A new Microsoft patent reveals the company’s plans to quite literally take over every conceivable home entertainment device in your home, combining them all into one huge distributed home entertainment network. The patent shows a “console” (presumably an XBox 360 or a next-gen XBox) being the central hub of the network, communicating with dozens of handheld devices. What’s interesting is that Microsoft doesn’t restrict what these devices are, and lists handheld gaming devices, mobile phones, PDAs and PMPs as possibilities.
The “Multi-Component Gaming System” (MCGS) as the patent calls it is completely distributed. Not only can each device share the content from any other device, it can also share the hardware resources of any other attached devices as and when necessary. For example, if your XBox hasn’t enough processing power to display three simultaneous pictures in a picture-in-picture setup, it’ll borrow the graphics rendering power from a handheld gaming device, and let that display the third picture.
Another example is distributed memory - if your XBox is running out of storage space, it’ll simply borrow whatever’s available from the other connected handheld devices. Even more intriguing, different handheld devices can swap what Microsoft calls “Doppler sound effects” for objects in motion, making the user think that an in-game object is really moving just by its sound. 作者: 没钱的命 时间: 2007-4-23 12:42
