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This trio was not alone. Canada had its own network, Nabu, “Turn on the smart TV!” Which he promoted with the slogan. Warner Cable and American Express launched a partnership to create a QUBE-based network, a two-way cable communication service that expanded to several cities in the midwest in the late 1970s. John Lockton, President of Warner Amex, told the Wall Street Journal In early 1983, “we felt the video game channel was the concept that the time was coming.”
Technology
The technology behind PlayCable is still used by millions of homes: cable TV. Today, cable networks in the United States have become the backbone of Internet access. Early networks like PlayCable laid the groundwork for this expansion.
PlayCable was a joint venture between Jerrold Division of PlayCable General Instrument, which designed cable TV converter cables for growing cable networks and between Mattel Electronics. “The overall instrument was actually working on PlayCable before Mattel’s Intellivision was launched,” Moskovtiz said in an interview with Zoom. “They were looking for other revenue, and that’s where another company, Mattel Electronics, seems to be offering a way to add another business element to its model.” Mattel’s Intellivision had what all cable providers craved: that popular television entertainment couldn’t be televised.
The PlayCable hardware was on the Intellivision console just like any other game, but at the other end it had a coaxial connection that allowed users to connect to a cable box from their service provider. After connecting, it sent the data via an FM radio band available in a cable that was not normally used.
Players launching PlayCable were greeted by a star field with the title “PlayCable Intellivision Intelligent Television” printed on it. Unlike modern Xbox and PlayStation consoles, PlayCable was fast and offered few options. The service was included directly in the alphabetical catalog of games while he played a familiar tune in the background.
PlayCable also surpassed modern consoles during download times. Recording Master Chief Collection It may take hours from the Xbox Game Pass, but even the largest games on the PlayCable would charge in less than thirty seconds. Thanks for the sheer size of the games of the time. The Master Chief Collection It takes up 800 million times more storage than the largest game ever brought to PlayCable.
Fast downloads were important because the physical device had a shared limitation with most game consoles of the time: it lacked long-term storage. Games were not loaded on the hard drive, directly into RAM, so players had to download a game again each time they booted.
The Games Network offered him his own idea. His physical box wasn’t inserted into the existing console, but it was a device called a “Window”. It had an integrated keyboard and supported peripherals such as disk drives, joysticks, and printers. These peripherals might have allowed the Games Games network to exceed RAM limits, but I never found any evidence that they reached customers.
GameLine used the slot on the Atari 2600 game cartridge just as the PlayCable used Intellivision, but connected to a phone provider via a modem instead of a cable box. It could be extended beyond GameLine games, which at the time also used telephone lines instead of cables to connect to other computer networks, but none of these services would have much chance of growing.
Legacy
PlayCable, GameLine, and The Games Network were incredibly modern, offering a range of online games a decade before the worldwide website. No one has survived since 1984. They were sunk by a perfect storm of technical, business and cultural trends.
Today, anyone with Internet access can sign up for the Xbox Game Pass and, when subscribed, download games directly from Microsoft’s servers. However, the Internet did not exist in the 1980s, so each service provider had to install its own computer. The Game Pass would probably not be feasible if Microsoft had to install a data center in every city where it wants to offer the service, but that’s how PlayCable and its competitors worked.
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