I'd been to three E3s, but this was my first Consumer Electronics Show and my third time in Las Vegas. Having grown up regarding CES as the game show, I'd always been awestruck reading the write ups on the far off games Nintendo and Sega were showcasing at the CES. It seemed like a gaming orgy on a scale my pre-teen brain simply could not comprehend.

But after having stalked the halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center for my trio of E3 adventures, CES in its heyday paled by comparison. E3 was the end-all, be-all gaming event.

With E3 transformed from media freakshow, stuffed to capacity with millions of blinding lights, thousands of pimply-faced "industry professionals" and subwoofers blasting at molar loosening levels, to a series of meetings, I was hoping CES would fill the missing gap. Sure, we'll have PAX and E for All Expo, but CES brings in every consumer electronics company in the world, meaning at least a strong showing from Sony and Microsoft. And it's in Vegas, where freakshows are the norm.

After staying up on Saturday night until 3 AM treating my liver to the lion's share of $100 worth of overpriced booze at clubs Beauty Bar and Lure, I was rudely stirred at the ungodly hour of 8 AM by Crecente. He'd flown in at the last minute to sit in on a group interview with Bill Gates. "Let's meet up" he said. No, let me sleep and eat a breakfast buffet, I thought.

Begrudgingly, I made the three mile, thirty minute drive over to the convention center, snagged my press pass, and met up with Crecente, who spilled the beans on his interview with Gates. We sat in the near-empty international Cafe, planning coverage. The calm before the storm.

After news had leaked during the weekend that Microsoft was enabling the Xbox 360 to use the company's IPTV service, Microsoft officially announced it at the keynote that evening.

Other than that, Uno and Geometry Wars on Vista were the only thing most gamers really cared about. Underwhelming.

Sony's moment in the sun also focused a small portion on their gaming business, touting a million PlayStation 3s shipped to North America. I was thrilled not be live-blogging either of these keynotes.

I just assumed that CES would be on par with E3, maybe less so from a video gaming standpoint, but still full of the hustle and bustle. I was pretty wrong.

CES is a very different beast. For one thing, there's the layout. Lugging around a laptop and the collected swag seemed tough when walking from South Hall to West Hall in the LA Convention Center. That's nothing compared to the confusing layout of the LVCC, which has North, South and Central halls, with bus loops and golf carts to shuttle conventioneers from hall to hall. Add to this multiple press tents outside Central, as well as the Sands Expo Center, The Venetian, and the Las Vegas Hilton and you'll have to quickly become familiar with the layout, the bus schedules and the most efficient route to the press room. I finally understood the geography of CES around 2 PM on day four. Way too late.

On day one, I had two appointments scheduled, one with the Games for Windows group, one to discuss the Xbox 360. During the former we walked through the new features of Vista that impact gaming. From new ways to look at system requirements, to Uno on Live, we talked nothing but Vista. I eagerly awaited my playtime with Guitar Hero II which I could hear on the other side of the meeting room wall.

After finally enjoying the free pastry and coffee provided by MS, I met with Xbox's Peter Moore and Aaron Greenberg to discuss the Xbox 360, HD-DVD and the new IPTV service. This was my first time talking to both, and, yeah, I'll admit it, I was oddly "starstruck" when meeting Moore for the first time. Here was a guy I'd been reading about since his days with the Dreamcast. Talking to Moore about Crazy Taxi was more surreal than I thought it would be, partly due to the slow effectiveness of the courtesy coffee.

I decided to pick myself up with a little gaming just across the street at the spacious Microsoft booth, which held stations for Vista, Zune, IPTV, Xbox 360, Live Messenger and more. In the gaming area, the most space was given to Shadowrun and Halo 2 for Vista. It was clear that Microsoft was treating their booth like an E3 exhibitor. They had product managers and developers—like Flagship's Bill Roper—overseeing each demo unit, ready to answer questions.

