DigiScents Shuts Down Operations

After going through $20 million of initial funding, Digiscents could not line up investment for its next round of operations. Digiscents says that it distributed over 5000 copies of its SDK in its ScentWare Developers Program, but because the product never made it to market (mid 2001 was the company's target product launch date), no smell-enabled titles ever made it to market, either. The Digiscents concept for gaming was this: an in-game event would trigger a cartridge inside an scent emitter (which was to be sold to consumers for about $100) to spew out the proper mix of scents, sometimes combining chemicals from multiple cartridges on the fly to get the proper aroma. A fan would then drive the odor to your nose in about one second. Alas, it wasn't to be.