Nintendo, a name most familiar in exclusive circles-the young teens market-has made its first U.S. investment in a small company with an “expanding” technology.
Waltham, Mass.-based Reflection Technology Inc. has designed the Virtual Boy game device for Nintendo Co. Ltd., using its patented Scanned Linear Array virtual display technology.
Virtual display is a small 32-bit, RISC-based (reduced instruction set computing) device. Viewers place their eye up to a small window to see a 1-inch-square resolution photographic image.
The Virtual Boy features two eye holes, a stereoscopic 3-D image in red and black that has a higher resolution than most computer screens, optics that make the image appear full size, stereo sound and is suited to play a variety of game cartridges. Except for the controller, all the components for Virtual Boy are in one unit.
Allen Becker, Reflection’s president and chief executive officer, said the game will retail for under $200 in the United States and Japan.
Reflection is the creator of the FaxView Personal Fax Reader, a facsimile accessory that plugs into a cellular phone to receive and read standard faxes. With FaxView, the viewer can read an entire 8.5 inch x 11 inch fax transmission as one image. FaxView is currently undergoing separate market trials with GTE Corp. and Southern New England Telecommunications Corp.
“The cutting-edge technology developed by Reflection Technology has multiple future applications in the real world, such as telecommunications,” said Nicholas Negroponte, director of the media laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an investor in Reflection. “Utilizing this technology, Nintendo’s Virtual Boy will provide video game players with a truly unique experience.”
Howard Lincoln, chairman of Nintendo America Inc., said “Reflection’s display technology enables us to deliver products that uphold Nintendo’s leadership tradition.”
Nintendo invested in Reflection’s virtual display for its low cost and high quality, according to Becker. He did not disclose financial terms of the agreement.
Initial talks for the Virtual Boy licensing agreement were in the works more than two years ago, said Becker. However, the companies agreed to complete product development before going public with the alliance.
Reflection’s Becker cited two chief benefits from the Nintendo relationship. First, producing the Virtual Boy device in mass quantities cuts down the costs of its components, thus production costs. Second, Becker anticipates Nintendo’s mass market presence will serve to endorse Reflection’s virtual display technology in the telecommunications arena, as well as the video game market.
Discussing any future association between the two companies, Becker said Reflection is exposed to Nintendo’s technology, but it has little bearing on Reflection’s key focus, telecommunications.
Nintendo has exclusive rights to the virtual display technology within the video game market and will introduce the game in Japan and the Western Hemisphere in April.
Looking ahead, Reflection plans to develop consumer electronic products, fax and electronic-mail pagers and full screen handheld telephones.
Reflection expects to establish independent agreements with both GTE and SNET to distribute FaxView next summer.