The priority given to Xbox 360 games was a bit more unusual. While they smartly gave Guitar Hero II two kiosks, Fusion Frenzy 2 was given prime real estate, despite being largely ignored. Inversely, the never-seen-before Def Jam Icon was hidden away, nestled between a load-bearing column, making actually getting to the demo harder than necessary.

The wait to get on an Xbox 360 or a Windows machine was no more than five minutes. Far different from E3, where standing fifteen to twenty minutes watching someone else's game was not uncommon. In other words, playing games at CES was a breeze.

It was time to find Sony, get my hands on some Heavenly Sword, Lair, and whatever else SCEA was showing off. On the way, I took in the sights, the 100-plus inch televisions from Sharp, Panasonic, LG—they're the ones who were pimping their big HDTVs with Sonic the Hedgehog and Virtua Fighter 5.

At the Sony booth, the wait was a tad longer, but only four games were on display. No Warhawk, no Heavenly Sword. I left Gran Turismo HD and Resistance alone, concentrating on Lair and MotorStorm. It was regrettably clear that the PlayStation business wasn't being displayed with the same importance as the Games for Windows and Xbox business (my booth tour was scheduled, rescheduled, then ignored when I showed up for it). SCEA PR staff were on hand, tucked away behind a desk littered with PSPs.

Fortunately for Sony, the crowds gawking at the PS3s were considerably more impressive than what was at the Xbox 360 area. They even attracted one Sony superfan.

The following few days were spent playing tons of forthcoming Xbox Live Arcade releases, including Alien Hominid, Heavy Weapon, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Since the number of Windows and 360 titles outnumbered everything else, that's where the majority of my gaming took place.

But there were other fringe-gaming moments at the show that kept my attention. A trip to the Sands Expo led me into the Kentia Hall of CES, clogged with random video game exhibitors. GameDaily was there. Tons of chairs with built in sound systems were available for the sitting. Games powered by exercise bikes. The single Wii title from Majesco, Cooking Mama, was behind closed doors, but still playable. After no more than an hour at the Sands, I had exhausted its gaming content.

From that point on, I looked high and low for games, played the Crysis demo thrice over, even watched Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel do his usual Quake 4 schtick. Played a member of Team3D in Counter-Strike. I became a fixture at the Microsoft booth, playing Hellgate London, Def Jam ICON (until I "got it") and squeezing in as much Guitar Hero II as I could.

At one point, I helped what you'd call a non-gamer figure out how to play MLB 2K7. As he was initially holding the Xbox 360 game controller backwards, with the top facing him, it took quite some time to get him up to speed. It was the first time in a long time I'd seen anyone that green at gaming.

After four days, I was ready to get the hell out of Vegas. With only one formal party invite (half the reason I go to these things is for the booze, obviously!) and lots of solo coverage it was a less fun and games type of experience, more of a charting the Las Vegas Convention Center one. It was clear that video games were not anywhere near the highest priority at CES.

I was surprised by how much I liked Shadowrun, glad to have had time with some great Xbox Live Arcade titles. Also surprising was how disjointed the Sony global presence was and how disappointed I was with Lair (please fix!). That Nintendo has zero representation, save one third party cooking game, was disappointing.

We'll see how the rest of the year's gaming events shape up, but CES is no E3 replacement. That's for sure. With all those glossy gadgets, games just don't have the opportunity to shine. Michael McWhertor

While companies like Intel and Sharp went to great lengths to bring in Formula 1 and NASCAR replicas into their booths to give aging executives something memorable to sit in during their gaming sessions, others were simply trying to convince the handful of gamers in attendance that their current sofa just isn't as good as a chair with a subwoofer aimed directly at their ass. Serious gamer chair gallery after the jump.

