CES 2008 Round-up
GamesIndustry.biz' Patrick Garratt summarises the just-completed 2008 CES
The curtain is about to come down on the 41st annual Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas, Nevada, with no surprises or earth-shattering announcements as far as the videogames industry is concerned.
Some of the news - Skype coming to the PSP and Microsoft attracting Xbox Live marketplace content from Disney-ABC and MGM - was announced before the show even began this past Monday.
Another pre-show announcement - Warner Bros. declaring its exclusive support for Blu-ray - took the wind out of the HD DVD camp, causing them to cancel a planned CES event.
The biggest rumour, regarding Bill Gates' final keynote speech, turned out to be just that. Considering the multiple SKUs already on the market - some with a harddrive, some without - it was doubtful that Microsoft would add to the confusion by releasing yet another console just with a built-in HD DVD player.
As it turned out, it was largely "business as usual," with both Microsoft and Sony talking about 2007 sales and not revealing too much information about future plans that wasn't already known.
Perhaps it was wrong to expect substantial news in a year when no new consoles are on the horizon and the current systems are only a year or two out from their introduction.
On the other hand, perhaps this year's E3 will become that much more important in terms of announcements...
A handy listing of our CES 2008 news items:
Hirai hopes PS3 profitable next fiscal year.
Ubisoft titles to support amBX.
BT is first Xbox 360 IPTV partner.
Microsoft expands Games for Windows portfolio.
Sony sells 1.2 million PS3s in US during holidays.