Project X Details Emerge

VM Labs president Richard Miller hosted a telephone conference Monday to announce details on its Project X platform. Certain details surrounding Project X were confirmed, but other, more burning questions remain unanswered - such as what third parties will be developing Project X-compatible games and what hardware manufacturers are going to be licensing the technology.

First off, the Project X hardware is an all-in-one solution for hardware manufacturers who make digital video products - for example, DVD players, digital satellite receivers, and set-top boxes. Project X hardware replaces MPEG-2 hardware in DVD players by offering a one-chip, simple solution, adding little or no additional cost to the product. After utilizing the Project X technology, it will be up to the manufacturers to decide what additional features they want to add into their products - possibilities including game playing, video phones, or other entertainment features

Miller explains, "In every digital video product - DVD player, digital satellite receiver, etc.- it has to have at least 2MB of RAM - and typically more than that. Furthermore the machines require at least one MPEG decoder IC - a large, complex chip. What we do is replace that MPEG decoder chip with our media processor, since our media processor can do all the audio and video decoding, in fact all the back-end work that's necessary inside a digital video product. The net result of this replacement of components is little to no incremental cost to the manufacturer."

The hardware is also extremely flexible, able to be molded to include features usually associated with several different consumer electronics products. Miller told the conference that "the ultimate, deluxe version of a Project X DVD player could have a small video camera plugged in that sits on top of your TV with a telephone line attachment, and you would be able to use that product at that point to surf the Internet, send and receive e-mail, make H.324 and H.323 video telephone calls, play DVD movies, and of course run video games, entertainment, and edutainment software applications."

While not going into specifics, Miller said that the machine can perform 1.5 billion instructions per second (1,500 MIPS), making it faster than a 1,000MHz Pentium II. The hardware, developed by VM Labs, will be manufactured by as-yet-unnamed semiconductor partners, one of which is rumored to be Motorola.

Top-tier consumer electronics manufacturers will then take over and build it into their products. The first Project X-compatible machines will hit the market in 1999, Miller said, not by Christmas 1998 as cited in the recent announcement by MultiGen.

Miller says that the company is trying to reach the mass audience with this hardware - meaning not only hard-core gamers but families as well. Project X will therefore not only have entertainment titles, but edutainment as well.

Specific developers were not named, but VM Labs is shipping development systems at the rate of 25 per month. Titles developed by third parties will have to be submitted to VM Labs for compatibility testing to make sure they work with all configurations of the system, but will not be censored or evaluated for content (however, ESRB ratings may be assigned to the titles).

Royalty fees to VM Labs, according to Miller, will be lower than those third parties currently pay to Sony or Sega.

"Project X provides the opportunity to bring gaming and interactive applications to the whole family and to a much broader set of households than has been traditionally possible through game consoles."

As for price, Miller did comment that some of the current low-end DVD systems are selling for about US$299 and that the initial Project X-enabled machines should match or exceed that price. Of course, different models will sport different features, but one thing will remain constant - software and applications made to run on Project X-enhanced machines will be compatible across the board. A Project X upgrade to current DVD players will not be made, since current DVD players do not include an expansion port.

However, Miller said that it would be possible to make a Project X expansion card for use with PCs.

While certain details concerning Project X did come into clearer focus, the bits of information released today still leave VM Labs' Project X in a cloud that obscures much of what gamers are curious to know.