And yet, with all that effort to capture the show's game chairs on film, that I somehow failed to capture the "Ultimate Game Chair"? So sad. Michael McWhertor

If my prediction of core pack discontinuation in 2007 comes true or MS releases that 256 MB memory unit, this sort of thing won't be an issue. Regardless, core pack users should be denied Castlevania goodness for their shortsighted purchases. I just want to shake you core pack owners! Gah! Michael McWhertor

Castlevania to break Live Arcade size limit [Gamespot]

Def Jam ICON was on the show floor this week and I spent some hands on time with EA's latest brawler packed with Def Jam artists. There are some significant changes for the forthcoming console release, including a change in developers from wrestling specialists Aki to EA Chicago, the studio that brought you Fight Night Round 3.

Only two characters were available for play in the demo, Big Boi of Outkast and T.I. of... I have no idea. Since I'm in Las Vegas, I'll just assume that stands for Treasure Island. The two face off at a gas station (with car wash) which doesn't take long to go up in flames.

At first blush, series vets will notice some striking differences. The game has a bright, almost bleached out, dusty look to it. Characters look very lifelike, with realistic cloth movement. The interactive backgrounds are lovingly modeled.

The four face buttons will perform standard punches and kicks (quick, strong, high and low), with the analog sticks performing multiple functions. They'll initiate "force" moves, like spinning kicks and heavy punches, as well as set up grapples for throwing. Hold the left trigger to switch to "activate turntables" to switch the music track and perform a DJ scratch. Scratching?

Yeah. Scratching.

Apparently you need to "fight to the beat" using the background music to your advantage. My initial impression of the system meant that you'd need to time your attacks to the beat of the music, which is visualized onscreen by the jumping and cracking of the environment, the turning of signs, the rhythm of the car wash, but from what I gather that's not the case. The combat is slowly paced, so this is not Beatmania meets Tekken.

While the game's graphics are beautiful and straightforward, with some of the best fire effects to date, the animation appears a little stiff. Combine that with moments of BIg Boi spinning a record in mid-air in the middle of a fight along with some waving of hands in the air like your fighter just don't care and you get some unintentional hilarity. Still, the models, textures, and HUD-free display make for a nice looking game.

Amidst the din of the CES show floor, fully grasping how the game's music system benefits each player is a little tough, so hopefully we'll get some more hands-on time in a proper environment soon. Since I don't really care about the Def Jam stable or artists, I'm more interested to see how the fighting engine changes flesh out. Michael McWhertor

"I would argue that consumers worldwide, to the tune of over 200 million PlayStations, PS2s, PSPs and PS3s, have decided whether or not Sony has the DNA to deliver hardware, software and services to suit this industry.

I think if you look at Gran Turismo HD alone it points to the potential of the PlayStation Network and the kind of ground breaking content we plan to offer.

Karraker then dug into the mystery of shipped versus sold.

To Sony, shipped has always meant 'sold and shipped to retailers. Microsoft views 'sold' as what has been sold to retailers but could be sitting on pallets in warehouses or stacked on store shelves. 'Sold' to Sony has always meant what the consumer has actually purchased.

I think many people have incorrectly viewed our competitor's 'sold' figure to believe it was actually sold to consumers, which it was not."

Yes, but what does "sold in" mean Karraker?

SCEA rebuts Peter Moore's PS3 "disaster" jab [Gamepro]

Sorry, Crecente. I know you were looking for a McWhertor on barbarian fantasy fix, but it just won't happen. Currently in "press lockdown," the game is on display in Microsoft's CES booth, but I was only permitted to look, not touch.

Funcom's product director J rgen Tharaldsen was nice enough to keep me away from the two demo units, talking me through the highlights and features of their MMO, already three and a half years in development. The game was running in DirectX 10 mode, which looks better than the rather flat screenshot above. Rich rich foliage and lighting made the game stand out as one of the most visually impressive MMOs in recent memory.

The attention to detail was evident in things like ornate armor and weapon design, a clean HUD and impressive animation. Tharaldsen told me that the reason that horse animation looked so realistic was that they actually got motion capture data from a real horse. I think we'd have been satisfied with a motion capture from a pair of dudes in a horse costume, but we'll take it!

