CES 2008

(Credit: Nyko)

CES 2008 wasn't a very big show for gamers. Sure, there were plenty of controllers and accessories on display, but actual game developers were conspicuously absent. It's not surprising; CES is always oriented more towards general consumer electronics, and game-heavy companies usually wait until spring or summer shows like E3 to make their big announcements.

We were surprised by a major announcement from Namco at CES, though. According to the game company, its upcoming Soul Calibur 4 will feature Darth Vader and Yoda as playable bonus characters. Soul Calibur 2 saw Zelda's Link, Tekken's Heihachi, and Todd MacFarlane's Spawn as playable characters, but they aren't as big as Vader. Let's see the lightsabers fly.

Nyko unveiled its Wireless Nunchuck for the Wii, one of the first actual third-party controllers (and not simply a clip-on accessory) for the Nintendo Wii. When it ships in early February, it'll cut the cord between the Wiimote and the Nunchuk for about $30.

Gateway and Dell showed off some new gaming desktops, with Gateway's offering packing a quad-core AMD Phenom processor into a system that starts at $1,100. Alienware wowed spectators with a massive 22:9 curved wide-screen display. Unfortunately, the company hasn't announced any release date or pricing (though you can expect the price tag to be around "a lot."). Finally, Saitek showed off its new Cyborg Keyboard, a gaming keyboard that lets you customize the lighting of different banks of keys. You can have the WASD keys glow red, the number pad glow green, and so on. It's not exactly a revolutionary change in game control, but it certainly looks cool.

After the holiday season, gaming has hit a bit of a lull. Besides a few big titles coming out next month, don't expect much major news until spring or summer, when E3, PAX, and other shows bring out the developers.

What happens in Vegas...

Many of us have been decrying the overall lack of gaming gear here at CES, but while there might not be much video game hardware on display at the Las Vegas Convention Center, several video game publishers are in town showing off their latest wares, including LucasArts, Eidos, Microsoft, and Namco.

The latter is perhaps the most interesting, since the title being shown off is the latest iteration of the fighting game Soul Calibur, which first hit living rooms via Sega's Dreamcast console back in 1999. The series features an eclectic cast of medieval Japanese characters battling over a magical sword, and the new entry, Soul Calibur IV, will be available later in 2008 on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

We got a chance to spend a little hands-on time with the game, which will look and feel familiar to fans of the series. The most noteworthy part is the addition of two well-known characters to the mix--Star Wars stalwarts Darth Vader (in the PS3 version) and Yoda (in the Xbox 360 version).

While Darth himself and a handful of Stormtroopers were in attendance, and we got to see some prerendered footage of them in action, neither Star Wars character was included in our hands-on demo of the game, so we'll have to wait to indulge in some Samurai-vs-Sith action.

At first glance, Re-Mission comes across as a stylishly produced, anime-influenced video game. But the targets in question are cancer cells, which the character Roxxi the nanobot blasts with the Chemoblaster, the Radiation Gun, and the Antibiotic Rocket.

Re-Mission is specifically designed as a health improvement intervention for teens and young adults who have cancer. Game producers at HopeLab start with a desired health outcome, and then reverse engineer a game that encourages positive behaviors, adding motivation and fun into something as scary as a kid's battle against cancer.

Re-Mission helps teens fight cancer

HopeLab Vice President Ellen LaPointe spoke at the Sandbox Summit conference on Tuesday, and I was amazed to learn that the game producers actually test the effectiveness of their games through controlled clinical research studies. HopeLab followed 374 kids with cancer, at 34 hospitals in several countries, playing the game in English, Spanish, and French. The kids who played Re-Mission showed measurable improvements in their attitude (sense of self-efficacy) and healthy behavior (taking medications as prescribed).

It's interesting to see a nonprofit with a health-improvement mission embrace video games in this new way. It is crucial that Re-Mission looks as well-designed as any game out there on the market. Deborah Manchester of the kids' science Web site Zula, another panelist at the Sandbox Summit, said that one pitfall of educational media is that we can get stuck in a rut trying to put the same boring content into a digital format. Re-Mission shows what can be accomplished when designers break out of that box to create a product based on what kids and teens really enjoy playing.

