The keynotes for Sony and Microsoft to kick off the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) aired last night, and in case you missed our live tweeting regarding the game portion of the show, we have a quick recap here for you. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to be reported as far as games go, which was to be expected because CES is essentially for all electronics.
Sony had a few things to reveal about the PlayStation Vita regarding services that it will provide. Music Unlimited is a service that allows you to sync your existing music library to a cloud, and then stream it wireless across different Sony devices. It will work with the Vita as well as Sony laptops and tablets.
Play Memory studios is a service that will allow the sharing of videos and pictures socially and across Sony devices, much like Music Unlimited. It was quoted as being “almost like a game.” Netflix was officially announced as being supported for the Vita in the United States, and Sony is reportedly working on getting it working on the system on day 1 but this is not confirmed.
All PlayStation Store content will be available to Vita players on day one of launch, and 25 launch titles will consist of both first party and third party developers. That was pretty much it for the Sony keynote, and there were many a Twitter follower that were upset that there was no news revealing details about the mystical PlayStation 4.
Next was the Microsoft keynote which was even more bare in the ways of gaming news, although we did get acquainted with Windows 8. After a rather awkward demonstration of the Kinect-friendly Xbox 360 dashboard that has been out for the general public for long enough for them to be aware of it, viewers of the live stream were treated to a cut feed so that they could not see the trailer for Transformers 2.
Microsoft revealed to us the inclusion of Fox TV and other networks which will be available on demand on the Xbox. Comcast was mentioned, so there’s that too. Shows like Bones and Family Guy were mentioned to be on demand, which hopefully means new episodes as these shows are already available (along with almost all of their seasons) on Netflix which is currently on the console.
Also, Kinect is apparently bringing us interactive television (supposedly later this year). Sesame Street TV was demonstrated to the audience, and it seemed interesting but it would be even more interesting to see if this type of interactive display could be applied to more genres than kid’s games. Last but not least was the announcement of Kinect for Windows, which hopefully will not require players to be far away from their computers to use. Kinect for Windows will be an entirely different sensor that needs to be bought, and will be likely more expensive than the current sensor. Major Nelson added (via Twitter) that Kinect for Windows would only be compatible with PCs running the SDK.
[Images via Android Whiz and Compixels]
