I have been following a series of posts by Matt Cooper of rAVe called Gaming the AV Industry.  I have read each post so far, and have commented on a couple of them in the past, (in fact Matt asked me to comment on one of them, knowing I may take exception to some of the content, so I commend him on that!)

I have come to the conclusion that Matt knows a lot about gaming.  He knows about games, he knows about genres, he knows about platforms, and he knows about new deveopments and coming attractions.  In fact, Matt knows more about games than I will probably ever know about them.

Matt has been trying to build a column to help residential integrators leverage gaming platforms in an effort to cement their value and add incremental revenues, 2 things most residential integrators would LOVE to do.  The effort is noble.

Unfortunately, and I may be wrong here, it seems that Matt hasn’t worked for a residential integrator in the past and as such, I find the dots loosely connected and sometimes circumvented all together.

This post though is not about critiques but about a challenge.  I thought I’d play editor for a day and ask Matt to put together something that may be valuable to the residential integrators out there when faced with integrating a gaming system into the larger AV scenario.

So here you are Mr. Cooper, your challenge if you choose to accept it…

Build a schematic for a distributed gaming system for the 3 major platforms, being X-Box One, PS4, and Wii

The schematic and design should include

• Connecting the system into a distributed AV switch or routing system.
• Extending the bluetooth/wireless connectivity from the central console to each display so the controllers can work in remote locations
• Extending the Wii Bar and Kinect Sensor either wired ar wirelessly to each display so that sensor can be moved to the room where gaming is desired.
• Description of the cabling or wireless extenders, etc that should be used and how these terminate at each end for connectivity.
• An explanation of how to centralize games on the console to eliminate changing discs (can you download directly to console, rip existing disc based games to console, etc)
• A nod to the console’s ability to also act as a hub for apps and as a media server.
• A way to extend the storage capacity via NAS or similar device.

I believe that if you could show integrators how to do this and give them tips, tricks, and hardware ideas, that they in turn could go offer their customers a way to take their systems to a whole new level.  Just a thought and I look forward to you picking this one up and running with it!

Game On!