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Overview:
With so much attention focused on the Playstation and Wii game systems these days, ZapIt was able to come under the radar with a game box suited more for the whole family than just the younger generation. The Game Wave is like Trivial Pursuit on steroids, with a DVD player thrown in for fun. The game's developers wanted to create an interactive board game-type console that families could use to play classic card games like Blackjack, with six remote controls and embedded DVD playback for watching movies.
Given the functional requirements, the design team had one big problem: the target retail price for the system was $99. Hence, the target cost to manufacture the product in China had to be around $50. Achieving that goal while meeting the performance requirements of a gaming console in a highly competitive market pushed the design team close to its limits.
While the project started well with the selection of the Mediametrics 8611 processor as the heart of the system, problems inevitably cropped up, starting with gaining access to National Semiconductor's source code for the processor (Mediametrics was bought by National). From there, issues arose such as interfacing to the DVD drive, handling the crisis brought on by the discontinuation of the original DVD drive and figuring out how to make six IR hand consoles work without apparently colliding.
This On-Demand seminar examines the approaches the Game Wave's design team used to overcome the various hurdles that inevitably came up. Specifically, this seminar will show viewers:
- What to look for in a core CPU for gaming
- How to get a company to open up its source code
- Why IR is best for gaming, versus RF, and how to get six IR gaming remotes to work without colliding.
- How to proceed on a hardware and software design project when the hardware is likely to go through many changes.
- And much more!
Who should attend:
Designers of any low-cost consumer entertainment device particularly one geared towards multi-user gaming applications.
Presenter:
Richard Nass
Richard Nass is editor in chief of Embedded Systems Design magazine (www.embedded.com) and can be contacted at rnass@cmp.com.
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