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Intel and Philips Partner To Make Media Center PC

Intel and Philips are partnering to produce a Media Center PC - just don’t call it a PC.

It will be positioned as an entertainment device, said Philips spokesperson Simon Poulter. “We’re not calling it a PC, even though the device has a lot of PC functionality. We want it to be seen as an entertainment center.”

Well, Microsoft have been trying to do that for years now without much luck, so it will be interesting to see if Philips manage any better. As a company with a heritage in consumer electronics they have a chance, but if the resulting device is essentially a PC, a sceptical public isn’t going to fall for it.

The PC-based Philips system, called the Philips Showline Media Center MCP 9350i, includes a card that allows users to watch two TV channels simultaneously, a 250-gigabyte hard disk drive for storing music and photos, and a recorder for DVDs and CDs.

Source: [l=http://www.mediacenterpcworld.com/news/510]MediaCenterPCWorld.com[el]

Add comment September 6th, 2005

Myst Developer Goes to the Wall

Those of you who were around at the dawn of the PC gaming age will remember the Myst games fondly. The series of graphical adventures may not have stood the test of time with their fixed perspective viewpoint and linear gameplay, but at the time they were hailed as triumphs and sales were appropriately high. Myst is the second biggest selling game of all time - yes, more than Doom or Quake - beaten only by The Sims.

However, Cyan, the developers behind the Myst series have closed their doors and laid off all staff, with the exception of Rand Miller, the co-founder and president Tony Fryman. Presumably they are staying on to oversee the release of the final Myst game, End of Ages, which is due out this month.

Cyan was hit hard by the failure of its MUD project, Uru, and falling sales for later installments in the Myst series which did not capture the imagination in the same way they did in the early 1990s.

Add comment September 6th, 2005