What's next for HopeLab? Ruckus Nation, whose underlying goal is to look for new solutions to childhood obesity. Students from all over the world entered Ruckus Nation's online competition for new product designs that are cool and fun enough to get kids moving.

HopeLabs will support the development and testing of winning products, providing a real opportunity for kids to not only win a contest, but to see their innovative ideas come to life.

If the Wii Zapper strikes you as too 'gunlike,' then you're probably not going to like these Wii accessories. Brooklyn-based CTA Digital showed off an entire arsenal of gun-themed Wiimote peripherals.

From the pistol-like Magnum Gun to the submachinegun-like Buzz Gun, CTA showed off no less than six Zapper-like Wii gun attachments. The Shot Gun for Wii stood out among them, a hulking, heavy pump-action shotgun accessory. The Shot Gun was a mock-up, and hopefully the final version of the gun will be lighter than the bulky model CTA displayed.

While they look fun, CTA's Wii accessories were questionable at best. Several models boasted built-in laser pointers, which are essentially useless when actually playing the Wii. Along with the company's various other Wii accessories, like Wii boxing gloves, Wii glowing swords, Wii fishing rods, Wii pool cues, and even Wii cooking utensils, the entire display seemed like an attempt to cash in on Wii fever. The most blatant example of this was the Airplane Navigator, a flight yoke accessory in which you fit the Wiimote and Nunchuck... and which no Wii game can actually use very well. So far, I haven't seen any games that involve holding the remote and nunchuck together and waving them around like a flight yoke to move or steer.

CTA had no pricing information for its various Wii accessories, but a spokesman said that units were already being shipped to retail outlets.

As it has in the past, Dell put a new desktop on display at the show this year, but without revealing any specifics. We're not able to tell much by looking only at the exterior of the XPS 630, other than the fact that it retains the overall look and feel of the high-end XPS 700 series, including the external case lighting.

Two flavors of Dell's secretive XPS 630.

(Credit: CNET)

Dell pulled a similar move with the XPS 710 H2C at last year's CES, and that system shipped in February 2007. If Dell follows that same pattern, we hope to have a review unit in our hands by mid-January.

A group of video game giants that changed the way people play in the '80s, '90s, and 2000s were honored with technology and engineering Emmy Awards during a ceremony Monday night in Las Vegas amid the Consumer Electronics Show, according to Sony Online Entertainment.

The awards were handed out in two categories. The first was development of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The winners were Sony Online Entertainment, Blizzard Entertainment, and AOL/Time Warner for EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and Neverwinter Nights, respectively.

In the user-generated content and game modification category, Electronic Arts, Id Software, and Linden Lab were honored for Pinball Construction Set, Quake, and Second Life, respectively.

(Credit: Nyko)

The Nintendo Wii uses a wireless remote to begin with, but that remote still manages to use a cord half the time. Most Wii games use both the Wii Remote and the Wii Nunchuck, an analog stick peripheral that plugs into the base of the remote via a long cable. Nyko first cut the Wii cord with the Wireless Sensor Bar and is taking away yet another tether with the Wireless Nunchuck.

The Nyko Wireless Nunchuck connects to the Wiimote via a little wireless dongle that clicks into the controller's accessory jack. Once plugged in, tapping the connection buttons on the dongle and the Nunchuck syncs them together, letting the Nunchuck work as if it was physically connected to the remote. The Nunchuck runs on two AAA batteries, which Nyko claims can provide up to 30 hours of gameplay. It has all the same features as the original Nunchuck, including analog stick, C and Z buttons, and even an accelerometer for games that use the Nunchuck for motion controls.

I spent a few minutes playing with the wireless Nunchuck, and it feels very much like the original. The shape is nearly identical to the corded Wii Nunchuck, and it sits comfortably in the hand. I'm not sure if it will work with the Wii Zapper, but since the Zapper lets you stash the cord inside it anyway, it's not that important a feature. The wireless dongle only measures an inch or so and keeps the same profile as the remote itself, so it doesn't feel too different from using a bare Wiimote or a Wiimote and corded Nunchuck.

The Nyko Wireless Nunchuck ships in late January/early February and will retail for about $30.

