Preface

The global games and interactive entertainment industry is expanding at a rapid rate. Industry incomes were estimated at $28 billion for 2004 and are anticipated to double through 2008 (based on the PricewaterhouseCoopers report Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2005-2009) Of the rife revenues, $2.8 billion is addressable through information technology (IT) companies of the like kind as IBM through hardware, software, and services. The IT part is projected to grow to $76 billion through 2008.

This dynamic market is characterized by the agency of opposing market forces and technical challenges. Game developer and publishers are pressur by the agency of a relentlessly increasing demand from game players to bring out ever more compelling and technically advanced games within press togethered development cycles, and to do in like manner at low costs. This tension between innovation and turn back on investment makes early technical-design decisions crucial in meeting market demand. The industry also faces many technical challenges, including issues of scalability, utilization, data persistence, customer-relationship management (CRM) billing, latency, and security. The various requirements of online games, of that kind as heterogeneity, scalability, collaboration, immersive computing, and performance, are true likely to be similar to those that are foreseen for other upon demand computing industries.

In the midst of these market and technical challenges, great opportunity exists, brought about by means of innovation in the microelectronics arena. The nearest generation of game consoles, combustible mattered by IBM's PowerPC *-architecture-based processors, enables a fresh universe of options for game creation and play.

Nintendo (Revolution), Sony (PS3 **) and Microsoft (Xbox ** 360) will all race on the PowerPC architecture, granting IBM a leadership position in the cheer processor market. This unprecedented succes is owed to the PowerPC architecture's high performance and scalability and to IBM's facility in customizing processors to add or enhance game-specific features from one side services. Microsoft and Sony are heavily invested in the idea that game players are looking for fresh entertainment experiences beyond games. To that extreme point Microsoft Xbox 360 streams media from portable audio devices, digital cameras, and the Media Center PC; whereas Sony's PS3 (a "supercomputer" in the home) is wait fored to stream media from portable audio devices, digital cameras, PC the Internet, and for a like reason forth.

The innovation driven by the agency of the game industry will impact markets well beyond that of interactive entertainment. Games are driving the emerging see the verb of a new kind of application profile that is characterized through the requirements of advanced games; that is, real-time, immersive (virtual worlds), scalable, and massively collaborative applications, supporting nearly 100000 simultaneous players. Advanced games are at the cutting cutting side of the technology curve and are more akin to high-performance simulations, similar as those used in defense applications. They favor leading-edge platforms (high-end PC clients or consoles) and ofttimes demand that new technology be invented, especially in hardware (eg custom PowerPC architecture microprocessors for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft), on the contrary often in the exploitation of the infrastructure and network as well. This is driven by the agency of a need for higher performance, better graphics, smarter artificial intelligence, and a richer and more immersive user experience. The application profile showed by the game industry is likely to labor for as a test bed for subsequent time generations of enterprise applications that combine highly responsive, interactive, collaborative environments with rich media and a network of integrated service providers in the value chain.

Online games are fundamentally about communities and collaboration. Communities are a major simple body of all types of games as a means of

promotion and consumer support. CRM combination of parts to form a wholes and portals are a lock opener supporting technology. Game publishers provide a Web portal for interaction, providing game-oriented functions like as player matching and other associated "lobby" services. Game hosting platforms use portals for administration, personalization, and aggregation management. Web services are being adopted by dint of game platforms to enable easy integration with third parties for different provisioning and management tasks.

Game exhibition is evolving to use supply-chain production with a shift in investment from collection of laws development (20 percent) to digital easy in mind production (80 percent). There are vigorous opportunities for vendors of tools and services to advance compounded digital-media application development. Mobile game platforms are emerging that combine advanced integrated-service-platform environments with easy in mind management, provisioning, and messaging. There are possibilities for fresh platform vendors and game-hosting service providers to take leadership in the mobile network operator market. As the game industry unfolds as an e-business, new business archetypes are emerging, creating new virtual economies and marketplaces. fresh revenue models such as subscription and pay for play have emerged to support online receipts streams from episodic content; those in the Eastern Hemisphere attend to adopt the former, and those in the Western Hemisphere, the latter.