If you're not familiar with the name Funcom, they're responsible for another well-known MMO, Anarchy Online. Perhaps you'd prefer to think of them for their PC and Xbox adventure games The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. Reader's choice, but it seems they're exploiting their strengths in both genres to make Conan a strong story driven MMO, rich with the mythos created by author Robert E. Howard.

Some of the highlights from Tharaldsen's expert pitch were dynamic hand-to-hand combat techniques, custom spell recipes, sieges on player-built cities, and an extremely deep character creation tool. How deep? Well, including the requisite muscle mass, hair coloring and cup size sliders, they even have customizers on the level of nose crookedness. Perfect for your giving your barfighting mage some street cred.

Fortunately for non-Vista upgraders, the game will be available for Windows XP and Xbox 360. While cross-platform play is not confirmed, the Conan team wouldn't rule it out. Keep your fingers crossed. We're going to get in the beta proper soon (we hope!) and hope to have some genuine gameplay impressions available soon. Michael McWhertor

Despite my l33t AK skillz, I lost. By a wide margin. He threw in a couple pity kills to stop my snot-nosed sobbing, but it was pretty clear I still suck at Counter-Strike. At least I got a t-shirt I'll never wear out of it! Michael McWhertor

I walked by the Nvidia booth today, only to get suckered into another playthrough of the CES Crysis demo. My goal this time was to launch as many North Korean soldiers into the air, only to have them plummet to their doom. Muahahaha and all that. Fortunately, the lovely Richard Blakeley from Gizmodo scored some quick footage of the floor demo, so you can check out some of the action. Obviously, YouTube doesn't do the DirectX 10 game justice, but at least you can witness some of the cool gameplay. Michael McWhertor

It's Alien Hominid, the 2D side scrolling shooter, but in HD.It's hard, it's artistically fresh, and it's very straightforward. Shoot stuff. Throw grenades. Don't get hit. It's inexplicably fun. This is another strong title for Xbox Live Arcade.

Since I don't have much more to say about it, other than "me like", here are the Achievements for Alien Hominid HD.

Alien in Training 5
Complete level 1-1 of the game.

Hungry Yeti 10
Eat 50 KGB agents with the Yeti.

City Destroyer 10
Destroy 25 buildings during one game.

Juvenile Alien 10
Complete the game on Easy Difficulty.

Adult Alien 15
Complete the game on Medium Difficulty.

Expert Alien 20
Complete the game on Hard Difficulty.

Head Chomper 20
Head bite 50 enemies without touching the ground or firing.

Killing Spree 15
Kill 1000 enemies during one game.

Mad Hatter 20
Unlock all of the 31hats that are in the game.

Perfect Fight 30
Defeat the Final Boss without using a continue.

Survivalist 25
Survive any challenge mode for 20 minutes.

WMD 20
Reach 5000 Km in Super Soviet Missile Mastar.

Pray for a quick release! Michael McWhertor

What exactly makes these built for gaming? I'll leave this one up to the Sharp marketing department, whose carefully worded slides are available after the jump.

The televisions come in 32" (the LC-32GP1U) and 37" (the LC-37GP1U) sizes and have an MSRP of $1700 and $2000 respectively. Cheap! Okay, not really that cheap and this whole "optimized for gaming thing" sounds suspect, but will you believe "pretty"? Michael McWhertor

I still couldn't believe I was there to witness it. Michael McWhertor

* I really have no idea.

Rumored to hit Xbox Live Arcade any day now, Heavy Weapon is PopCap's cartoonish tank shooter that is not only easy to control (you merely move left and right, aiming your turret 180 degrees with the right analog stick) it's definitely the easiest game to play at CES. And, yes, I've played Luxor 2.

Your tank constantly moves to the right and the sky is constantly filled with enemy aircraft. Jets, missiles, bombers, helicopters, and zeppelins will do their best (or close to it) to eliminate you by dropping courteously small amounts of missiles and bombs in your general direction.

