Motorola, Nintendo, & Sony Towards Wireless Gaming

WeekendKruzr writes "CommsDesign is running an article about how Motorola has partnered with Sony and Nintendo to work on bringing 2.4Ghz wireless LAN tech to the console gaming community. They're calling it an "isochronous network" and it is "intended for streaming, near-real-time traffic..." with production scheduled for later this year."

Re:Sony and Nintendo

[Smedrick]

Correct, but they're not really "working together" in the same sense. The article states that Motorola is developing the technology based on input from Sony, Nintendo and other developers. So it's more like the game developers are working together with Motorola.

...which is better than the title suggests, because just the thought of Nintendo and Sony working together makes me queesy.

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Re:isochronous?

[Cardhore]

No, it's from "iso" meaning "the same" and "chronous" meaning "time". So packets are sent at the same time. That's how the network achieves low latency, by scheduling time slots for each node, as it were. Otherwise you get packet collisions and the like which adds latency.

Wireless would be nice...

[alexhmit01]

When I was a kid, we'd lug our Nintendo over to someone's house if they didn't have a Nintendo (granted, this was a theoretical use after a few years) as well as games.

We would also move from room to room. When I had friends over, we'd get kicked across the house to not disturb my parents. With this tech, your friend could bring their Gamecube over and you could play that way.

While Slashdot users will have no problems with cross-over cables or Network hubs, that seems like more of a pain. Besides, while 20-something gamers that LAN party may be able to put the TVs nearby, most kids are stuck with the TVs in place.

I certainly can think of times we'd have used TVs in nearby rooms but couldn't run a network cable.

Remember, Console gaming isn't about tech, its JUST about fun. The tech can enhacne the fun, but don't expect people to read manuals.

Hell, games explain the controls inside the game now, as people don't read the manual. You want them to setup a TCP/IP network?

Alex

Re:isochronous?

[David Leppik]

"Isochronous" means that there are fixed time guarantees for packets within a stream. That is, you can reserve a stream with a particular bandwidth, with guarantees that your packets will be delivered within a specific amount of time.

This is not, as some have suggested, the same as "synchronous," which means that a fixed time slot is reserved for a particular host. The problem with synchronous networking is that the host has tiny window of opportunity to broadcast, and if the host doesn't use it then the bandwidth goes unused.

FireWire is another example of an isochronous protocol. It's also common in telecom networking protocols.

What's interesting to me about this is that it's an isochronous networking format with a mesh topology-- presumably hosts get added on an ad hoc basis, with real-time guarantees extended to streams that need to be forwarded.