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Games in the Sun (Microsystems)

Techstination feature for Thursday, June 12, 2003

Sun gets into gaming. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Sun Microsystems, best known for making computers that run corporate networks and Internet sites, is pushing a new business for the company... games. Chris Melissinos, Sun's new chief gaming officer... says the idea is to use the company's Java programming language and server know-how... to enable online multi-player games...

"I think where Sun differentiates themselves is that we have been building these kind of massively connected environments for years. One great example of that is Wall Street. A lot of the trapping that an environment like Wall Street and online trading encompasses, is equivalent to what is trying to be built today in the online gaming space."

Sun hopes it will have an advantage in promoting its technology for games... because software written in its Java language can run a variety of devices...

"The market is not only going to include the PC games but also how do we start taking devices like wireless phones, like wireless PDAs, like portals, telematics, set top boxes... how do we go ahead and create a frame work for game developers to take all of those devices and provide a way for a consumer of a game to have touch back into that massively multi-player robust, persistent world from any one of those devices whenever they choose to do so."

It may not be an easy pitch. Java has not been widely used by PC game developers so far... although it has been used for games on a number of cell phones. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.