Along the way, friendly planes will drop power ups to boost your rate of fire, shields and main weapon strength. They'll also drop MEGA LASER parts, which you'll need four of to deploy for a limited time. Finally, they'll drop nukes, which will give you a screen clearing (and boss damaging) megaton explosion.

After defeating the end level boss, you'll be given a chance to upgrade one of your tank's abilities, from defensive enhancements, to new weapons, such as flak cannons, lasers, homing missiles, lightning bolts (!!!) and more.

Frankly, the game was just too easy. I don't know if the difficulty was toned down for the CES demo, or if I somehow missed setting the skill level, but it was absurdly easy to the point of boredom. Granted, this is a PopCap title, but during my co-op run through of five levels, I lost only one tank. Hopefully, the challenge of the game will increase, because there was a simplistic fun about it, but I can see many gamers becoming quickly uninterested. Michael McWhertor

Since I'm currently rocking no speakers (I've been without a PC sound system since my move in November), it's actually a perfect set for my needs. I don't have the space to install 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound just for my PC. Hopefully I'll find three one hundred dollar bills on the ground over the next few days to pay for it, because I was amazed at the rich, deep, room filling sound coming from three (admittedly large) speakers.

If you're in the market, you should try to get a demo. These were pretty damn impressive. Afterward, I got some hands on time with a few other products which are after the jump.

Normally, I'd consider worrying about keypress lag minimized from 8 milliseconds to 1 millisecond and finely tuned 72 gram key resistance focusing solely on the details, but the Tarantula keyboard is still super cool. Since I, ghetto PC gamer, am still tapping away on the included PS2 keyboard I bought about ten years ago I think I'm due for an upgrade. Stored profiles, programmable macros, a nifty little light attachment accessory for nighttime gaming, I'm getting a little gadget jealous.

Since I'm pretty comfortable with my Logitech wireless optical mouse, I was less excited about some of the gaming mice on display, but they did have a very solid feel with amazing response. I also happen to suck and suck hard at most first-person shooters, so an extra 1200 dpi resolution isn't going to help me out.

But Razer afficionados should be aware that the company will be re-releasing 10,000 Razer Boomslang mice for the device's ten year anniversary. Very cool.

Hopefully we'll get some offered samples and see how our respective games improve. Michael McWhertor

The CES demo of Crytek's gorgeous first-person shooter Crysis is a brief one—too brief, considering the amazing DirectX 10 graphics and effects. You could run through the thing in about 5 minutes without really trying, but you'll want to stick around for a bit longer to take it all in. It's just a small taste of the new features and technology that the Crytek team have stuffed into their futuristic sci-fi shooter.

The demo level takes place in North Korea at a remote army base surrounded by a thick jungle. The Crytek team have made almost everything destructible, including the dense foliage that casts realistic shadows and reacts to gunfire. The first thing I did in the demo was destroy a couple of those son of a bitch trees, just to see their leaves flapping about. Then it was time to waste some unsuspecting North Korean soliders, who, unfortunately for them, didn't have god mode switched on.

While only two weapons were available, the assault rifle gives you the option to customize it on the fly. You can add a silencer, change ammo types, add a sniper scope, but the default settings work just fine. The game is rife with motion blur—simply mouselook left or right quickly, and you'll see it in action at any point.

The game also uses blur and depth of field visual effects during gunplay. Look through the assault rifle sights and you'll lose focus outside the radius of your area of fire. Very cool.

Your character is also outfitted with a full body suit that grants you different abilities, depending on what you have switched on. Switch the focus to strength and you can pick up (and throw) heavy objects. Need some cover? Pick up a barrel (don't worry, it won't explode) then launch it at your enemies. No gravity gun required. The same can be done when you go straight fisticuffs. Turn on strength, walk up to the nearest soldier, grab him by the throat, then launch him across the tarmac. Sadly, you can't pick up corpses and use them as weapons or cover, but when I suggested it, the idea seemed warmly received.

