I have just received a press announcement stating that in early 2009 (January 12th) amBX will be releasing a free SDK to the entertainment industry to help them integrate amBX effects with their products. Certainly sounds like a good move for amBX and for us gamers may mean that more new titles are released with full amBX capability. A short extract from the press release is given below:

The amBX SDK enables developers across the whole of the entertainment industry to get up and running quickly with test tools and example applications to guide the way to enhance games with immersive amBX effects. A support forum provides advice and best practice information as well as a complete tool box that will unlock the most advanced features of amBX. Up to now the amBX SDK has been available on a project by project basis but the new developer programme has opened it up to the development community free of charge.

“The amBX SDK provides developers with everything they need to get quickly up to speed and at no charge. It makes amBX very approachable and this will be a major step forward for us as we take the amBX proposition to wider markets and sectors. The whole point of amBX is to immerse the player deeper into the game and the amBX SDK now makes a rather complex operation very simple and extremely low cost.” commented Neil MacDonald, CEO of amBX.

If there are any budding developers out there you can go and register your interest for the SDK by visiting http://developer.ambx.com. Sounds like amBX is going to make a good start to 2009 so I wish them luck and can’t wait to see how many studios and developers embrace this.

One of the games industries main development news portals for the UK has published a rather nice interview with the new CEO of amBX; Neil MacDonald. The article talks about amBX spinning out of Philips with VC investment, what the future holds and how they are working to promote the technology.

A snippet can be found below along with a link to the full interview:

What is the game development industry’s attitude towards amBX at the moment?

Cooke: Whenever we demo amBX to developers, the first question we get asked is, “How can I get this in my living room?” The development community has always seen and understood the vision we have of amBX as an innovative technology driving future entertainment experiences.

Any present concerns have always been around implementation time, and cost and hefty licence contracts. We are now in a position to change that and are currently developing a partner program which will mean developers can download the amBX SDK from a dedicated partner website with a forum and on-line tutorials. Our goal is to provide a best in class SDK and supporting tools.

MacDonald: I sense that the industry is waiting to see how we do now we are out from Philips. I also sense that there is recognition that we could now be better to do business with and it’s certainly my intention to prove that.

To read the full interview head over to the Developmag page here!