The thing about conferences like CES is that there is a ton
of stuff to wade through — mountains of bluetooth speakers, phone cases,
and all sorts of random things that nobody would ever want. There are
also a lot of great products, but we’ve managed to narrow down the list
to just ten of the most interesting things that we saw this time.
Steam Boxes and the Steam Controller
The biggest news at CES this year was the introduction of the Steam Box,
a gaming console designed to fit in your entertainment center and bring
PC games to the TV in your living room. Sure, you could always connect a
PC directly to your TV and play video games, but this isn’t quite the
same thing. To confuse things a little further, there are at least 13
different Steam Boxes of all shapes and sizes. Confused? Keep reading.
What makes all this work is the Steam Controller, which uses touch
pads instead of analog sticks for movement and looking around in the
game. The left pad is used for moving around in a game, while the right
pad is used to mimic using a mouse in a PC game, and it works
surprisingly well. It’s the first time that somebody has figured out how
to bring the PC gaming experience to the living room with the accuracy
of a mouse, but in a console-style controller more friendly for the
living room.
We’ll be writing a lot more about SteamOS and Steam Boxes in the near future once our review units get to HTG HQ.
Playstation Now Puts Gaming into the Cloud
PlayStation Now is
a cloud-based streaming game service that brings you PS3 games on a
variety of devices like the PS4, PS Vita, PS3, new Sony TVs, and in the
future, on a lot more devices. The only thing you need to bring to the
party is a DualShock controller.
How does this work? It’s simple: Your TV or PS4 or PS Vita will need
to have the PlayStation Now app installed, just like having the Netflix
app today. That will connect to the internet and the games will actually
be played in the cloud and streamed to your TV — obviously this requires a pretty decent internet connection, but for those that have one, it works well.
What makes this such an impressive feat, beside the obvious fact of
PS3 games being played off a cloud server with nothing but a controller
in your house, is that it brings backwards compatibility to the PS4, in a
way. The games will be subscription-based, and you can login anywhere
to play your games, assuming you have a controller.
The Pebble Steel is a Really Stylish Smartwatch
The new Pebble Steel is
made of either black matte or stainless steel, comes with leather or
metal bands, and costs $249, a full hundred bucks more than the regular
Pebble watch, which you can get on Amazon for $149, but it often goes on sale for even cheaper. And no, the original model isn’t going away.
Curved and Bendable 4K TVs Everywhere
There’s nothing really new with 4K TVs this time around, other than
everybody having one. What is new, though, is the plethora of curved TV
models, some of which bend on command. You can literally press a button
and the TV curves towards you to give you more of a feel of being
immersed in the content, almost like 3D without glasses. As if we
needed to inject Geico ads into our brains more easily.
The one thing that you really are going to need to watch out for is
the refresh rate on monitors and TVs — some of the vendors are pushing
models that drop down to a 30Hz refresh rate when using the 4K
resolution, which is different than the usual 60 or even 120Hz. You
don’t want to go cheap on the refresh rate.
While the 4K TVs are amazing and beautiful in person, when viewing 4K
content, it’s probably not worth even thinking about upgrading to one
at this point since there isn’t much, if any, content for them, and they
are going to be really pricey.
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