Here at CES it seems to me two very powerful themes are technology as a *social and lifestyle experience* and technology as a *mobile experience*. At the MMORPG gaming session it was noted that games in many ways were the first online social experience and continue to be a powerful and dominant social force in the online world. Dr. Lars Buttler of Trion (formerly with Electronic Arts) was very optimistic about the future of gaming, and along with others felt that current distinctions between console and PC would break down but the social nature of gaming would increase, including ways to move between multiple games. Buttler also suggested that the European market has been underestimated in gaming. Also notable is the fact that the search advertising market in Asia appears to be only about 25% of the gaming market. This contrasts with North America where search revenues are driving things more than gaming.

The most impressive things at CES I have seen:
Motion-enhanced driving cars created by D-Box. These simulate the driving experience in an arcade fashion with a high powered HP gaming enhanced PC plus an elaborate car simulator and 1-3 monitors. Very cool, but at something like $14,000 depending on configurations so it will be well out of range for many. D-box, from Quebec, won an innovation award for this.

A similar “virtual transport” product that also won the innovation award is the flight simulator, Dreamflyer. At about $2800 this seemed conspicuously cheaper than D-Box. I think this is partly due to D-Box’s real motion in the carriage vs Dreamflyers virtual motion on screen, though I’m not clear on the details of either product yet.

Alienware debuted a prototype gaming / immersion monitor (a picture of it below - sorry about quality) that won’t be available until middle of the year. The monitor was simply awesome looking - stretching *around* the viewers head in an arc of 45? degrees and about 60 inches wide by 16 inches tall. It’s like having 3 high resolution screens stiched together in an arc. Very impressive, and looked like a killer environment for hardcore gamers. Cost not determine yet but this has got to be a big ticket item. I think the gaming glasses some are showing off here are more likely to get widespread use due to much lower cost. More on the glasses later as I think that is a really provocative technology that is finally going to see some widespread adoption.