Other powers, such as camo will help you blend in with your surroundings, dynamically changing the suit's color to match things like the local flora or stucco walls. It's similar to the suit worn by Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4 if you're familiar with the TGS trailer.

After exhausting the supply of North Korean soldiers by killing them in every way imaginable, a military helicopter comes in to try to finish you off. It put up a pretty good fight, laying down heavy fire and squeezing off the occasional rocket. Your best bet is to take out the rockets on the wing with gunfire (there's a mounted machine gun on a nearby ATV) then take out the rotor and enjoy the spectacular crash. The explosions in this game are amazing, but seeing one occur about two meters from my face brought the game's frame rate into the single digits. While it wasn't a beefy demo machine, you should seriously consider some hardware upgrades before attempting to run Crysis.

The game ships sometime in the middle of 2007, so start planning your hardware purchases accordingly. This game kicks ass. Michael McWhertor

Wow. In a move that runs against what has always seemed to be a deep-seeded paranoia about piracy, Sony told Bloomberg today that they plan to start including portable files on Blu-ray disc to let users copy movies to laptops and other portable electronics.

Sony Pictures Entertainment will include portable files on Blu-Ray DVDs that can be transferred without a download, David Bishop, head of Sony's home entertainment unit, said in an interview this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Sony may add the feature this year, Bishop said. "It's not currently part of anything on our current release schedule, but we'll probably roll it out sometime this year," Bishop said on Jan. 8.

Thank you Sony, thank you very much. Please, please, please, don't forget your poor, lost PSP when you do that. Can you imagine buying a Blu-ray DVD that includes a free PSP version of the film? HOOOOOT! Brian Crecente

GS: What can you tell us about the HDMI-enabled Xbox 360 rumors that have been going around?

CS: We're always working on prototypes and new technologies and just playing with stuff in Redmond to see what's interesting. I think at the moment we have the widest available connections on the system. If you want to get great HD, I think we've got a good solution for that. In the future it's interesting to see where standards evolve to. I think one of the problems that the whole industry, us and entertainment, are facing at the moment is we're in this world where standards are evolving very quickly.

We have different high-definition standards for discs that we know are competing at the moment. We think HD-DVD is going to be the right way to go, but really it's all about choice in that system so that's why we're offering these sort of services with downloads—skip that whole "format wars" problem. With other standards, audiovideo standards, they're evolving very quickly as well. We're obviously keeping an eye on that and saying, "What are the future standards and how do we give consumers the right choice for that?"

At the moment, everything you might have seen is just looking at our experimentation back in Redmond, not really a product that we're thinking about announcing.

The interview is a must read, Satchell also talks about whether IPTV is coming to all Xbox 360s or just a specialized model, sales, the PS3 and the Wii. Brian Crecente

CES 07 Q&A: Microsoft's Chris Satchell [Gamespot]

Mike's been trying to find someone to let him play the Wii version of Cooking Mama, and I'm sure he will prevail, but until then, here's a clip of the game in action. Brian Crecente

Sadly, I got suckered into pedaling my way through a tortuous ten minutes of Need For Speed: Carbon only to realize I'm terribly out of shape and despise being on display. Plus, I found myself irrationally jealous of the man who got to play Oblivion on the nice bike. Avoid this hall at all costs if you hate being the subject of humiliation gaming! Michael McWhertor

In the interest of full disclosure and satisfying my curiosity, let's see what's inside!

Uh oh. Vista mouse pad? I'm scared to look further.

Huh. Not too bad. That's not a copy of Vista, mind you, merely a Windows Vista Launch Kit CD. But that is a full retail copy of the crtically acclaimed Company of Heroes. Score! Plus, there's a 2GB Sandisk pen drive, a Vista branded pen drive of unspecified capacity, a Belkin Easy Transfer Cable and two cards for free Office Live Basics. That last one is going right in the trash!

At least I'll have plenty of storage space.

Oh, by the way, another pen drive was just brought to my hotel room, courtesy of AMD. These things are worthless! Michael McWhertor