Philips releases Entertaible, a new social gaming platform

Philips unveils the Entertaible – a 21st century tabletop gaming platform that marries the best of electronic and traditional board games in a natural and simple way. Sitting comfortably around the game table, people can enjoy both the shared experience of playing together and the excitement of being able to directly interact with an electronic game.

Entertaible comprises a 30-inch horizontal LCD and an innovative multi-touch sensor design that can detect several pawns and fingers simultaneously. This allows players to intuitively interact with the virtual world as if – by magic – it were actually real, opening up a new class of electronic games which combines the features of computer gaming, such as dynamic playing fields and gaming levels, with the social interaction and tangible playing pieces, such as pawns and dies, of traditional board games.

Initially aimed at the out-of-home game market such as restaurants, bars, and casinos, Entertaible has the potential to evolve into a gaming platform for the consumer market.

video – high-res photos – press release – article (pdf, 145 kb)

Also in the latest issue of Password, the quarterly magazine of Philips Research (download as pdf, 2.5 mb, 27 pages), an interesting article about an open media center platform for the digital home.