Latest Gaming News

E3 2003: am3 Adapter And am3 SmartMedia For GBA

15th May 2003, 5:35pm
Following the launch announcement from February, 2003 in Tokyo, am3 Inc. will unveil its capability to play back motion picture on GameBoy Advance at the E3 Expo, 2003.

The key element of this technology consists of two devices, one is "am3 Adapter (tentative name)" which is designed to fit into GBA's cartridge slot and the other is "am3 SmartMedia (tentative name)" which plays the primary role as storage medium. Both devices come equipped with a high standard security system to protect stored content from piracy.

Both the "am3 Adapter" and the "am3 SmartMedia" are the officially licensed products of Nintendo Co., Ltd. (Japan) for sales and distribution in Japan. Naturally, after the introduction of this technology at E3 Expo, the licensed territory will be broadened to other international markets including the U.S. and Europe.

Together with the new image compression technology developed by a French engineering company named actimagine, we realized the motion picture replay (24 minutes on 32MB SmartMedia) on ARM7, the embedded CPU of GBA, without any additional software. Audio/video synchronized fast forward and reverse feature together with 30 frame/sec high quality motion picture image was also realized.

As you are well aware of, GBA is the foremost mobile entertainment device overwhelmingly popular throughout the world. As of April, 2003, the total number of GBA's sold to consumers has exceeded 14 million units in the US market alone, and with the introduction of the new model, GameBoy Advance SP, further popularization is expected. Under such circumstances, we are convinced that the user profile of GBA will become even wider along the introduction of new contents other than games.

The key intention of our business is to create a new content platform utilizing the widely proliferated mobile infrastructure of GBA. We are strongly convinced that we can create a new, untapped market not only for those companies with rights of various motion picture content but also for companies who intend to develop original content (i.e. short film, promotional video, commercial footage, among others) on GBA. Additionally, we are also planning to explore markets other than motion picture such as music, flash animation, digital manga, photo collection, educational material and so on.

The products will be displayed for demonstration at the am3 booth (#7519) as well as at the Nintendo of America booth (#2816) at E3 Expo.

Notes

Sales commencement in US market: 2003 Christmas season (tentative plan)

Price: (tentative price)

am3 adapter: US$25

am3 SmartMedia w/content: US$20

Sales Channel

Toy store, Game shop, Other major retail stores

Content

TV animation, GBA original animation, Educational video, Digital manga, Music video clip, Audio-visual book, Photo collection, Karaoke, etc
Share |
by Damien