Star of the four-day Consumer Electronics Show, which closed its doors in Las Vegas yesterday had to be the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, which Advanced RISC Machines Plc of Cambridge, UK reveals uses its 32-bit ARM60 RISC chip as the control processor. IBM Corp was trying very hard to persuade the world that it is dedicated to fun and games (see reports on page two), and there was plenty going on elsewhere. Apple Computer Inc said it had now officially received the first fully integrated hand-held version of the Newton Family from Sharp Corp, and says it plans to ship it by the middle of the year. Compton’s NewMedia Inc, Carlsbad, California reckons it has eliminated one of the major obstacles preventing widespread retailers acceptance of CD-ROM-based software – incompatibility of formats for different operating systems. It says it will 50 CD-ROM titles in the current quarter incorporating its Multiple Operating System Technology, which enables the same disk to operate with MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh System, and Sony Corp’s new multimedia player format. And Sega of America Inc and Nintendo of America Inc say they plan to inundate the market with new games and accessories, with Sega claiming that it outsold Nintendo in the US market over Christmas. On the new product front, Nintendo added a line of games for the Super FX special effects chip and Sega has an infra-red Activator which enables players to control characters on a screen through hand movements rather than by pressing buttons.
