Introduction

Vegas, baby!

Once again, Las Vegas (the city that never sleeps, where you can play the slots as soon as you get off the airplane, and where you can get a meal of steak and eggs with the change in your pocket) plays host to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show.

The last time we sent the FiringSquad team to Vegas, the casinos worked in parallel to keep our hard earned money, so only I made the trek to CES this year. The Consumer Electronics Show began with a convention center and a few hotel ballrooms, but now part of Vegas is turned into a tent city with covered exhibit halls. I actually prefer the outside exhibitions with good weather because you can get a better cell phone signal.

A few years ago consumer electronics would have included little more than home stereo components, and maybe a few kitchen appliances here and there. Now, CES is as much a computer show as an electronics show, although you will find most companies trying to disguise their computers with catchy names.

Gates and Xbox (Gates on right)

The Rock, Xbox, and Gates

Enter Xbox

Gaming consoles are a great example of powerful computers in disguise. At this year's CES, the most anticipated announcement was Microsoft's Xbox. Bill Gates and WWF's The Rock unveiled the XBox on Saturday, with The Rock comparing himself to the power of the Xbox.

No running prototypes of the Xbox were shown, although Microsoft did show a looping video with interviews with developers and some in-game clips. These video showings were quite impressive and drew a large crowd.

The crowd for Metal Gear Solid on PS2 at E3 was just as big, however. The difference here is that the Xbox is recruiting more traditionally PC game development companies, while Sony's PlayStation 2 has more of the traditional console development side. NVIDIA did have a sign outside the convention center advertising its involvement in the Xbox, but no booth. You can check out the Xbox performance sheet at Xbox.com.

The sign

Some models of the Nintendo Game Cube were also shown at CES, in the Secure Digital booth. Nintendo's Game Cube will support SD flash memory cards.

Game Cube

Game Cube controller