PiNGPING (Printed Intelligent NFC Game cards and Packaging), a consortium of six European companies is working on the integration of near field communications (NFC) in to printed products, including board and card games. One of the consortium is the game company, Cartamundi. Other participants include Van Genechten Packaging, PragmatIC, SMARTRAC, TNO, and imec. No specific game products have been announced yet. However, SMARTRAC, a producer of RFID technology, has opened a research and testing center in Finland.

Cartamundi believes that incorporating NFC in to cards, for example, could allow people to play games remotely but with physical components or enable tracing histories of individual cards.

[via Printed Electronics Now]