Philips amBX Uses Flashing Lights and Wind to Rot Gamers' Social Lives

Another year, another wave of PC gaming accessories that may or may not make the cut. One of the more curious ones at CES this year was the amBX from Philips, using a combination of lighting, vibration, and wind to provide a more immersive experience to your gameplay, at a price. Details after the jump.

For lighting, the amBX experience consists of 4 light towers and two wall splash lights that operate independently of each other, lighting up and changing colors as scripted by the games. An example of this was in the intro for Supreme Commander, where a mech shot a bunch of enemies from the center to the left, and the left light towers flashed red respectively while the rest of the towers cast a dark yellow to match the fog of war. An interesting note, the light towers actually are backwards compatible with older games that don't support the amBX, glowing to match the dominant color displayed on-screen.

Wind is generated by four fans, also on different channels that act in the same way as the lights do, responding to scripted events. In the Warhammer demo they were used to provide an effect to the fog, as well as place emphasis on powerful attacks. As can be expected, these are not backwards compatible with older games. Assisting the fans with the touch sense is the "rumbler", a vibrating wrist rest that's also scripted. It's a bit too tall for our liking and will encounter problems with keyboards with existing built-in rests, but we have to admit it's a much better idea than the vibrating mouse.

amBX will begin shipping in Spring in one of three packages. $199 will get you a splash light, controller, light towers and one game, $299 will get you the Pro Gamer set with all of the above plus a 200-watt 2.1 speaker system and two games, while another $99 will afford the expansion kit that includes the fans and rumbler. A premium kit that contains everything and three games will run $399.

This leads us to wonder just what numbers Philips expects to pull with these price points. With expensive new gamer technologies coming out all the time from the Killer Nic to Ageia's PhysX physics card, Philips will have to work hard to establish the amBX as a strong accessory worthy of our hard earned paychecks.

Currently four games are already announced that officially support the amBX, including Supreme Commander, Toca Racing 3, Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death, and Defcon (How about a nice game of global thermonuclear war?). Philips has stated that 60-75 games will be supported by the end of the year.