This summer's Consumer Electronics Show was buzzing with multimedia, namely 3DO. This is a company which has found favor with Wall Street and software developers. We shall soon see if they also find favor with consumers.

Philips CDI (CD-Interactive) showed their CDI system working like a laser disk player but using 5 1/4" CD media. The picture quality was excellent.

Virtual Reality products were in displayed (unlike Comdex) from several vendors. Sega had an impressive prototype without any "jumpiness" due to a slow frame rate. At the anticipated $200 price point, this should serve to make Virtual Reality a household name this holiday season. Joysticks and interactive cockpits are getting very realistic and have new features. Even I can fly some of these simulations quite well as they are much more realistic than conventional video games.

Many PC games for the holiday season are coming on CD. I saw many, many prototypes and these CD games make ordinary computer games pale in comparison. One developer has told me that they had to limit the game to only 650 megabytes in order to fit on a CD. Wow, have games changed. Video playback plays a heavy role in many of these games. I saw some really cool stuff at the show!

It will be interesting to see what happens this holiday season for us as developers and for us as consumers.

Copyright © 1993 Rick Smith All rights reserved.