What happened to the ApeXtreme?

The ApeXtreme was showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on the 9th of January in 2004, and went on to win the award for "Best of CES" in the "Home Audio & Video" category. Fated for big things it has since left many people scratching their heads and asking what the hell happened to the ApeXtreme. To recap the Apex press release commented,

"The ApeXtreme is the first device of its kind. It functions as a full-featured, high-end home DVD player, a hard-disk-based Personal Video Recorder and a home game console designed to play any PC game, all in one attractive device. The device moves PC versions of electronic games out of the computer room and into the TV room, giving gamers the ability to play their favorite "PC-only" games on a console machine, with a bigger game image -- on their standard TV."

Apex stated that the console would be packaged with a keyboard, gamepad, mouse, and remote control. And would have the ability to play PC games by simply inserting them into the console's dvd drive. It would also beable to play VCDs, MP3 files, DVDs and CDs. The core platform would be an embedded Microsoft's Windows XP operating system in conjunction with VIA Technologies' "Glory Personal Gaming Console Platform".

The specifications of VIA's platform is a 1.4GHz VIA C3 processor, 256MB SDRAM, 20Gb hard drive, S3 DeltaChrome graphics accelerator, support for Hi-Def HDTV, DirectX 9.0, Vertex shader and 2.0+ video standards. A selection USB port would also allow users to play games with a keyboard and mouse, a preference most PC gamers would jump at for fps titles and sim games. Further more it would have come with an inbuilt Ethernet port for high-speed Internet connection.

At the time the Xbox could already do most of this, so that was not the main attraction of the ApeXtreme. The key selling point was allowing users to play PC games with minimal interaction and configuration, and automatic patch installation. The system used to achieve this was DISCover's "Drop and Play" game-recognition database, it would have handled all the work of installing and optimizing the PC games.

Plans were to release the ApeXtreme in two versions, priced at $299 and $399 respectively.

So what happened?

Only Apex know for certain.

Kurt Kaiser of the DISCover platform said of the ApeXtreme: "I don't think we will be working with [Apex] on a product. There was a lot of consumer demand and industry excitement for the product, and we are disappointed they were unable to bring it to market."

It appears from the outside Apex lost confidence in the project and decided to scrap it. It's not hard to see why, PC gamers have a love of tweaking and modifying their machines, the ability to upgrade every single part of their setup is also key. After a year the ApeXtreme would simply have become obsolete, lacking the specification to play any of the latest games. Asking $300-$400 when the Xbox was only $199 was also hardly likely to induce a craze. Finally do PC gamers want to own a console? historically hardcore PC gamers have shown an unwillingness to try console technologies.

Comments

Posted on 29 / 10 / 2006

God Loves Us
The system didnt last

Upon hearing of the success Apex had at the CES 2004 show I was hooked and eager to own the system. I prayed for an Apextreme and confessed that I would own one, and a few years later the Lord answered that prayer and I became one of the only owners of the Apextreme. Though it had been cancelled I bought one prototype from Apex. They sent me several PC games with the system as well. I took it apart and I looked inside at all the hardware. I have left it in the box sent to me by Apex and I need to contact someone who is an expert who can get the system running again (it seems to have crashed) and maybe put in a gaming museum for others to enjoy.

User Rating -
User Name - Big J South

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