CES: Day One

While most of the world is waving goodbye to festive season hangovers and settling back into its daily grind, for anyone who's anyone in consumer electronics, the party's just getting started. This week sees the world's largest entertainment technology trade show kicking off in Las Vegas, bringing some 140,000 attendees to prod, poke, and generally interfere with all the newest gadgets and gewgaws. What surprises did the first day of CES hold for video game fans?

The CES madness begins.

Sure, there are nearly 3,000 exhibitors filling the halls of CES, but this week it was a 52-year-old, slight-figured nerd god who stole the show. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates chose his CES keynote speech to announce his retirement from day-to-day operations at the Redmond gaming giant, and to give us a glimpse of what we can expect from the Microsoft Games division in the months and years to come.

Much of Gates' keynote looked beyond Microsoft's current product range and out to future developments. Gates demonstrated Microsoft's new Surface technology, which promises to bring coffee table-sized touchscreens into all our living rooms; that is, as soon as the price has dipped below the cost of a perfectly good car. But there was plenty of good news in there for gaming fans, and particularly those who are keen on the Xbox 360's media playback functions.

Of chief interest to State-side Microsoft consumers was Monday's announcement of a new set of content partners for the Xbox Live video download service. TV shows from ABC and Disney and movies from MGM should be coming to a console near you very soon. More tantalizingly, at least for British gamers, Bill Gates unveiled a new cooperation with British telecoms giant BT that will turn Limey 360s into set-top boxes distributing television on demand.

Need anything signed?

The service will integrate BT's "BT Vision" TV service with the Xbox 360's Live functions, giving fortunate UK-based customers a single point of entry for both television services. So, when is Microsoft going to toss a digital TV-related bone over to this side of the pond?

Uh, we don't know yet. Given the 360's chunky hard-drive options and considerable horsepower, there's no technical reason why it couldn't function as a quite capable high-definition Tivo-style DVR, but we're still waiting for Microsoft to give us anything more exciting than the 360's current range of downloadable movies and TV shows.

Predictably, Microsoft top brass doesn't share our vague sense of unfulfillment. "This is an exciting moment in home entertainment," commented Enrique Rodriguez, VP of Connected Television at the Redmond giant.

Gates' final keynote ended in a torrent of celebrities, some of whom are worth nearly as much as Gates himself. Bono, Hillary Clinton, Jon Stewart and Steven Spielberg all put in appearances, but the climax - if that's a word that can tastefully be applied to Bill Gates -- of the speech featured a Guitar Hero duel between Gates and Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division. Both brought out substitutes: Bach pinned his hopes on Guitar Hero champion Kelly Lyon but was outdone by his boss, who brought along Guitar Hero III coverboy Slash, former guitarist for Guns N' Roses, to perform in his stead.

Bill Gates patiently waits for Slash to complete a guitar solo.

Rounding out a busy day of Microsoft announcements, nine 2008 PC titles were brought under the Games for Windows banner. The games - which include Atari's Alone in the Dark, Lucasarts' LEGO Indiana Jones and Eidos Interactive's Tomb Raider Underground - will all ship with some form of Windows Live integration.

Although CES certainly saw a big push from Microsoft, Sony wasn't entirely quiet on the gaming front, although other consumer electronics overshadowed the PS3 on the Sony stand. Metal Gear Solid 4 was on display, complete with an "Exclusive title for the PlayStation3" banner that might just kill off the speculation that that this huge series is eventually bound for the 360. Oddball platformer LittleBigPlanet was the only other Sony game CES attendees could play, and as always it's looking delightful.

Solid Snake is rattling in his cage in anticipation of his release.

Like Microsoft, Sony also shared a nugget of news that will please movie buffs: you'll soon be able to transfer Blu-Ray movies from your PS3 onto a PSP, ready to view on the go. Given the vast size of Blu-Ray movies (and the diminutive size of the PSP's screen) there will obviously be some recompression and accompanying quality loss, but it's bound to prove more attractive than buying your movies all over again on UMD. If you're planning to take advantage of this new feature, you might want to invest in one of Sony's 16 GB Memory Sticks, which also made their debut at CES.

The Consumer Electronics show continues through January 10, 2008.