The authorised version in Japan on Matsushita Electric Industrial Co’s alliances with AT&T Co and Electronic Arts Inc in a separate joint ventures to develop products for the home computer games market is that Matsushita’s role is to produce the hardware from which an AT&T pen input device will communicate by radio, and on which Electronic Arts will develop the games and educational software. The plan will be put into effect by the formation of a joint venture company by AT&T and Matsushita to develop a handwritten input liquid crystal diode display-based computer, in two sizes, one large enought to fit in a briefcase, and another small enough for a breast pocket. This will be able to access the AT&T telephone network around the US, and the operating system will be the Go Corp pen-based operating system. Electronic Arts has formed a new company, San Mateo Software Group, in which Matsushita will take a stake of between 20% and 25%. The new company plans to release CD-ROM software based on its own standard this year.
