Allods Online

By Linda "Brasse" Carlson
(photos by Valerie Thuillier & Linda Carlson)

I can describe the Consumer Electronics Show in one word: enormous! It is the world's largest consumer technology show. Period.

Dedicated to displaying and demonstrating the latest and greatest in the electronic devices that we have come to love and depend on, CES fills not just one, but six huge venues, stretching from the Hilton to the Sands/Venetian, for a total of 1.7 million square feet. That is more or less equal to 35 (yes, thirty-five) football fields. Cabs and shuttles run non-stop between the locations; the scene is like an ant farm gone wild. I can honestly say that I have never been to a larger trade show.

I spent most of my first day at CES simply walking around the four exhibition halls, trying to get a feel for where everything was located. After forty years of continuous operation, a venerable record for any trade show, CES clearly demonstrates that our appetite for electronics keeps growing by leaps and bounds. Other shows have come and gone, including Comdex and E3. CES? It just keeps getting bigger. My cabbie one evening told me that they are planning to build yet another extension to the exhibit halls due to growing demand for display space at this show.

The thing that stood out most when I first entered the halls was the very solid presence of Asian business. Known as the "International Gateway", the two large halls adjacent to the Hilton were packed full of hopeful businesses from China, Taiwan and Korea. The Sands Expo Center also contained a great many Asian companies, most clearly organized and beautifully grouped under their sponsoring country's banners.

I was interested in the wide variety of small to medium sized businesses, eager to arrange partnerships in the North American marketplace. Purveyors of cables, chips, custom plastic moldings, telecommunications, networking, you name it. If they don't make it yet… they will. They are here, and they want a part of the market. We are used to seeing the far east represented in the names of many of our biggest electronics suppliers, of course, but the participation from China is growing by leaps and bounds.

The market works both ways of course; North American and European companies are scrambling to localize product and learn to adapt to the unusual market conditions in China. It is a game of strategy, of positioning, give and take; with China's huge population, and the stakes are high. The giant has awakened, and we are in for some very interesting times ahead!

The second thing I noted at CES, as I put a few more miles behind me, was the dearth of games on the floor. There were precious few games with dedicated booths. Some of the big players such as Microsoft gave space to windows-based games, SoE hosted an off-site demo booth to showcase their online product and even Dell had some key Devs from various titles on hand to talk about how well their games run on the new Dell gaming rigs (oh, and they sure do!), but the single-title companies were nowhere to be seen, with two exceptions, which I will cover later. Given the lack of games to cover, I also decided to explore the wondrous world of gaming peripherals and new gadgets - you know, all that clutter that we so love to accumulate to enhance our gaming experiences!

CES even offered some cautionary tales, such as this one, assuming that a picture is still worth a thousand words… the volume of music data alone that you can lose, should your hard drive fail, courtesy of Maxxtor. It certainly scared the heck out of me! Yes, you may wish to take a break now and go back up your data.

The people of CES: Registration personnel.
Unlike many trade shows, CES is NOT open to the public. You must be a bona fide member of the electronics industry (manufacturing, distribution, sales) or press in order to get in. After an hour of standing in lines and watching the staff process applications, I am convinced that you could get into the Oval Office at the White House for a casual tea with the President more easily than you can enter CES without the right credentials. These people do not mess around, have no visible sense of humor and are not going to be tricked into issuing you a pass. By the time I received my press badge, I felt like I had completed the immigration process to an exclusive new planet.

(note: the people shown in the above picture had all the right stuff and had no trouble checking in.)

Having overheard some of the discussions and arguments brought by people desperate for a badge (and who clearly had not read the manifesto of requirements in advance), I understand the strained looks and lack of humor the registration staff suffer from. I would rather dig ditches in the Gulag than serve at those desks. Any day.