With CES drawing to a close, its last couple of days sucked into a vortex of sense-crushing Apple hype, I've gathered together a few of the gaming bits and pieces you may have missed.
Dell XPS 710 H2C Edition Gaming Desktop This ostentatious beast of a machine features a patent-pending cooling system that combines liquid-to-air heat exchanger and fluid chiller to allow extreme overclocking action. Add in the Intel Core Extreme QX6700 quad-core processor and two NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards and that's five and a half thousand dollars-worth of PC thank you very much.
Vigor Force Recon QXN Half the price of the Dell is this not-exactly-shoddy gaming machine with Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad-core processor, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX video card, 1 gig of memory and a 150GB SATA hard drive. Find out more about Vigor here.
VoodooPC ENVY HW:201 Gaming Notebook PC Not sure I entirely understand the burgeoning gaming notebook market, but there you go. The ENVY has two NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX GPUs, AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile CPU and a whopping a 20.1" high-resolution screen (the biggest notebook display on the market apparently).
DirecTV Championship Gaming Not a product but a TV programme - satellite television provider DirecTV used CES to announce that it'll be bringing its Championship Gaming series of professional videogame tournaments to a world audience from Spring 2007. The company is in talks with Sky so us Brits will be able to enjoy the sight of a real sportsmen in mortal combat.
Trimersion 3001AD HMD Hurray, virtual reality is not dead. Again! The Trimersion head-mounted display unit is wireless, so you won't garrote yourself mid-game. It also comes with a gun controller and features motion tracking elements to give total freedom of movement. Apparently plugs into any console, PC or mac via USB. Okay this one was shown at E3 as well, but still worth a look. More here.
Razer Microsoft Reclusa gaming keyboard Yes, a 'cutting-edge' gaming keyboard from peripherals expert Razer and some other company that also had a new OS at the show or something. I'll leave this one to the press release: "Hyperesponse Gaming Key Action for maximum response with minimal latency, and two built-in gold-plated USB ports. Gamers will be able to improve their efficiency with 12 custom-programmable buttons that include two 360 Degree Jog-Dials and two Bumper Buttons conveniently located on each side of the keyboard for faster control and optimized gameplay." Seventy dollars to you, guv.
Sharp AQUOS HDTV Game Players Series As well as its awe-inspiring 108" LCD TV screen - the world's largest - Sharp also revealed a couple of special gamers' TVs (models LC-37GP1U, LC-32GP1U). These newcomers feature, "a special game mode providing a newly developed 'Vyper Drive' feature, which reduces lag time between the game console and the TV to be virtually imperceptible". Available in 32- and 37-inch screen sizes they handle 1080p as well of course.
Nyko rechargeable Sixaxis and Wiimote docking stations There were loads of next-gen accessories at the show, but these are quite cool. The PS3 model lets you charge and store up to four (non-award winning) Sixaxis controllers. The Wii model holds just two but also comes with two rechargeable NiMH battery packs. Useful.
Actual games A few new and forthcoming titles hit the showfloor including DirectX 10 showcase Age of Conan>Age of Conan from Eidos, Namco's Hellgate London and Xbox 360 versions of Castlevania (including a new video) and Alien Hominid.
R2D2 projector Couldn't resist this. According to PocketLint: "The size of a small child... it will feature a 80-inch throw projector, a DVD player, an iPod docking station, Memory card and USB2 slots, built in speakers and have the ability to run around your home via the wireless remote." Sadly, no head-mounted drinks tray or electric shock capability.
