For many years now the movie industry has put a lot of work into the quality of your cinema going experiences. They have used technology to ensure that the picture and sound quality is consistent and accurate. So that everything that you see and hear is exactly as the studio intended. And they use this authenticity as a marketing tool.

Now it is possible for us in the games industry to go some way to ensure that our customers have as authentic an experience as possible. What I am talking about here is using technology to calibrate all the monitors in a studio to give a perfect image. So the game looks like it’s makers intended. Obviously you are still relying on the calibration of the customer’s monitor. But at least you are half way there and you know that if the customer has their monitor set correctly they will see the game exactly as it was seen under development and so exactly as the development team wanted. Of course keen gamers can use the same technology themselves.

The technology is the SpyderTV PRO™ 2007 from Datacolor of  Lawrenceville, NJ, USA and consists of a piece of test equipment and some software.  This scientifically measures contrast, brightness, colour, tint, colour temperature presets and cuts/gains so you can quickly and easily calibrate every monitor in the studio to perfection. Then you will know what your game really looks like! Here is a review.

Remarkably the Spyder only costs $1199, so this is not an affordability issue.

Of course this low price means that keen gamers can buy a Spyder themselves to set up their own televisions and monitors. This means that they will see a game exactly as that game’s designers saw the game when they were developing it (as long as the developers used a Spyder). A really nice level of authenticity.

So do you think this is a cheap way to getting a great technical feature that you can use to help you market your games? Or just another toy for your tekkies to play with?