APEX TO SHIP DVD DEVICE THAT ALSO PLAYS PC GAMES THROUGH TV
Apex Digital said it planned to unveil a combination PC gaming console and progressive scan DVD player at CES in Jan. after signing a deal with privately held technology company Digital Interactive Systems Corp. (DISC). An Apex spokeswoman said “we have not yet established a ship date, nor have we confirmed pricing, although we anticipate it being in the $399 range.”
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In preliminary specs for the product, Apex said its “Apextreme” PC Game Unit/DVD player would “play PC versions of your favorite electronic games in the TV room where high-quality TV and home audio equipment will further enhance your game- playing experience.” In addition to the gaming functionality, Apex said the unit would include typical DVD player features, including the ability to play back discs encoded with MP3 music files, S-Video, component and composite outputs, Dolby Digital and DTS outputs. The player also will feature a 40 GB hard drive -- presumably for storage of saved games -- along with an Ethernet connection, phone connection for modems, a 1.2 GHz processor and 256 MB DDR RAM.
A spokeswoman said Apex is “interested in product categories that move the home theater experience out of the computer room into the living room where one can enjoy home entertainment on the large screen format.” Of the game console competition from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, she said: “This is a not a new gaming platform and is therefore not considered to be competitive to Microsoft, Sony or others. It will be compatible with existing PC versions of current games.”
The spokeswoman said Apex was “always open to branding opportunities but [we] have defined nothing yet” on advertising and marketing plans for the gaming system/DVD player.
DISC already had taken the wraps off the DISCover technology to be used in the Apex player at the E3 Expo in L.A. earlier this year (CED May 21 p5). There, DISC Pres. Avraham DorEl said his company was negotiating with various OEMs and had tentative deals with Hyundai Electronics, ABS Computers and Far East-based SVA to bring out products by this holiday selling season. DorEl said Mon. that the Hyundai deal “probably” would still happen but the status of the ABS and SVA deals wasn’t clear.
DorEl said Apex, which wasn’t one of the companies he had cited in May, would “definitely be the main consumer electronics company” that would be spotlighted in a product/technology showcase DISC planned to have at CES. But he said DISC already had signed a deal with Alienware, which also would be announcing a product at CES. DorEl said the company also had been talking with a couple of other companies, and deals were very close to being finalized. He said “I'm sure [computer maker] Voodoo,” for example, would use the technology. Alienware and Voodoo had not commented by our deadline.
It wasn’t clear Tues. whether products that Alienware and other manufacturers would be unveiling would be similar to Apex’s DVD player. But DorEl had said in May that manufacturers wanted to license a variety of models from an entry-level $299 product with a Pentium 3 processor and 40 GB hard disc to higher end devices at $545 and up with PVR functionality, a Pentium 4 processor, Dolby 6.1 sound, 120 GB hard drive and Nvidia G-Force graphics card. He also said future high-end consoles could be HD-ready “to really take advantage of high definition.” DISC at this time doesn’t plan to offer its own console, DorEl said.
DorEl explained at E3 that the key to the DISCover console was patented technology that configured a PC game disc the first time it was loaded and then stored that configuration so the game automatically started up every time that same disc was loaded. He said that meant DISCover could offer consumers the best of both worlds -- providing them with access to thousands of PC games that could be played with superior graphics on their TVs, and with the plug-&-play capability of videogame consoles. Unlike most of its competitors, he said the company wasn’t looking to offer exclusive content.
DISCover potentially can “play any [PC] game out there” but only games that get “registered” by it will actually work, DorEl said. Third-party game publishers including Electronic Arts (EA) have greeted the concept with open arms and no fee is involved for the ability to register games, he said: “They don’t have to do anything for us.” EA had no comment by our deadline.
DorEl projected that “we will have over 2,000 [PC] games” at rollout that could be played on consoles that used the DISCover technology. That was one of the reasons why he wasn’t concerned about competition from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, DorEl said. He said that when those manufacturers introduced their consoles, only a limited number of games were available. In comparison, at the debut of DISCover consoles, there already will be more compatible PC games available than GameCube or Xbox had months after their start.