Bigfoot Found, Creates Network Accelerator

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Back in the early 90s, dedicated sound cards began popping up on the market, offering better sound quality and MIDI synthesis than existing integrated sound solutions. In the late 90s, similar progress was made with standalone graphics accelerator cards. These days, every dedicated gamer has a video accelerator and most have sound cards. Recently, AGEIA announced that it is developing the first standalone physics accelerator card, the PhysX chip. Early footage and claims regarding the PhysX chip have been attractive to many gamers, but many also question how it's going to affect PC gaming--certainly not the cheapest hobby--to be expected to buy so many separate cards. Now, startup Bigfoot Networks has just announced that it has obtained $4M in funding to release its first standalone network accelerator card.
The company will bring to market the world's first Gaming Network Accelerator card, which will allow online gamers to play their favorite games with less lag. Lag is the number one problem in online video games today, and Bigfoot Networks is the only company in the world whose sole mission is to fight lag.

"Bigfoot Networks products will infuse online gaming with blazing speed, making them a ton more fun," says Harlan Beverly, inventor, co-Founder, and CEO of the company. "We are to online games what 3D video cards are to graphics: essential. Eventually, we plan to completely eliminate the dreaded lag monster."

Bigfoot plans to announce more details about its card at conferences such as E3 in coming months, with the first product being brought to market this summer. The company's website also has a whitepaper on the causes of lag (PDF link), arguing that in today's world of broadband connections, latency itself is not the primary, or even a significant, cause of lag.

Gamerati has a short interview about Bigfoot with company CEO Harland Beverly.

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    March 8, 2006 12:23 PM

    I bet they'll integrate this vaporware into the Phantom console. I heard it's big launch title will be DNF.

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