Over on the eightbar blog, there’s coverage of an event that was held today at IBM Bedfont in the UK and also, in parallel, within the Second Life environment.

Part of the day included a “think tank” session debating the future of Virtual Worlds.

It was fascinating stuff - an opportunity to discuss a range of topics from the underlying technology, to some of the social implications. This all dovetails neatly into the stuff that is being talked about on ibm.com at the moment.

After demo-ing the Wii over the past couple of days I’ve become embarassingly obsessed with acquiring one. After well over a dozen phone calls, it still eludes me. I’d like to think I’m not stupid enough to buy one on eBay and pay a ridiculous premium, but I find myself wandering over to check out the offers…

Do I need professional help? Or simply something like the Wii tracker?

Jai has decided to join MySpace.  But he’s awfully lonely; won’t somebody be his friend?

Click here to check it out!

You can see more on ibm.com.

Who’s that good-looking character in the new Game Tomorrow logo? Meet Jai, IBM’s ambassador to the world of videogames. Jai wants to show you why gaming represents a whole new way of looking at computing. You can learn more about Jai and his world by visiting ibm.com.

Jai also serves an important role, as today IBM kicks off a major educational campaign around videogaming. The United States is in the midst of a major crisis, as fewer and fewer kids pursue engineering careers. Gaming is one way to help kids connect math, science and engineering to some of the coolest technologies around. We want to remind kids that the amazing things they can do with an XBox, PS3 or Wii are only possible because of visionary, dedicated engineers. The ibm.com story also features interviews with game developers talking about how kids can pursue a gaming career. And as more kids think about pursuing gaming careers, more will also branch off into computer science and engineering careers that require the same skills as game development - careers that will reshape science, medicine, design, defense, IT and more.

Jai’s very pleased to meet you. He hopes you’ll stick around to hear more about how we’ll Game Tomorrow!

Online game sales to triple in four years, says analyst report
All three of the next-generation gaming consoles have serious online services attached, and many developers of PC games also sell their wares through digital delivery systems these days. Today, those downloads account for about 8 percent of total gaming revenues, according to a fresh eMarketer report, but the firm expects that portion to grow to 22 percent by 2010.

These figures include full-game sales, service subscriptions, and incremental game updates like mini-games, expansion maps, and in-game music sales. The fact that each of the console makers is listing online play as a major selling point contributes to the generous growth forecast.

We’ll know in another week.

This week, in the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) booth at SC06, IBM will demonstrate newly developed interactive ray-tracing technology. The iRT will be running on a hybrid system consisting of four IBM QS20 Cell blades and an AMD Opteron based client. By dynamically balancing work across the four Cell blade’s 1.6 Tflops, the iRT renders high definition images at interactive frame rates using advanced techniques such as BRDF shaders, and ambient occlusion. This mini-Roadrunner is approximately 1/2000^th of LANL’s monster 1.6 petaflop system. I hope they invite me back to run the iRT on their finished system.

Quicktime Movie of real-time iRT output
(Resolution reduced and H.264 encoded but still 27MB so be patient)

A source at Sony’s invitation-only PlayStation3 media day (now underway at a gallery in SoHo) phones in with an update:

• 15 titles are being previewed, from both Sony and 3rd-party developers
• The titles are being shown on 42″ HD plasma screens, at 1080p
• Some of the most striking titles include Resistance: Fall of Man, NHL 2K7, NBA 2K7, and Lair
• Great media buzz at the event
• When asked how the titles looked on the HD screen, my source simply said (speaking of the NBA game) “I swear, it looks like live television.”

Sounds like a tough assignment!

Technorati tags: PlayStation 3, Sony