Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming: CES gaming happenings

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Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Sunday, January 07, 2007

CES gaming happenings

The 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) starts tomorrow, but tonight's Bill Gates/Microsoft keynote had some gaming nuggets for the masses.

Of course, Microsoft was pushing Windows Vista, with just around three weeks before the public release.

Where that matters to gamers was the demo of the much-touted "Live Anywhere" functionality -- playing a game on Windows Vista (via an Xbox 360 controller), getting online, hooking up with someone on an Xbox 360, and getting them to play the same game.

Sure, the game was UNO (nothing against UNO, since it is one of the top-downloaded/played games; it's just not my thing). Microsoft did, however, say (again) Halo 2 is going to be another "Live Anywhere" game. Halo 2 has been trotted out a couple of times by Microsoft in this context, and has generally been dismissed as a mistaken reference (how are they going to make the last-gen Halo 2 work over Live Anywhere?). But having yet another mention lends some credence to the idea.

Of course, Bungie's FAQ is still pretty cut-and-dried:

Q Will Halo 2 Vista players be able to play against Halo 2 Xbox players?
A No, Halo 2 Vista players will only be able to against other Vista owners.

And there was a passing reference to Shadowrun. Again. I'm hoping they're soft-selling this title to keep it from competing with Gears of War, Mass Effect, Crackdown, and other titles, rather than because it needs more baking time.

Oh, and the Windows Live experience, I dare say, is slicker and faster than the Xbox 360's.

Microsoft also made the big announcement IPTV will be available on the XBox 360 -- in holiday 2007. The concept and demo are exciting (standard and hi-def video, picture-in-picture, zero lag channel switching, and so on), and its being targeted for the 360 is a surprise -- I just hope it comes to fruition. I've still got a really bad taste in my mouth from CES 2004 when Bill Gates announced the Xbox Extender -- "by end of year" -- and it shipped the end of November 2004. And sucked. Horribly.

According to Xbox chief Robbie Bach, Microsoft sold 10.4 million Xbox 360s (exceeding their EOY shipping target of 10M units) -- absolutely dominating the now-gen war. There was a nod to new "Halo-level franchise" Gears of War (and its moving of 2 million units), as well as to upcoming titles Mass Effect, Guitar Hero II (??), and Grand Theft Auto IV.

According to Bach, The Xbox 360 and HD DVD peripheral drive "continue to sell out" (which I'll be interested in seeing nay-sayers debunk), and (more interestingly), that the HD DVD format is the top-selling format (ostensibly over Blu ray).

There was more interesting stuff in the keynote, but I wanted to pull just the (even marginally) game-related stuff out.

Besides, this is the Consumer Electronics Show, so the keynote detail was a bit light. And they blacked out the HP Media Server portion of the keynote (which is something in particular I care about).

I'll post more game-related stuff if it happens.

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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.

Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Sunday, January 07, 2007

CES gaming happenings

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