Link This |
Email this |
Blog This |
Comments (2)
Gaming at CES 2008: More Than Just Guitar Hero?
January 9, 2008
Every so often a video game comes along that spurs a small cottage industry. Typically it is a character-driven game like Tomb Raider or some similar franchise that draws players in. But this year it was hard to walk the show floor at CES without seeing some rock god wannabe jamming out to some actual rock god’s hit single in a video game. The wannabe is typically armed with some plastic version of a real world guitar – and the game of course is Guitar Hero!
While this could go down as the year that Warner Brothers dropped the HD-DVD format (which could spell bad news for those who bought the HD-DVD add-on drive for the Xbox 360) or the year Sony exited the rear projection TV market, this year’s show will always be “the Guitar Hero CES” for me.
Even the newly expanded Gaming Zone in the South Hall was dominated by Guitar Hero. This isn’t to say that there aren’t other new gaming devices. The new gaming keyboard from WolfKing makes a nice addition for the PC first-person shooter arsenal, while the Game 02 mouse from Sandio Tech with 16 programmable buttons could be the best improvement to the gaming mouse since the scroll wheel.
Despite this, many gaming peripheral companies seem to be placing their Las Vegas bets solidly on Guitar Hero. This begs the question as whether there are actually enough fans of the game out there in need of a second axe to grind. Of course it is hard to argue with the likes of Bill Gates, who was joined on stage during his keynote address by former Guns ‘n Rose lead axe man Slash, who rocked out (with a real guitar) along side an aforementioned Guitar Hero wannabe.
Even worse, this maybe the wrath that Guitar Hero brings; spotted on the show floor was an Air Guitar Hero, which takes the fakery to the step. Rock on, we think!
Woe (or is it Wii) is Us
When it wasn’t another plastic guitar this year it was a new shade of pale looking controllers for the Wii. Normally I’d cheer this as innovation, but alas this year’s controller parade was dominated by various new takes on the Wii Zapper. Instead of the fairly non-descript, and somewhat benign looking non-gun that is Wii Zapper, the models seen have the appearance of bleached shotguns and Glocks.
OK, these controllers actually address one of my original complaints about the Zapper – namely that the trigger finger wasn’t properly placed for the dominate hand. These controllers solve the issue by switching the place of the Nun-chuck and Wii-mote, but do these really need to look so much like firearms. Again, the tactile experience of learning to aim a gun shouldn’t be fun and games.
Posted by Peter Suciu on January 9, 2008 | Comments (2)
