Edmonton firm poised for growth from wireless video game controller market

A small but growing Edmonton-based wireless engineering firm is ready to take on the gaming world with its wireless RF technology that connects multiple peripherals to game consoles such as the PlayStation 2, the Xbox and the GameCube. Eleven Engineering Inc. has already made public one major deal, and will soon unveil details of a second. In both agreements, the major third-party video game controller manufacturers will integrate the company's Spike wireless chip sets into various types of controllers.Eleven Engineering's chip sets eliminate the need for cables to plug in the various types of video game controllers such as steering devices, fishing rods, and light sticks. The company's CEO hopes its system will become a de facto standard for the technology.The advent of game consoles that can also play movies has changed the physical placement of the devices within the home and that's created a new flavour of market, explains Eleven Engineering's president and CEO, John Sobota. "They're ending up in the living room rather than being squirreled away in the basement or in the kids' room," he tells Report on Wireless. "That sort of mainstream positioning of the console itself actually means wireless is now required more than ever in the living room because people are used to having wireless control (through the remote control)."The company has signed a deal with Unical Enterprises Inc. of Los Angeles CA, which represents video game peripherals under the brands of Sylvania and Rayovac, and also the Northwest Bell phones brand name. Unical has traditionally been in other consumer electronics markets, but has now decided to dedicate significant funds to the development and manufacture of video game controllers.A real breakthrough for Eleven Engineering will come in May at this year's E3 video game conference and exhibition, says Sobota, adding that's when the company will unveil details of an agreement with a major multinational consumer electronics firm. "They're huge in accessories in general, and they're expanding into video game accessories," he says. "And their entire wireless line is going to be based on Spike." The Edmonton firm made a name for itself a few years ago when it signed a deal with Sony Corp. to wirelessly enable its PlayStation video game system. Under terms of that agreement, the company integrated its AIRPLAY wireless technology into the system. Sobota says the technology was specifically made for Sony, but was used as a base in developing Eleven Engineering's current Spike technology."The Spike chip set takes a lot of lessons from that experience, but it's a brand new technology," says Sobota. "AIRPLAY was a 300 MHz technology and Spike has two versions: a 900 MHz version and a 2.4 GHz version."A Spike-enabled system operates by using a transceiver, called a QuadX, plugged into the console. The control devices communicate with the console in a multipoint configuration. Four separate control devices can operate simultaneously, meaning four players could play a single game at the same time without experiencing any interference issues or other operational glitches.A key value proposition of the technology is that it enables controller devices to be portable from one location to another. With a QuadX-enabled console, any type of controller, whether developed for Xbox or GameCube, can operate with that particular system. The objective is to make Spike the de facto standard for wireless video control products, explains Sobota."Our goal is to make the chip set accessible to anybody that wants to build reliable wireless video game control products," Sobota says. "One of the benefits of having multiple customers building to that standard is that literally you can purchase a QuadX for your console and then you can purchase the control device from other companies."One of the key features of Spike is that the dynamic bonding between controllers and the console takes place in real time when the system is started, Sobota explains. "There is no hard relationship between the control device and the QuadX, which means that the control devices are portable from house to house to house and from console to console to console."Dual interference protection, price major selling pointsOne of the more promising applications of this technology outside of the video game world is its potential to compete in the short-haul wireless communications space, which is currently dominated by Bluetooth. Questions still remain about the reliability and long-term viability of Bluetooth, but Sobota thinks he has answers to some of those questions.Spike is highly defensive in terms of protecting against interference or causing it. Sobota explains that the chip set was designed with both types of spread spectrum technology, giving products using Spike a high-level of reliability. Direct sequence spread spectrum is used to account for and deal with spurious channel problems or noise, and frequency hopping is used to look for and avoid other radiators in the band."Our goals going into the design of this was to layer method upon method of error protection," he tells Report on Wireless. "So we're more defensive than 802.11 and we're definitely more defensive that Bluetooth."Another key selling feature of the Spike chip set is its current cost. Sobota claims that Eleven Engineering's initial price point for the chip set is close to the magic number of US$5 per chip that Bluetooth developers talk about. He adds: "Within a year, we'll be below the US$5 price point."Sobota admits that facing off against Bluetooth would be a monumental challenge with more than 2,000 companies currently working on the protocol or planning on using it in consumer electronics devices. It is for that reason that when Eleven Engineering decides to officially move into this space, it will target markets where Bluetooth isn't that well suited.While Sobota won't get into specifics on this front, he admits that applications that need very high reliability and low latency, similar to the video game controller market, are ideal targets for its pending general-purpose wireless chip sets. Development on that product will begin when Eleven Engineering receives interest from potential customers."Bluetooth is a bit like a Swiss army knife. It's pretty good at a lot of things, but not really good at specific things," explains Sobota. "You know how expensive a Swiss army knife is, so if what you really want to do is to eat a steak, you're not going to use a Swiss army knife."

Edmonton firm poised for growth from wireless video game controller market

News | February 19, 2002

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