With Wii, its new video game device, Nintendo has gotten people out of their seats to play video games. But now, according to an article in BusinessWeek, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) might soon be getting players out of their houses and onto the streets of the real world to do their playing.
I wrote about HP's acquisition of VooDoo Company a couple of months back and noted at the time how, in addition to helping it compete in the video gaming world against the likes of Sony (NYSE: SNE), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), which acquired Alienware earlier this year, the acquisition would also benefit VooDoo by giving it access to HP's impressive research-and-development efforts.
The BusinessWeek article cites a "provocative new video clip offering a glimpse of the future" of video gaming. This clip shows "kids playing a virtual scavenger hunt on portable gaming machines. But instead of sitting on the couch at home . they're racing along alleyways and back streets of the real world collecting clues posted on walls and other places to find the prize."
If you're wondering how these clues might get posted on walls, I encourage you to read this Foolish piece about HP's Memory Spot technology. Smaller than a grain of rice, these "Memory Spots" currently cost about $1, hold four megabits of data, and are kind of like a cross between a sophisticated bar code and a high-performance radio frequency identification tag.
As the memory-storage capacity of these devices improves and the price drops, however, what HP and VooDoo will be able to do with these devices will also increase. For one thing, the tiny memory chips will enable gamers to begin posting information and reading clues anywhere in the real world. And it is this capability that could take gaming to a new level.
Beyond that, though, the possibilities are almost limitless. If gamers can use consoles to search and read clues in an external environment, why couldn't people similarly use their cell phones to retrieve information off posted advertisements or off menus outside restaurants?
The answer is that they soon will. And while this technology might first show up in back alleys for video-gaming purposes, I am confident that it will also show up on Main Street and be used in business settings as well. Either way, it could be a profit venture for HP.
Interested in other HP and video-gaming Foolishness?
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Fool contributor Jack Uldrich will need the help of some voodoo if he is ever to become a good gamer. He owns stock in Microsoft. The Fool has a strict disclosure policy.
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