, called Xbox Live. Like Sony, Microsoft
is trying to woo developers to write ambitious games for
many players using its technology - from programming tools
to computers running Microsoft software - as the engine
room for such Xbox games.

"Microsoft is taking a very different path: it's their
technology all the way down," said David Levine, chief
executive of Butterfly.net, which is based in Martinsburg,
W. Va., and Los Angeles.

The leading multiplayer games, like Everquest, have
initially grown up on personal computer technology. But
that is beginning to change as video game consoles become
increasingly powerful computers in their own right and
their numbers rise rapidly.

Everquest, for example, has just introduced a version for
PlayStation 2. Beginning last summer, a number of
multiplayer versions of popular PlayStation 2 games have
been introduced, including Socom: U.S. Navy Seals, Madden
Football and Game Day 2003.

Yet so far, most of these have been what are called
session-based games, accommodating only up to a dozen
players in teams, with the size of the teams limited by
space on a server. Grid technology allows many clusters of
computers to be linked together as if they were a single
machine, making it easier for players to roam widely within
a game's virtual environment.

The other thing Sony and its technology partners hope to do
with the grid model is reduce the costs for developers to
make and support multiplayer games for PlayStation 2, the
leading game console. Such games have been costly, bespoke
projects. The game developer or publisher has had to set up
and support expensive computer server and host systems for
each game.

The grid model presented by Butterfly.net and I.B.M. could
sharply reduce costs, according to some developers. For a
fee, those two companies - or others - can supply the
platform software and computing engine-room services,
freeing up game developers to work on new features.

"This will standardize the industry and put everyone on a
more equal footing," said Curt Benefield, chief executive
of Sherman 3D, maker of a multiplayer science fiction game
called VibeForce.

For Sony, the collaboration with I.B.M. and Butterfly.net
is a way to try to encourage developers to design such
games for PlayStation 2 - a market that has just begun to
emerge, the company says, but is expected to grow rapidly
over the next few years.

"This is building a foundation for developers to work on,"
said Monica Wik, a spokeswoman for Sony Computer
Entertainment Inc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/technology/27GRID.html?ex=1047356201&ei=1&
en=86957451d6693ce9



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