Philips Continues Game Moves With Entertaible

Electronics giant Philips, which has recently been extending its research into video game-related areas with the forthcoming amBX technology, which uses light, color, sound, heat and air to submerge the user within a complete "sensory surround experience", has announced another hybrid gaming technology, the Entertaible, on display at this week's CES in Las Vegas. Currently a working concept, Entertaible comprises a 30-inch horizontal LCD, sophisticated touch screen-based multi-object position detection, and all supporting control electronics, and, according to the firm, "...allows the players to engage in a new class of electronic game which combines the features of computer gaming, such as dynamic playing fields and gaming levels, with the social interaction and tangible playing pieces, such as pawns and dies, of traditional board games." According to Philips, though initially aimed at the out-of-home game market such as restaurants, bars, and casinos, the Entertaible has the potential to evolve into a gaming platform for the consumer market. "Entertaible offers the means to reinvigorate established board game classics," comments Gerard Hollemans of Philips Research in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, who leads the research team that developed Entertaible. "However, in the longer term, Entertaible could be used to invent brand new games offering unprecedented levels of user interaction – games that would never become predictable or ever quite 'feel' the same twice, however often you played them."