Some of the hands on demos shown from the exhibit floor proved to be very much linked to gaming and its future development.

Nvidia, of course, had an awesome display of their 3D setups being run on every type of system imaginable from ASUS Laptops, ASUS All-in-One PCs, even on a huge Vierra Panasonic 50”+ TV (size estimated),but it was simply huge and awe inspiring to see such flawless 3D graphics that totally immersed you into the game. The Geforce Demos were great to get a hands-on preview of 3D gaming, including seeing Mafia 2 with full PhysX support and 3D supported on 3 monitors without a hitch or any delays in gameplay. To say you felt like you were in the game is an understatement. I look forward to writing the review on the next DirectX 11 and PhysX supported title H.A.W.X. 2.

A final added note of information was the talk I had with Nvidia’s Mobile Team, has been working on solutions for porting games without the need to "dummy" down the game for portable devices. This means graphics and gameplay should be equal to its computer and console counterparts, something I, for one, can’t wait to see. Of course, its important to note that this fantastic technology is based on Tegra, which they hope to be the mainstream in the next year on portable devices and tablets everywhere.

Playcast introduced the ability to get rid of the console completely while gaming on your TV, and mentioned going live within the next month or so. The technology shown and demoed was a rendered mpeg 4 stream being fed through an Internet RJ-45 jack from a laptop acting as a server. The actual gaming client machine shown was a simple Giada Slim N10U machine powered by an intel atom 330 processor coupled with a Nvidia Ion 9400m GPU. This setup was to simulate their own servers running the game, while the client machine can also be any netbook/laptop, or for home use, a simple cable set-top box.  The connection showed was through a LAN plug, but will be available over a common cable connection when they go retail.  The founders of the company actually came from the Digital TV world and  they have lots of experience with video over cable and have assured me that no buffering will be required, putting most people on a level playing field as far as their connections to their cable companies. 

The game they were displaying were Frontlines, Fuels of War, Dirt 2 and even Capcom titles such as Street Fighter IV.  I was assured many other titles were already licensed and they would be including some new titles such as the new Call of Duty, Black Ops. I was also told this was going to be a subscription-based service with games being available on a per day, week, month or permanent basis (similar to OnLive - Ed.). More details can be found at: http://www.playcast-media.com/