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The 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2014) is wrapping up and tech nerds are still recovering from being inundated by awesome announcements. Looking through the retroscope, I wish I had gone to this year’s show. It had the expected technology and gaming announcements I expected. What surprised me was the amount of vaping goods on display. Gah! Before I plan for CES 2015, let’s take a look back at five announcements I liked from CES 2014.
- WWE Network: I wrote about the CES 2014 WWE Network announcement yesterday and I’m still jazzed about the news. This streaming-video service is a dream come true for marks, smarts, and smarks. For $10 a month you get all 12 live WWE pay-per-view events, some original programming, and on-demand access to classic pro-wrestling matches. Hell, I’d pay $10 a month just to watch Ric Flair’s vast library of five-star matches.
- First-Gen Steam Machines: Valve-powered Steam Machines are potentially disruptive for the entire videogame universe. Steam Machines could dratically change things for gamers, game developers, and game publishers. I was thrilled to see that first-gen Steam Machines will be coming from top hardware vendors at a broad range of prices. Steam Machines are on the way from Alienware, CyberPowerPC, Digital Storm, Falcon NW ,GigaByte, iBuyPower, Origin PC, and others.
- T-Mobile Pays For ETFs: T-Mobile USA’s John Legere is easily the most entertaining CEO in technology today. I love his bold moves and juvenile antics. Some of the things he does aren’t exactly professional, but damn they’re funny. It was hilarious that he crashed AT&T’s CES 2014 party…and promptly got kicked out. In a serious move, I dig the latest step in T-Mobile’s “Uncarrier” initiative: paying early-termination fees (ETFs) for customers moving from AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon to T-Mobile. It’s just the latest in a number of aggressive moves from carrier.
- Razer Project Christine: Speaking of bold and aggressive, I’m absolutely smitten with Razer’s Project Christine concept design that was unveiled at CES 2014. This modular PC chassis looks amazingly cool and is extremely practical. It makes upgrading and expanding a PC’s capabilities a snap. Even though I’m mostly a Mac guy these days, I’d love to get a Project Christine PC for when I’m working on PC games.
- PlayStation Now: The Gaikai streaming-videogame service will be reborn as PlayStation Now. In addition to streaming older PlayStation games to PlayStation consoles, the service will be built into select Bravia televisions. This is a fantastic value-added feature for casual gamers that want to play videogames every now and then, but aren’t into it enough to buy a dedicated machine. It could even serve as a gateway service and create born-again gamers. It’s a very cool and very smart move from Sony.
How about you guys and dolls? What CES 2014 product or service announcements did you enjoy?
