Hello Everyone!

We are very proud to announce the v1.2 release of the Spawn Labs product line, including more attractive pricing and a major software upgrade that delivers significantly improved video, latency and quality throughout the product. Highlights of the new release include:

• Reduces price from $199.95 to $129.95.
  Spawn Labs has reduced the price of the Spawn HD-720 from $199.95 to $129.95 and has reduced the price of Spawn Gamepad Adapters from $39.95 to $29.95.
• Reduces latency to 45 milliseconds for default play settings.
  We have reduced latency for LAN-based play from 60ms to 45ms. Latency is now imperceptible for play around the home using a local network.  Latency when playing across the Internet within a major metro area is very low – typically 60-65 milliseconds – allowing for effective, enjoyable game play of any game genre around town – e.g. playing from work or a friend’s house.  Latency at long distances such as coast-to-coast is not sufficiently low to support high-twitch games like first-person shooters, but is fine for RPGs, turn-based strategy games, and other less latency-sensitive game genres.
• Doubles video quality for lower bandwidth network connections.
  This software release literally *doubles* video quality for a given amount of bandwidth. The video quality of play sessions across the Internet is most often constrained by the uplink bandwidth of the network to which the HD-720 is attached.  Previous versions of the software required a 6Mbps connection or better to deliver a high-definition video session, and 3Mbps or better to deliver a standard definition video session.  This software release requires just a 3-4Mbps connection to deliver an HD session, and 1-1.5Mbps to deliver an SD session.
• Significantly improves the stability and reliability of Internet play sessions.
  In previous software versions, video could freeze and resync during the first couple minutes of play as our adaptive algorithms found the right balance of settings for the video stream.  After this initial settling period, resyncs could occur once every 5 to 20 minutes, disturbing the user’s play session, even if only for a moment or two.  Play sessions sometimes also terminated due to a loss of connectivity between the system components.  The new software release virtually eliminates video freezes and resyncs for all but the worst network connections and conditions, and also guards much more effectively against and recovers from connectivity issues so that play sessions are not terminated.
• Enables users to play from many more locations.
  The previous version of the software streamed audio and video using the UDP protocol.  We found that many office/corporate networks (as well as a few other miscellaneous networks) block UDP streaming so that users could not play from these locations.  The product now streams using either UDP or TCP, and it will automatically scan the network to which the Spawn Player is attached to choose the best option.  As a result, users can now play from most locations and networks.
• Adds support for multiple remote players per computer.
  Now more than one player can remote play from a single computer at the same time.  For example, if you are traveling and your two kids both want to play Little Big Planet at the same time from a single laptop, you can plug two game controllers into the laptop, and both kids can play together. Or if you are at a friend’s house and you both want to play a multi-player game from the console at your house, you can do it. Note that you still need to have one Spawn Gamepad Adapter set up with your console for each simultaneous remote player.
• Improves interoperability with 1080p.
  Previous versions of the product required that users set their consoles to output 720p video.  While streaming 1080p doesn’t make much sense today, many users don’t want to set their console to 720p because they give up 1080p resolution when playing natively at home on their console and TV.  Now users can have their consoles set to 1080p when playing at home.  When a user starts a remote play session, the Spawn Labs products will turn on the console, automatically detect that the console is set to 1080p resolution, and ask the user if it’s OK to reset the console to 720p.  If the user says yes, the Spawn HD-720 runs a macro that sets the console to 720p and video starts streaming through the Spawn Player.  When the user is finished playing, they can run another macro remotely from the Spawn Player to set the console back to 1080p so it’s ready for use when they return home.  The Spawn HD-720 does not support HDMI (due to HDCP encryption limitations), but it does support 1080p video using component video cables.
• Provides an easier and more reliable initial setup process for the HD-720.
  The new software adds enhanced discovery technology so that the Spawn Setup Wizard reliably finds the HD-720 in almost all network environments.  The new software also makes software updates of the HD-720 more reliable.  In terms of usability, we have streamlined the flow of the setup wizard to make it easier to follow.  We’ve produced videos that show how to set up an Xbox 360 and PS3 from start to finish, and we’ve produced videos that show how to open and forward firewall ports to the HD-720 for the most popular routers to enable Internet play.
• Improves the stability and performance of the Spawn Player.
  We have eliminated 95% of the crashes encountered with previous versions of the player.  The new software release also ensures that game controllers are more reliably recognized and activated and that there is no loss of control during game play sessions.
• Eliminates support for legacy consoles.
  As part of the v1.2 release, please note we have eliminated support for the Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube legacy game consoles.  We now support only the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles.

