"Game On" - HP Shows Amazing New PC Gaming Technology

HP isn't exactly known as a hip and cool company. In fact their image is probably more conservative IBM wannabe than cutting edge visionary. Well, they are about to pack that image up, pour some gas on it and burn that mother to the ground!

With the recent surge in popularity of console gaming brought about by this latest generation of hardware from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, HP is planning to seize what it sees as a golden opportunity to take PC gaming to unprecedented heights while fundamentally changing the way we play games on computers. During HP's Gaming Summit at Dogpatch Studios the company announced "Game On", the company's HP Labs research center that is developing technology that could be incorporated into next-generation personal computers that play interactive video games designed for the broadband era.

We're not talking your standard Next Gen shooters or racing games either. Oh no, what HP has planned are some pretty amazing gameplay technologies. The prototypes they showed included computers with curved screens so someone playing a racing game can see the track they're driving on ahead and to the sides for an incredibly immersive experience 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 is walking through a big city with his handheld game player. He points the device at a portion of the city's skyline and the device scans the outline of the buildings in view, creating a game scene from that image. Very cool indeed!

During a panel discussion, Rahul Sood, chief technology officer at HP Gaming, and founder of Voodoo PC which HP acquired in the fourth quarter of 2006, said that next generation PC games based on Microsoft's new DirectX 10 technology will do more to drive sales of Vista than anything else. He said, "DirectX 10 is going to provide a dramatically improved gaming experience that will drive adoption of Vista."

Sood also said he 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, which can sell for $8,000. When asked specifically if HP plans to soon introduce a line of PCs such as that, Shane Robison, executive vice president and HP's chief strategy technology officer said, "I am not allowed to go there."

While impressive, HP has a steep hill to climb. Sales of gaming consoles grew 33 percent in 2006 while sales of gaming PCs grew by only 1 percent, according to the retail sales tracking firm NPD Group Inc. There are reasons to be optimistic though. Sales of gaming software that runs on PCs reached US$6 billion globally in 2006 and are forecast to hit $12 billion by 2010, said Rick Wickham, director of games for Windows for Microsoft, citing figures from IDC.

HP's move into gaming could be a "game-changing" one, said Rob Enderle, lead analyst with technology research firm The Enderle Group. HP could try selling high-margin gaming PCs to escape from the low-margin PC market it competes in with every other PC maker. But he explained it could also be a risky move. "The buyer may say they don't want one and that is the risk when you make a game changer. You make a guess at where the market is going and you get there first," Enderle said. "If you guess wrong you're there all by yourself"