By By Ronald Diemicke
For gamers, Digital Life is a gadget lover’s heaven. The annual three day media consumer technology tradeshow was held at the Javits Convention Center. this year from Oct. 14 through 16. It featured the biggest companies in the technology industry.
Some of the heavy hitting names included, Microsoft, Creative Labs, Intel, AMD, Nintendo, Belkin, Namco, Sega, ATI, Konami, Netgear, Nvidia, Lucasarts, Sony Online Entertainment and TiVo. A notable attribute of this year’s show was the heavy focus on video gaming.
Ziff Davis partnered up with Global Gaming League (GGL) this year to create a $100,000 video game tournament. The GGL is a league that holds events for professional, as well as, amateur gamers. Professional tournaments for Counterstrike 1.6, Halo 2 and Warcraft 3 were some of the prominent competitions. While there were wildcard spots for players who showed up the days of the tournaments, most of the spots were gained through qualifier matches held both online and in local gaming parlors throughout the last two months.
Even if players were not professional gamers, there were still chances to win and compete. For example there was a Quake 4 pre-release challenge being held by online media presence, UGO.com. The top player of each of the games they ran won prizes such as T-shirts, copies of Quake 4, mp3 players and PSPs. The winners also recieved tournaments in the soon to be released Lucasarts title, “Star Wars Battlefront 2” and “Major League Baseball 2k5,” for cash prizes.
Representatives from technology companies spoke about new home products, gadgets for the holidays and how video games are made.
The hall was packed for Peter Moore’s presentation of a look at the new X-box 360. He guided the consumer audience through the feature list for the X-box 360 for the first time. He made a point to talk about the design process for the 360, describing the areas they felt needed improvement from the last generation and describing how they were combating the problems.
The audience roared as he showed video clips of Kameo: Elements of Power, Perfect Dark Zero, Project Gothem Racing 3 and Gears of War. He also showed a montage clip of various games in development and approximately 17 new titles that would be available on the Nov. 22 launch day. He walked the audience through the new dashboard system that consisted of “blades” containing all the information, which broke down into sections for general system info, X-box live content, system options and other media options. He also made a point to show the customization of the product and talked briefly about how to change the backgrounds in the system to represent their favorite game. Users were also told that they could customize the face plate of the system.
Moore showed off the versatility of the machine, which included the ability to play smaller, quicker, less complex, downloadable games in the vein of old arcade games like Joust and Pac-man.
The crowd’s collective jaw nearly dropped when Moore plugged in both an Apple iPod and Sony PSP into the 360 and played digital media from both devices. He showed off the 360 as a digital media center access point by streaming content off a Windows laptop with Windows Media Center edition on it.
Finally, he brought two members of the audience on stage to compete in Project Gothem Racing 3 for the chance to win an X-box 360 and to give spectators the chance to see a game run in real time. Screenshots and video don’t do the game justice.
“I’ll pit what I’ve got and what I know is coming versus anybody else’s first party or even third party exclusives,” Moore’s said previously. “It’s going to be a lot different in the next generation.”
Microsoft has these games nearly ready to ship and they look like they’ll play just as good as they look. Meanwhile we’ve seen nothing even remotely playable from either Sony or Nintendo.
Another highlight was a showing of Gametap.com’s service. Gametap is a service that allows you to stream emulated or older PC titles to your computer that have been officially licensed from the developers. Gametap had demo machines running 20 or so games ranging from Hydro-Thunder and Streets of Rage , to Virtual Fighter 2, Rampage and even Beyond Good and Evil. The service is available for $15 a month with 300 games available.
One tucked away booth was Ageia Technologies, the makers of a new type of physics add-on board, as well as middleware software solution for the pc. The technology has been designed accurately replicating real world physics with more objects in a dynamic world without putting the burden on the CPU. Ageia also makes a middleware solution for the X-box 360.
While Ageia was showing many of the same demos of a first person shooter type game, they also showcased a new demo of some cloth physics they are working on. The demo had a tapestry hanging from a wall, and as the presenter moved the mouse over it, the cloth moved as if wind was blowing. When the presenter clicked the mouse, it simulated the tapestry being ripped. Depending on how he tore the cloth, the displacement of the weight changed as well as how it hung on the wall. This technology will further immerse players in their gaming environments in the future.
Digital Life was a good convention with some awesome things to see, play and do. It is a lot like window shopping in the mall, but instead of boring things like clothes or food, you get to feel like James Bond discovering one of Q’s many new devices. It is always an adventure.
Numerous gadgets were unveiled at the Digital Life festival. (Image Courtesy Kevin Peachin)