(Credit: Saitek)

Lighted keyboards are nothing new, but they tend to light every key the same way, or can be limited to just one color. Saitek is changing that with the Cyborg keyboard, a gaming keyboard with a unique, multicolored lighting system.

Watch the Saitek Cyborg Keyboard video on CNET TV.

The Cyborg keyboard divides its keys into a variety of zones, like the WASD keys, the other letter keys, the number pad, and the arrow keys. When gaming, users can customize the lighting of each zone through the keyboard's touch sensor panel, changing the zones' color and brightness. The WASD keys can blaze bright red, the number pad and letters can glow a soft green, and the hot keys on the keyboards' sides can light up orange.

Besides customizable lighting, the Cyborg keyboard includes a variety of other gaming features. The WASD keys, arrow keys, and space bar are metal-plated, giving them a different look from the other keys, and according to Saitek, makes them wear better. Users can program the side hot keys with custom commands and macros for certain games. Finally, two USB jacks, a microphone jack, and an audio/headphone jack sit on the keyboard, letting users hook up additional devices like headsets and game controllers through the keyboard itself.

Saitek plans to ship the Cyborg keyboard in March, with a suggested retail price of $80.

Gateway bowed two new gaming desktops at the show today, the high-end FX540, and the more modest FX7020. The former is an update to Gateway's year-old customizable, semi-high-end Intel-based PCs. The FX7020 packages a quad-core AMD Phenom chip in to a relatively affordable $1,099 package.

Watch the Gateway FX7020 video on CNET TV.

The Gateway FX7020, with optional 24-inch LCD.

(Credit: Gateway)

Gateway's FX7020 represents the type of PC we expect to see a lot of in 2008: the $1,000 to $1,500 gamer that finally has the graphics horsepower to handle the newest 3D PC games. Dell, HP, Velocity Micro and others will all compete hard in this space this year, but Gateway's FX7020 represents the opening shot. Its AMD Phenom quad core CPU isn't the fastest CPU around, although it is quick enough. But the real horsepower lies in its GeForce 8800 GT graphics card. Until now, few PCs in this price range have been able to handle the likes of Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 and other new PC games with any kind of decent image quality. This PC, and forthcoming systems like it, should finally deliver the promise of next-gen PC gaming to a wider audience.

The Gateway FX540, with optional 30-inch LCD.

(Credit: Gateway)

As for the FX540, it's not quite the bleeding-edge performance behemoth you see from Falcon Northwest and Alienware. We're glad that Gateway has finally seen the light and moved to an SLI-capable motherboard (which can use two Nvidia graphics cards, rather than two slower ATI cards, like the older FX530), but despite claims of "no-compromise" hardware, the NForce 680i SLI board can't accept Intel's latest Core 2 Extreme quad-core chip, the QX9650. Instead, you're limited to the Core 2 Extreme QX6850, which, while still plenty quick, is a generation old. That doesn't mean you should write the FX540 off. As long as Gateway keeps pricing of this customizable system reasonable, as it has in the past, this system could still offer some decent bang-for-the-buck

Alienware put on what it termed a "technology statement" in Vegas tonight with the aptly named "curved display." That's its unofficial name. It also has no price yet, and no release date more specific than "second half of 2008." What we can tell you is that after the brief minute or so we spent with this monitor, we think high-end PC gamers are going to be excited for it.

Off-angle shots aren't DLP technology's strong suit, but up close it sucks you right in.

(Credit: CNET)

The specifics are that it's a rear-projection DLP screen that can run at a resolution of 2,880x900 pixels (wider than a 30-inch LCD, but not quite as tall). Alienware also said it was running off only a single, midrange ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics card. We only sat down (crouched, really) in front of the curved display for a minute, but we were instantly impressed by the level of immersion. The panoramic screen encompasses your entire line of sight, including your peripheral vision. The effect eliminates almost all visual distractions from your gameplay.

As weird as it may sound, this is actually the most practical panoramic display we've seen. You can see from our picture that the screen will fit relatively easily on a desktop. We expect it won't be cheap, but whatever the price, we imagine Alienware will get plenty of interest from the high-end gaming community once the curved display becomes available.