That Time Of Year

Well its finally that time of year: no, Christmas is over and done with, its Nerdy Tech Show Week. That's right, because neither of the events organisers will back down from their 'first working week of January' schedule, the rabid Mac fanboys will be off to San Francisco for the Macworld Expo which starts on Tuesday, and the Windows crowd (and anyone thats not a Mac fanboy, really) will be heading to Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, kicking off on Thursday.

This year, the shows will really be competing. Its Apple's last appearance at Macworld this year, and although it isn't Steve Jobs giving the keynote, there is likely to be lots of discussion of the upcoming Mac OS release (Snow Leopard) on top of the usual hardware announcements. At CES, Microsoft is largely expected to be plugging its own new system, Windows 7, which is expected to launch around the same time as Snow Leopard in the first half of this year. You'll likely hear more on both of these later this week from me.

But what has this week really got to do with games? Okay, so Macworld isn't at all relevant (Hey, make some decent gaming Macs, Apple; we might be nice! Also, when you do, send me one.). But CES is usually full of gaming related stuff, and at the very least there are always sexy new Bravias to drool over.

Well last year, on top of the Bravias and Vaios and Walkmans etc, Sony announced plans for a Digital Copy program (Blu-Ray films copied to PSP via PS3), which came into force late last year with Sony Pictures movies like Hancock, and should expand more this year; Skype got announced and added to PSP, and (ha!) Blu-Ray killed the hell out of HD-DVD. Teasers already released for this year's show suggest a massive coming-out party for the long silent Prototype for PS3 and 360, and there are rumours that the Movie Store will be coming to the EU, as well as a Music Store for everyone. Don't blame us if it doesn't happen that way btw, that's how rumours work.

See you later in the week for the latest from the two shows.