New Books: Gears of War, Starcraft & Race for a New Game Machine

A trio of new books based on and about video games have been released in the last few weeks. So let's dive right in:

Gears of War: Aspho Fields was written by Karen Traviss (of Star Wars: Republic Commando fame) and is a prequel to the games that make up Microsoft's biggest franchise that isn't Halo. The book is the first of a planned trilogy and the Amazon link includes an excerpt from the book's opening chapter.

Next up is Starcraft: I, Mengsk by Graham McNeill. I, Mengsk is the first novel set during the time period of Blizzard's upcoming Starcraft II.

Finally, there's The Race for a New Game Machine: Creating the Chips Inside the Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3 by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps. The details a new angle in the battle betwen the Xbox 360 and PS3 by chronicling the development of Sony's Cell processor and how Microsoft was able to use that research to help create the Xbox 360's graphics chip.

An article about the book on the Wall Street Journal site reveals that Sony's contract with IBM did not prohibit IBM from selling Cell-derived technology to other companies. One of those companies turned out to be Microsoft:

In late 2002, Microsoft approached IBM about making the chip for Microsoft's rival game console, the (as yet unnamed) Xbox 360. In 2003, IBM's Adam Bennett showed Microsoft specs for the still-in-development Cell core. Microsoft was interested and contracted with IBM for their own chip, to be built around the core that IBM was still building with Sony. All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony's primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony's R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it.

Sounds like an incredibly interesting read and adds a new wrinkle to the console war.