CES 2009

It's no secret that gaming's presence at CES can barely be felt, but we were lucky enough to find some diamonds in the rough, including a few that made us want to phone a lawyer.

While there was no new gaming software to be found, there was a respectable amount of gaming hardware and accessories that stole our attention. Nyko stood out with the company's Wand and Kama Charge Kit and Mad Catz showed off Street Fighter IV-branded FightPads and FightSticks. We were wowed by the Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision, but unfortunately getting it all set up requires a few expensive add-ons.

We were upset to see a lack of products devoted solely to game consoles like we had originally anticipated. So where does this leave gaming's future at CES? Believe it or not, gaming actually had more of a showing at this year than it did in '08, so we'd imagine to see an incremental increase next year. Keep in mind, a lot of third-party hardware and accessories are a result of the Wii, a console that lends itself very well to the production of such items.

Check out these other notable CES gaming stories and slide shows:

• How are these console emulators legal?
• Saitek showed us a flight stick for the home console
• Does this Sixense remote improve on the Wiimote?
• The thought-controlled Mindflex game
• DreamGear WarBeast gaming guitar: An exact replica of the B.C. Rich WarBeast guitar
• The Psyko 5.1 headset puts a new spin on surround-sound gaming
• Mad Catz lets you program 11 buttons with the Cyborg X
  

Shady video game console emulators at CES 2009--photos

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One of the interesting trends we saw at the lackluster gaming showcase at this year's CES was an abundance of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis hardware manufactured by third-party companies.

Some booths, which preferred to remain nameless, were showcasing 3-in-1 portable players as well, with slots to play all the above-mentioned consoles. All you need are the original game cartridges.

Perplexed as to how this kind of blatant patent infringement could possibly be tolerated, we asked these booth reps, "How can this be legal?" One booth rep immediately told us that "the patent for these consoles has since expired, essentially making it a free-for-all." At a different booth, a clearly uninformed rep responded, "As far as I know, all this is Kosher."

But is it? A while back in 2005 a Gamasutra article disclosed some research and uncovered that simply because a patent is expired doesn't mean protection of the patent has also. So what are these guys even doing at CES in the first place?

We'll be in touch with Nintendo for some further explanation and a statement, but as far as we can tell, some of these vendors appear to be breaking the law with these devices. We'll update this story once we hear back.

Meanwhile, check out our slide show highlighting some of these suspect products for sale from various vendors on the showroom floor.

The Consumer Electronics Show tends to be about small gadgets, the kind that fit in the hand or a pocket, or at least don't take up too much space on a desk or TV stand.

For Advanced Micro Devices, however, CES 2009 was an opportunity to talk about a supercomputer, the sort of high-tech machinery that even today tends to require at least a modest-sized room.

AMD said Thursday that by the second half of the year, it will be ready to go with the massively parallel "Fusion Render Cloud" supercomputer. And where supercomputers typically are used for rather wonky projects in energy research, weather forecasting, and such, the AMD machine is intended to help in the "deployment, development, and delivery" of high-definition content--and this brings us back to CES--to mobile devices.

Think video games and movies. Says AMD:

The system is being designed to enable content providers to deliver video games, PC applications and other graphically-intensive applications through the Internet "cloud" to virtually any type of mobile device with a web browser without making the device rapidly deplete battery life or struggle to process the content. The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will transform movie and gaming experiences through server-side rendering - which stores visually rich content in a compute cloud, compresses it, and streams it in real-time over a wireless or broadband connection to a variety of devices such as smart phones, set-top boxes and ultra-thin notebooks.

To deliver on that promise, chipmaker AMD is working with a company called Otoy that specializes in software and special effects for the video game and film industries.

The Fusion Render Cloud will use AMD gear including the Phenom II processors, AMD 790 chipsets, and ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics processors. It is being designed to break the petaflop processing barrier--in layman's terms, to run with the fastest of the fast supercomputers--and "to process a million compute threads across more than 1,000 graphics processors," AMD said.

Cloud computing is one of the most loudly proclaimed topics in information technology these days. Although there are a number of interpretations of what it entails, the basic idea is that applications and heavy-duty processing live in some centralized data center, connected to via the Web, taking much of the workload off individual PCs and other devices.

We've seen our fair share of surround-sound headphones, but the Psyko 5.1 PC gaming headset goes about it in a unique way. Instead of loading separate audio channels in each ear cup, the Psyko 5.1 places them on the unit's headband and it's the ear cups that house the actual subwoofers.

With the speakers located on the top of your head, the Psyko 5.1 relies on the strategic positioning of the channels in the headband to create the surround sound effect. Currently the Psyko 5.1 is only available for PC, but the company assures us that video game console versions will be coming soon.

For more on how the Psyko 5.1 works, check out Tom Merritt's first look from the CNET stage.

(Credit: Mad Catz)

To celebrate the release of Street Fighter IV, Mad Catz has teamed up with Capcom in order to roll out a collection of branded FightPads and FightSticks emblazoned with various Street Fighter characters.

The FightPad and FightStick will be available for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms in addition to the Tournament Edition FightStick, which features the exact hardware found in arcade cabinets.

Look for these licensed items to go on sale next month and be sure to check out our slide show of the entire line of Street Fighter IV accessories.

TrueMotion remote is set to ship in December.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)

LAS VEGAS--Imagine playing baseball on Nintendo's Wii Sports and being able to pull the ball to left field or lay down a bunt instead of just randomly smacking doubles or home runs.

A Silicon Valley company says its take on motion-control technology will offer far more accuracy to such games. CNET got the first look at the technology here at CES 2009.

