Interactive media & eInfrastructures

1. Interactive media & eInfrastructures Building a successful future Alexis Arragon, Business Track: Cross-Industry SectionEGEE’07, 01-05 October 2007, Budapest, Hungary

2. A brief history of evolution Why “cheap” is the premise of mass adoption Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

3. Some facts… Access to unlimited online storage: cheap! Better 3D graphics: cheap! Bigger storage capacity: cheap! Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

4. … and some figures HUGEMARKET! Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

5. Future ofInteractive Media Why it can benefit from eInfrastructures Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

6. Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

7. Serious Games & Simulation • Address critical issues for the future • Knowledge management • How to capitalize on staff knowledge, how to store knowledge and train new staff, etc. • Crisis management • How to deal with ecological issues, how to foresee and react to floods, earthquakes, military threats, terrorist attacks, etc. • Risk management • Heavily used by insurance and bank companies • Shared interest from academics and industry • Resources demanding and constrained field • Computations can be done offline… • Clusters of servers, N-cores machines • … or online • SETI, Folding@home, distributed and grid computing • Impact on technology • Realistic modelling: procedural landscape and urban modelling • Pervasive networks and environments Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

8. Virtual Worlds & Social Networks • Biggest trend of the last years: the famous Web 2.0 • Allow users to virtually connect to any social group • MySpace for the music (originally) • YouTube for the video • LinkedIn for business • It’s up to you to build your own social network! • … with any device • PC, home console (PS3 Home), mobile (Disney’s WonderDays in Japan), set-top box? • Users are now content producers • Customisable environment is the key! • By definition, those services need eInfrastructures to expand Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

9. Who’s next? Digital Cinema Advertising • Ubisoft Digital Arts Studio • Former cinematic studio • Short & long film production with dematerialised content and pipeline convergence • “We’ll also see products , where you can jump in and use the interactivity to control and shape what you’re being told as a story” Y. Mallat, CEO • LucasArts / LucasFilm / ILM • Videogame & cinema production pipeline convergence • Might be the latest but also the most eager to enter the game • Google bought recently Adscape for 23m$ while Microsoft had bought Massive just before • New lucrative business opportunities (in-game ads, profiling, etc.) Both will benefit from technology and digital distribution to be delivered directly in the user’s hands. Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

10. Strategic impact • “My best advice is not just to follow new technology developments across the whole value chain but to get into the driving seat. […] I ask that you are open to change and new business models”Viviane Reding on Media 2.0, CeBIT March 2007 • “I believe that Europe needs a strong interactive games industry. […] European interactive games industry is also very much a cultural industry […] an opportunity for cultural diversity”Viviane Reding, ISFE Expert Conference June 2007 Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

11. From ideas to action National and European initiatives Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

12. Technology evolution • What’s in tomorrow’s home entertainment platform? • RAM? Cheap! • PC standard is 2 – 4 Gb • Storage space? Cheap! • 1 Tb disks commonly available, memory cards up to 4 – 8 Gb • Processing power? Cheap! • CELL processor in PS3 • Intel N-core program (Core2Duo as a standard, Quad Core available, 40+ core announced) • Dedicated hardware? Cheaper and cheaper • nVidiaGPUs with SLI technology • AGEIA PhysX card Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

13. The Distribution Revolution • Physical formats are fading • Everything is online • The rise of distribution platforms • Manufacturers • Xbox Live, PlayStation Network • Third-party • Steam, Goa • This is more than just games: Music (iTunes), VOD, IPTV, etc. • The search for new business models • Subscription (WoW, Xbox Live) • Micro-payments (Gran Tourismo 5, Microsoft Points) • Episodic content (Sam & Max) • Media convergence (Ubisoft Digital Arts Studio) • New business opportunities for innovative distribution solutions! Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

14. Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

15. Consumer PLAY ALL edutain@grid Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

16. edutain@grid Why eInfrastructures are a good candidate to being a distribution and execution environment… Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

17. edutain@grid in a nutshell • A scalable QoS-enabled business grid environment for multi-user Real-time Online Interactive Applications • 36 months FP6 project, started Sept. 2006 • Focus on online games and e-learning through pilot applications and interest groups • A new type of applications for grid environments… • Scale application instances for large numbers of concurrent users under real-time constraints • Economically viable and attractive applications • …and a flexible distribution platform • Collaboration between academics (Grid experts) and SMEs (industry-driven pilot applications) Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

18. Business actors Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

19. Runtime steering use case scenario join session leave session deploy session massive join massive leave Market Broker Coordinator Hoster Hoster ROIA session ROIA session migrate Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

20. Facts list • Highly demanding, real-time computation and communication • Thousands of concurrently interacting users • Dynamic control- and data-flow Real-Time Grid Services Real-time Communication Framework Open Market B2C Models Large non-Grid Expert Edutainment Community E-Learning Light-weight Security Models Online Games QoS Negotiation Other ROIA Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

21. PLAY ALL • Objective: Give content creators a complete and next-gen ready tool-chain, covering asset management to digital distribution • Multi-platform • Durable • Open • French initiative funded by Ministry of Industry and Paris’ region • 6,5m€ funding, 2 years project starting now • Studios + Middleware developers + Academics • 14 partners Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

22. Beyond edutain@grid and FP6 Challenging the competition Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

23. Get Europe into the driving seat • Interactive media is a cultural asset • There is a “fight” for “cultural diversity” • Local content is always a winner! • We should prepare for the next evolutions • Processing power, unlimited storage capacity, virtualised resources, bandwidth = cheap! • What about: latency, real-time computing, multi-core machines and parallelisation? • Competition already on • Emergent’s GameBryo + HP, G-cluster FP7? Interactive media & eInfrastructuresEGEE’07 Business Track: Cross-Industry section

24. Köszönöm!Thank you!