Powerboat Challenge

Hamburg, Germany, 17th February 2009 – FISHLABS, a leading developer of high quality mobile 3D games and a member of the newly announced ng Connect Program, will demonstrate a new multi-player mode for its award-winning racing game Powerboat Challenge™ designed to leverage ultra-high bandwidth networks. The demonstration illustrates the capabilities possible on next generation networks as envisioned by the ng Connect Program. For the first time, mobile players will be able to experience multi-player, high speed racing in real time. Founded by Alcatel-Lucent, the ng Connect Program is a multi-industry collaboration among leading network, consumer electronics, application and content suppliers to bring next generation broadband network services to market.

The mobile phone game Powerboat Challenge™ delivers a real-world racing experience as players demonstrate their gaming skills by maneuvering around buoys and each other at high speeds. An ultra-fast LTE or 4G network environment can support the real-time transmission of the competitors’ position data and the much more data-intensive physical values making the game feel more realistic. This bandwidth-intensive information is required to simulate real-time collision queries for a real-world driving experience. The racing is just as intense as real life, as competitors push their way past each other to claim the better position for rounding the buoys. For the first time, FISHLABS will highlight the opportunities offered by next generation networks for multi-player mobile games at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, from 16-19 February 2009, at the Alcatel-Lucent booth, Hall 8 #A147.

“The real-time transmission of acceleration vectors in racing games was simply not possible with the current mobile telephone networks, because the low data transmission rates and the high latencies only permitted time-lapsed races without collision queries,” explains Michael Schade, CEO of FISHLABS Entertainment. “For the maximum racing experience, head-to-head racing and vying for position are crucial for real excitement. With the new LTE and 4G networks, the mobile multi-player game will achieve a new dimension.”