108 Inches of Anticipation

Last year's CES yielded the 108-inch TV as the piece de resistance for many technophiles. It was gaudy, gigantic, and a bit excessive; exactly what we love about CES. Most of us would be hard pressed to find a place for such a display in our homes. Finding this burgeoning television in a sea of automotive customization, recombinant innovation, and incrementally improved features may have been harder than one might have expected. Finding game content should be easier this year.

Last year's coverage was representative of what the game industry had on display. This trip down memory lane reminds us just how excited we were (as consumers) to see Crysis at the time. We all marveled at seeing Symphony of the Night, the first XBLA game to weigh in with a download size greater than 50MB, running in Microsoft's booth. And for some of us, those CES stage demos seemed very similar to the E3 stage demos we had grown to love. Past coverage also helps place more recent events into proper context.

With the streamlining and recalendaring of E3, this year's CES comes at a time when many of the large game companies can capture not only the enthusiast press's attention, but also the mainstream press's coverage to speak to consumers about how the latest-and-greatest toys they just purchased will be outmoded in a matter of months (or minutes). No wonder the rumor mill is turning out tales of IPTV-infused consoles, another Xbox 360 SKU, or a possible end to the HD format wars. In the consumer electronics space, CES is D-Day for many companies. They need to bring in the troops to get coverage of exactly what they will be doing this year to reshape consumer electronics . . . unless they are Apple.

This year, not unlike past years, I look forward to more game-centered coverage. Show the latest batch of downloadable console games, let us fantasize about playing them in rich HD, and for the love . . . Microsoft, please tell us when the Tron games are coming to XBLA. Getting sucked into a computer is what CES is all about.