For game developers only, the enterprise version of the Spawn Labs products also introduces a few additional capabilities:

• Adds support for secure website deployment.
  Game developers can now deploy the Spawn Labs website on a server behind their firewall so that all system components run internally on the enterprise LAN and are fully secure.
• Adds bulk user and device management for administrators.
  The game developer staff responsible for administrative management of the Spawn Labs suite of products can now use a Web-based management interface to time-effectively manage user accounts and device access rights with an efficient bulk management interface.
• Adds Web-based admin interface to the HD-720.
  In previous versions, any game developer staff responsible for the care and feeding of an HD-720 attached to a dev kit was forced to put the HD-720 and their computer on the same subnet, and had to run the Setup Wizard in order to update configurations and settings on the HD-720. The HD-720 now offers a built-in administrative Web interface that allows staff to remotely sign in to the HD-720 using a browser from across the network and perform any configuration or troubleshooting needed.
• Adds bonded multi-controller support for remote collaborative team reviews.
  Much like Web conferencing tools allow participants to pass control over the screen back and forth during a conference, the Spawn Player now allows two individuals or teams in remote locations to “bond” two game controllers into a single controller/player, and pass control back and forth as they view and move through a game.

- David

Hi Everyone -

Writing with most excellent news today. Spawn HD-720 has left the building! We shipped out to all our pre-order customers today and will be shipping daily on new orders going forward. You can check the press release here: http://bit.ly/706lgy.

Thanks to a combination of a number of great optimizations that have come together recently, I’m pleased to report that we have beaten our performance target for this first release. Playing across a LAN around the home or office is extremely tight, and playing across the Internet feels very good. In fact, performance (i.e. latency) has now been driven low enough that one of our kids (go Eli!) played Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox Live remotely from his laptop on the Spawn Player – essentially two levels of indirection – remote from the laptop to the X360, plus Xbox Live networked multiplayer.

While playing MW2 from his laptop, Eli simultaneously recorded the gameplay session in HD using the Spawn Player, and we posted an excerpt on YouTube here: http://bit.ly/7kpf6p. Note that the video quality of the game was actually significantly better in the live play and original recorded file – it’s been compressed by YouTube and has lost a chunk of quality/resolution in translation. 

The Spawn Labs approach to cloud gaming is significantly different than other companies in the market. From a technology perspective, our approach is peer-to-peer vs. the centralized, stream-it-all-from-our-datacenters concept. Essentially, you get your own cloud gaming server in your home, and you get to decide how to use it and what friends can access it with you. And from a user and business perspective, we see consoles as just as viable and important as ever, so we are as seamlessly as possible extending the console experience, helping our customers get more out of their investments in their  consoles and game libraries (past/present/future), and bringing mobility, enhanced social play, and content sharing to the console.

We are tremendously excited to reach this milestone, and we have a lot more good stuff up our sleeves, so stay tuned!

- David

Spawn Labs announces today that it is increasing the price of Spawn Gamepad Adapters from $29.95 to $39.95. We apologize for this price increase, but we found that the cost of goods of manufacturing the adapters is higher than we had anticipated, so the increase is necessary. We will honor the $29.95 price for all orders that have already been placed. All new orders received going forward will be charged at the new/adjusted price.

- David

Hi Folks -

I am writing to let you know that we are pushing out the ship date for the Spawn HD-720 by just one more week from January 18th to January 25th. Our offshore manufacturing in China took a little bit longer than expected, and we are expediting product via air to get it back here in time to ship a week from Monday. Sorry for this second delay to our ship date, even if it’s a minor one. But get ready – it’s coming!

- David

Spawn Labs is announcing some good news today. The Spawn HD-720 has passed CE certification testing, so we can now take orders from customers in any country in the European Union. Shipping to Europe is currently going to be a bit expensive at US$100, but we’ll reduce this as soon as we can get around to setting up a warehousing and fulfillment capability inside Europe – most likely in the UK. Thanks to everyone who has been contacting us and inquiring about availability of the product in various EU countries, and hope this news finds you all well!

- David

Following up on my last blog post, we have evaluated our product release status, and we are re-setting our target release date for the the Spawn HD-720 to January 18th. We are now essentially done writing code for the product features, and we’re planning to take the next several weeks to finish testing and hardening the quality of the product prior to general release. We’ll be sending evaluation units out in December to our major game developer customers and to the gaming media. And then we’ll release to the larger consumer audience January 18th. Thanks to everyone who is following our progress, and we’re very excited now to finally be so close to the finish (or rather the starting) line.

Looks like it’s about time to crank up the ol’ blog, and start communicating with everyone out there more regularly. Unfortunately, the topic of my first post is that we are running a little bit behind in finishing up the first release of the product, so we aren’t going to make our initial target to ship in November. I know a bunch of you out there are as disappointed with this news as we are internally. To atone for our tardiness, we have purchased a taser. Each day we all draw straws, and one unfortunate employee gets “tased”. But seriously, we are disappointed to miss our target ship date, and we are heads down working as hard as we can to bring it home. More updates on this front soon. Keep the faith! We are close.