As this year’s Consumer Electronics Show comes to an end Friday, what were some of the major takeaways from the gadget event? The Post’s Hayley Tsukayama reports :
Unplug the displays and turn down the lights: International CES is closing shop Friday until next January. And while the 2013 run certainly wasn’t the flashiest the trade show has ever had, there were still some major announcements and innovations.
For one, nearly every presentation in this ostensibly hardware-focused show had included something on content or the connection of devices in a wider ecosystem.
That made for fewer whiz-bang, head-turning announcements, but it did sketch a fuller picture of how technology could have an impact on everyday life. TV-makers have recognized the video-on-demand market and are developing tools that let users search all of those services at once. That move forward makes up, in part, for the companies’ publicity blow-out for televisions that are too big for most consumers and too advanced to show nearly any current content.
It also highlighted, more than ever, that companies that focus more on their devices and less or not at all on content are in danger of being left behind. Engineering marvels such as Sony’s water-resistant Xperia Z are impressive, but they seem like random solutions to problems that aren’t much of a problem. Do you really want to take your phone into the bathtub, anyway?
For the game industry, CES showed that gamers want new hardware, Tsukayama reports :
Gamers are certainly hungry for new, innovative hardware. For proof, look no further than this week’s CES tech show, where three game devices picked up a tremendous amount of buzz because they promised to pull hardcore PC gaming off of the desktop.
Nvidia’s Project SHIELD offered a glimpse of more mobile PC play by essentially putting a screen on a console controller. That raised gamers’ heartbeats not only because it untethers them from the keyboard and mouse, but also because it opens the door for more advanced streaming games.
Perhaps most threatening for Nintendo, however, was the announcement that the game company Valve is working with Xi3 Industries to deliver the Piston console, to bring streaming PC games straight to the TV without the user having to connect to a computer. Valve also said at E3 that it’s working on a “Steam Box,” which will run the Linux operating system. As VentureBeat reported, it’s not yet clear how closely related the two devices are.
Right now, the prototype console doesn’t have the multimedia and video-on-demand partnerships that give the Xbox, PlayStation and Wii U a place of honor. But because Nintendo has taken a while to amp up its entertainment, having started offering its social and searchable Nintendo TVii service only in December. That arguably makes it the most vulnerable to disruption from these upstarts. That will only increase as the technology advances to make network lag — skips between a key or button press and the action in games — increasingly less of a problem.
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