Sixense Entertainment, based in Los Gatos, Calif., makes the technology called TrueMotion, which was first developed to track the head positioning of F-16 and F-18 jet pilots. It consists of a handset and a base station. The controller tracks movement along six different axes, and the base station generates a very weak magnetic field. The data is used to determine the exact position of the cursor on the screen.

Nintendo's Wiimote, by contrast, uses three axes and measures the acceleration of the handset, not the absolute position of the remote. Using the absolute position allows people playing motion-control games, such as baseball, bowling, or soccer, to "use real world skills," said Sixense CTO and Chief Architect Jeff Bellinghausen. As in, if you know how to play baseball, TrueMotion lets you make strategic plays, like hitting a bloop single to left or a double to right.

But TrueMotion also makes a difference in how games are developed, according to Sixense CEO Amir Rubin. TrueMotion measures the exact degree of position of the remote every 10 milliseconds. When developers know the exact position of the cursor, there's less need to develop complex algorithms for games just to compensate for not knowing where the cursor is.

The first incarnation will be available in December for PC gaming. It will be backward compatible with a number of popular gaming titles, such as Crysis, Call of Duty 4, and the Madden and NBA Live series.

Big game makers have already had the TrueMotion development kit for a year. By the time the PC gaming version is released, they will have had two years to play around with it.

And although it's not announcing anything yet, Sixense says it is in talks with all three console makers--Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo--about licensing its technology. TrueMotion for console games won't be available until 2010 at the earliest.

Here's a video I took of Bellinghausen, demonstrating how TrueMotion technology works.

This is really cool, and really dumb at the same time: Mattel's new Mindflex game lets you control the height of a floating ball with your mind as you navigate it through hoops, cages, and hurdles on a circular racetrack. The goal is to move the little orb around the customizable course as quickly as you can (you control the speed of rotation with a hand-operated knob). The device keeps score for several people.

Conentrate, Luke.

(Credit: Mattel)

Control is by brainwave. A headset measures the level of your concentration, and the more you concentrate, the faster a little fan spins that's blowing the ball up in the air, which controls its height.

I tried a similar, experimental product at a trade show in Sweden about six years ago. It was a head-to-head (sorry) game in which two people at either end of a ping-pong-size table tried to move the ball to their opponent's goal line. The more you "relaxed," the farther the ball moved. As with the Mindflex, a headset read brainwaves. The trick with the Swedish game was that you had to relax to win--counterintuitive. With Mindscape, the more you concentrate the higher the ball goes. That makes more sense.

I asked Mattel Senior Marketing Manager John Ludwig if future versions will offer more axes of control--not just height, say, but speed or lateral direction. "It's all possible, it's just a matter of money," he said. Mindscape will be $80 when it ships this Fall. He also told me that future games might respond not just to concentration, but to fear (wouldn't want to to be the lawyer representing that one), anxiety, happiness, or frustration. "We're always looking for the newest way to control things," he said.

The issue I have with Mindflex is that it seems to me like a solution looking for a problem. It's cool to be able to spin a blower fan faster by concentrating, but is the game itself engaging? Once the novelty factor wears off, I'm not sure the replay value of this experience will be very high.

Mindscap was created using technology from NeuroSky.

Mattel is also announcing a new digital Web portal for its brands like Barbie and Hot Wheels. Currently, each toy or game brand has its own site. This makes sense--for kids loyal to the brands. But for parents and "gift-givers," it's too much to navigate, a Mattel spokesperson said. So a new portal, the Mattel Digital Network, is coming soon that lets grown-ups get the full Mattel marketing message no matter what Mattel toy they're looking for.

(Credit: Toshiba)

One of the many laptops being announced at CES this week is the Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q725. It will offer the same bells and whistles of recent X305s, except that its primary drive will consist of a 64GB solid state drive, while the secondary drive will be the standard spindle-based 320GB SATA hard disk drive. This hybrid solution will not only boost performance on an already beast of a machine but will also help with its typically lackluster battery life--as with most gaming laptops--not by much, but it's something.

Here's a quick look at the specifications:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000 2GHz
• 4GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Primary drive: 64GB Serial ATA SSD
• Secondary drive: 320GB (7200 RPM) SATA HDD
• Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
• NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX, 1GB GDDR3 discrete graphics
• Data: USB v2.0--four ports with USB Sleep and Charge (1 x eSATA/USB combo port)

The Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q725 will be available at launch on January 6 and will retail for $2,699 at Toshiba's Web site.

The Kama Wireless Nunchuk was our favorite gaming product from last year's show.

(Credit: Nyko)

While last year's CES didn't offer much in terms of gaming, it would appear that CES 2009 has a lot more in store. This is partially thanks to the Nintendo Wii, which has not only solidified itself as the best-selling console of this generation, but because the system lends itself so well to third-party accessories. We expect to see plenty of new products announced exclusively for the Wii from companies like Mad Catz and Nyko.

It's possible that Microsoft may reveal some new info regarding the Xbox 360 hardware. Rumors of a Blu-ray drive continue to swirl, so it's always a long shot.

Sony will certainly have a presence at this year's CES, so we hope to see some new information regarding the console as well. With the PlayStation 3 now in full swing, we'd imagine the company will show off some first-party accessories, possibly even an announcement about Remote Play, which lets you use your PSP along with your PS3 in real-time gaming scenarios.

With Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 both heavily invested in digital media, we think a lot of third-party manufacturers will announce new solutions for managing your content as well as new ways to stream the multimedia to your console of choice.

Of course we expect to see dozens of new entries for all consoles in terms of charging solutions and alternative game controllers, so be sure to check with us every day of the event for the latest and greatest from the showroom floor.