August 2013 – The Sands convention center in Las Vegas was crowded with the 5000+ customers, VIPs and Gamestop employees who attended the 2013 Gamestop Expo. The retailer’s pre-holiday training event culminates in an open to the public, of all ages, expo that features open game play time with this year’s major holiday games. The show floor had headphone suppliers such as SkullCandy and Turtle Beach, network router company Dlink showing their new video and gaming prioritized 802.11ac router operating at 1250Mbps for the wireless channel (peak, MIMO), new tablet companies, accessories like Otter Box, many of the AAA games that on pre-order for the holiday. At the center of the show floor was the GameStop store with accessories, collectibles and taking pre-orders on the games being shown.
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Gamestop Expo On-Floor Store
For the first time in close to a decade, it also featured multiple console platforms as new hardware. Giving their store personnel and preferred customers a first glimpse and play time, the expo featured the Sony PS4, and the Microsoft Xbox One as the major releases to refresh the almost 8 year old Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms. These two platforms were the “bookends” of the expo with the entrance side being Sony and the far side being Xbox One. Both were filled with very enthusiastic large crowds.
The games shown on these platforms showed quite a bit of development progress since E3 and even Comic-Con. The new games still were showing high detail with the improved resolution and higher bandwidth graphic engines of these new platforms, but more importantly, the games now had “playable graphics” with full depth of field and dynamic lighting. The new systems that promised cinematic quality gaming were now showing code samples that proved the capability in something other than a playable video clip.
Zomibie from TellTale Games\' Walking Dead
The show floor featured mainstream games on the PC, Xbox360, and PS3 in addition to the new platforms such as Batman Arkam Origins, Mad Max, Disney Infinity, Skylanders, NBA 2K14,WWE 2K14, Diablo III, COD:Ghosts, Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein, Battlefield4, Titanfall, Need for Speed Rivals, FIFA14, Madden NFL 25, Assassin’s Creed IV, DanceDanceRevolution, Metal gear Solid, Dark Souls II, Watch Dogs, and Just Dance 2014. All of these holiday release games met with a positive response on both existing and soon to be released platforms. Adding to this mix was the TellTale Games Walking Dead 400 Days game. They greeted attendees with lively zombies that were roaming the expo floor.
The big news this year was platforms. But they were not limited to the big 3 manufacturers. Also at the show was the Nvidia Shield portable gaming platform. This unit that is shaped like an traditional console “wing” controller with an integrated screen made its entry along side the PSVita and Nintendo 3DS. The Android operating system player has its own play store and is optimized for single user games, but has connectivity to support multi-player modes. Using this same core chipset – the Nvidia Tegra 3 is the OUYA platform.
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OUYA Discovery Console and Controller
The new cube shaped console features a 1Gb Ethernet interface, HDMI output, multi-channel sound, and supports 2 controllers, but comes with just one. The console platform, which was being shown in a two level booth at the show, has a new business model – it is a developer friendly platform that supports all of its games as free to ply and load. The console features 8GB of memory, which allows for several games to be loaded and stored and still be able to drive the 1080p output from the HDMI interface. The game play varies from single player FPS to adventure games, family games and through full multi-player MMOs. The free play varies by the developer and can take the options of free until level XX, free for XX hrs of play, completely free with in game currency, and other options being developed. The platform is available now from the web site, and will be in the Gamestop stores at the holiday season. MSRP of the cube with one controller is $99.00USD.
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OUYA on Gamestop Expo Floor
There were also tablet at the show. Contel was showing some of their 7” and 8” tablets that feature a quad core processor 8GB of internal memory and SD card expansion capability. Being targeted at the $69 Black Friday Sale price, the 7” tablet still features HD playback of videos and a 5MP camera. The 8” has similar specs but with a larger screen. These feature a standard 2.4GHz wifi connection, so downloading and installing games s not a challenge and can be done several at one time if needed. Amazon was showing their Kindle HD color tablet. Having most of the challenges of the standard Android addressed by moving to a color lcd tablet with a fast response time, the new HD is usable for video streaming as easily as reading a static book.
Rounding out the new tablets is the gaming platform from snakebite called UNU. This quad core based tablet move between being a standard Android Jelly Bean tablet, to one that includes a smart TV function, and full big screen gaming experience. Utilizing special controllers for gaming and for smart tv, the wireless device can connect via a microUSB connection in the docking station to the TV HDMI input. This allows for standard Google Play games, as well as a single and multi-player games that are designed for the UNU ecosystem.
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Sankebit\'s UNU gaming console tablet
One thing in common with all these new platforms, including the PS4 and Xbox One – is the need for high speed internet. The devices are built around the assumption of always available high speed broadband. The minimum setup is DSL level speeds (250K up and 2Mb down), but are optimized for 1M up and greater than 10Mb down. In most places that are not connected with FIOS, the Quality Of Experience of these consoles will suffer.