Next gen videogames technology is all about making the world’s we play in look evermore real, and offering a gaming experience that completely sucks you in. We reckon game developers are doing a pretty good job so far, but Philips has come up with a new technology to make the experience even more immersive.

amBX (short for ambient experiences) is middleware; a piece of software that connects software and hardware components, using lots of different peripherals to create a much ‘bigger’ gaming experience. Going beyond the audio and visual, it will turn your whole room into part of the entertainment system, but discretely; without taking your concentration away from the game.  It enables devices which provide sensory stimuli such as surround lighting, vibration, heating, cooling and air movement to react with what’s happening in the game on screen, enhancing the whole gaming experience. For example, in the new game Broken Sword - The Angel of Death, if you enter a dark room the amBX lights will dim, and if you walk outside in the game and it’s windy, the fans will start up all around you etc.

“For gaming, amBX will bring the virtual world out into your living room and allow you to participate more deeply in the gameplay. amBX is designed to allow the highly dynamic atmosphere of the game environment to be recreated in the real world – your bedroom or living room,” says David Eves, the chief technology officer of Philip’s amBX, and its co-creator.

Currently only available for the PC, you can get kits of varying sizes, so if you don’t have loads of cash, you can buy a few lights and a fan to add to the gaming experience, or if you’re feeling flush you can fork out for a huge number of gadgets from fans and heaters to vibrating furniture!

Having been in development for five years, games have only recently begun to come out which are designed to use amBX specifically, but the technology is clever enough that it will be able to work out how to react to older games too. It isn’t just for games too; it will work with your CD and DVD collection, and it will even react to websites when you go online. How cool is that?!

During the early days, lots of research went into how gameplay could be improved and if certain types of games work better with amBX than others. Surprisingly, they discovered that it works really well with all genres, but particularly adventure, which up until now has always been behind in the technology stakes.

“When Philips was first experimenting with amBX, it took a number of games, applied the technology, and found that surprisingly, it worked really well with adventure games,” says Charles Cecil, creator of the Broken Sword series, and one of the UK’s key gaming figures. “The team showed me how they applied it to a dance game and to an FPS (first person shooter) which both worked great, but the reason Philips felt it worked so well on an adventure was because adventures are games which are driven by the story. The story is intertwined with the puzzles on an ongoing basis, and the environments are ‘exciting’ to look at, so they found that amBX synched very well and enhanced the feeling you got when you played.”

But Philips’ isn’t just working with Cecil and Broken Sword publisher THQ; other companies such as Sega are working to integrate amBX technology into their games. For example, Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog is going to be one of the first next-gen console games to be amBX compatible, and whereas with Broken Sword the amBX influence had to be subtle to work with the gameplay, with manic games like Sonic you can expect much madder effects.

Cecil recently saw an amBX demo using the Sonic Heroes game.

“A game like Sonic Heroes provides very different opportunities; Sonic’s frantic speed means that the player’s eyes are glued to the screen. The player is not going to look away whatever happens and, with that in mind, the amBX effects can be much more extreme without causing distraction,” he says recently in an amBX newsletter.

Its early days for the amBX technology, so we’re looking forward to seeing how it evolves. Even though amBX is being launched just for PC this year, 2007 is just round the corner, which is when Philips plans to expand the range to include next-gen consoles like the Xbox 360, PS3 and maybe even Nintendo’s Wii. Next year we can also expect to see more extravagant set ups for living rooms and beyond.

“The future for amBX is really bright, and beyond gaming there are endless possibilities with other forms of entertainment including music, film and the internet,” says Eves. “Watch this space.”