Philips and Codemasters today announced that amBX patches will be available for Codemasters titles Overlord on November 16th, and Clive Barker's Jericho by the end of the year.

Shorthand for 'ambient experiences', amBX extends the gaming experience by allowing developers to use light, color, sound, rumble and air flow through enabled devices like LED colour-controlled lighting, rumble peripherals and variable speed desktop fans.
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The free digital magazine includes previews of Bioshock and Crysis, as well as an interview with Richard Garriott about the new MMO, Tabula Rasa. The man who invented MMOs is hoping to re-invent them.
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Darwinia developer Introversion has put up a job ad for a mobile version of its critically acclaimed PC genocide-'em-up DEFCON. "An opportunity has arisen for a new version of DEFCON to be created for a mobile platform," the job ad reads. "In order to de-risk the project Introversion requires the development of a prototype that will demonstrate the game running on a simulation of the target platform. "Once we have acquired the prototype we will further investigate the commercial viability of ... » Read More

UK-based indie developer Introversion has signed a deal to bring its unique real-time strategy game Defcon to North American retailers.

US publisher Encore will be responsible for bringing the well-reviewed title stateside, and has ordered an initial 50K copies of the game for retail. It will sell for $29.99.
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Philips has announced this week that two more major publishers/developers have been signed up to produce games which are 'amBX-enabled' ¿ allowing for realistic in-game wind, temperature and ambient lighting effects.

The company will partner with Codemasters and Introversion to amBX-enable TOCA Race Driver 3 and the upcoming titles DEFCON and Darwinia (all on PC).

The Philips release we just received informs us that the company, "...will utilize a special scripting language in Codemasters and Introversion titles that will redefine the experience of playing games by extending the game world out of the screen and into the real world."

What is this amBX, then? It's basically a bunch of wind and lighting effects which are created by a number of add-on peripherals including satellite lights, wallwasher lights (both offering 16 million different colours), twin-bladed desk fans (that can drop the ambient temperature on the skin, or on full-blast at 5000rpm can represent strong wind and almost blow your hair off!) and rumbler effects (via rumble wrist-rests and mouse mats).

The idea being that the combination of ambient lighting, sound, vibration and air movement at the correct moments in a game serve to increase the sensual and immersive feel of being in the game.

In TOCA for example, racers will feel the wind in their hair through the amBX fans and see the flash of lighting through tree lines, tunnels and landscapes via the amBX LED lights all in the real world around them.
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