The Future Of Handheld Gaming: GoForce 5500

NVIDIA GoForce 5500 Features

NVIDIA GoForce 5500 Multimedia Features:

• True, fluid digital TV and Video
  — The industry?s first handheld GPU to playback H.264, WMV9 and MPEG-4 video up
  to D1 resolution 1 at 30 frames per second (fps)
  — Compatible with major mobile TV standards including DVB-H, ISDB-T and DMB
  networks
• High Fidelity Surround Sound
  — The industry?s first handheld surround sound processor to deliver an immersive audio
  experience in the palm of your hand
  — Crossfade and multistream technologies help to prevent annoying breaks between
  songs and music cut out when the ringtone is activated
• Console class 3D gaming
  — Experience console class games, like Quake III Arena, at unrivalled speeds on a
  handheld device
  — 3X the performance of the previous generation 2
• Sharp, crystal clear digital photography
  — Rapid multi-shot capabilities so you never miss that photo
  — Support for up to 10 megapixel resolution
• Ultra-low power consumption
  — Dedicated low-power hardware design delivers more hours of entertainment
  on your phone with less drain on your talk time

The GoForce 5500 was the industry’s first handheld graphics processing unit (GPU) to enable true, fluid digital TV, high fidelity surround sound, rapid multi-shot photography and console class 3D graphics. What does all this mean to you?

It means that you will be able to get video at 30 frames per second and support from the latest in streaming TV like DVB-H. The GoForce 5500 is compatible with many popular video formats, including H.264, WMV9, Real Video, MPEG4, and H.263. For all the H.264 Codec buffs you will be happy to know that the GoForce 5500 can decode at D1 resolution (720×480 @ 30FPS or 720×576 @ 25FPS) and also encode QVGA at 15FPS and 384Kbps. This means that you can enjoy nearly any video from friends or right off the internet.

It also means you have the ability to play game titles like Siege that is in the works by developer Denied Reality. This is a native OpenGL ES title and will hopefully be one of the first of many native OpenGL ES games for mobile gamers.

Another screen shot that we have is from a game developed by Code Monkeys called Jump, which is based on the radical new extreme sport, “Free Running”. that game “Jump”, puts players in a race against each other across inner-city rooftops performing extreme stunts whilst jumping from building to building. Successfully completing stunts increases the player’s power enabling faster speeds to be reached, bigger jumps to be made and inevitably better stunts to be performed bringing home both incredible visual and heart stopping action. The title boasts high resolution texture maps for extra detail, high polygon models for more realistic characters, and special effects for dynamic and immersive environments.

Other OpenGL ES Games For Mobile Phones Include:

• Need for Speed Most Wanted
• Madden NFL 06
• Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 06
• Go Face- It
• Quake III Arena Source Code (GPL)
• Slam Street
• Lil Jon Crunk Golf
• 3D Extreme Air Snowboarding
• Alpha Wing 2
• Duke Nukem Mobile
• Killer Edge
• Interstellar Flames 2

As you can see the list of mobile games is getting large. Companies like Electronic Arts Inc. already have ten game titles for mobile phones and more are in the works.

Final Thoughts:

It is exciting to see a new market for gamers start from scratch and we can’t wait to see this technology available on every phone sold on the market, but that won’t happen for years to come. NVIDIA said that the GoForce 5500 costs around $20, which is a significant cost factor when making phones. When speaking with NVIDIA at the show one statement they made for the record sums up the entire mobile gaming market, “3D on the mobile phone is starting to look awesome, but the content developers need to catch up to the technology that is already on the market.” Not only do I agree with that, but I’d also like to point some of the blame at the handset makers. Mobile phones like the Motorola RAZR have the NVIDIA GoForce 4800 in them, but they failed to activate hardware acceleration on RAZR V3X phone series. If you own one of these phones you have everything you need to run 3D games, but Motorola didn’t enable those features for you. With the game developers hard at work porting games over to OpenGL ES 1.1+ it doesn’t mean jack if your phone doesn’t support them. In closing I’d like to leave you with one last comment from NVIDA on mobile handset gaming.

Legit Reviews: When will I be able to play current games on these phones instead of watching demos?
NVIDIA: We will see 3D games on phones by the year end… (shugs shoulders) I hope.