Gdgt Event @ The Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom!
Posted by John De Large on 10.06.2009
Games and technology galore! JDL breaks down the NYC gdgt event!
Hey folks, on Thursday I had the pleasure of attending the gdgt event in Manhattan at the Manhattan Center (man, the Grand Ballroom looks weird without an ROH ring and folding chairs). I hadn't given much thought to the event at first. Having never heard of gdgt, I assumed it'd be some little known trade show. I was surprised to see a line down the block and people having to pay to get in. I filled up on noodles at the Lunchbox restaurant not too far away and headed in with my security/wrestler friend/undercover nerd FNB.
So once inside we get a t-shirt and we grab some drinks (open bar!) before heading over to the Rockstar booth to see what they've got at the Rockstar booth.
Rockstar had PSP's and PSPgo's and GTA: Chinatown Wars and Beaterator available to play. Driving in GTA: Chinatown Wars felt natural as could be and the animation is awesome.
Different buttons add different music to your track and there's even a chart to track how music synches up, kind of like the old MTV Music Generator on PS1 (c'mon, who remembers that?).
Next door was a Sony booth, with the PS3 Slim (it's really not all that small, just less bulky) and Uncharted 2 out. Uncharted had a bunch of Jackie Chan style stunts that I didn't even bother trying. There were also a few more PSPgo's out and a woman hovering over them to answer any questions/make sure they didn't get jacked. Curious as to how I would play games on the PSPgo, since there's no place to put UMD's and no way to upload games onto the Go. The woman informs me that with a PSPgo you have to re-buy your entire library again. Well, this is news to me!
When I complained to the woman that this might alienate some gamers, the woman also went on to say that research anticipates that PSPgo owners would either A) be new to the PSP and would be getting their games for the first time around or B) that research shows that Sony has SUCH faithful customers that PSPgo owners would actually be excited to re-buy all of the games in their library. WOW. I didn't want to call her a liar, but I made sure to tell her that her research was WRONG.
HTC had some sweet phones for Sprint and T-Mobile, with the latter (The Dash 3G) catching my attention. I'll be sure to pick that up in a few days.
Mitsubishi had an awesome TV (Unisen 249 Diamond Series) with a CCFL backlight. I honestly had no idea how how big this monster was, hang on while I call someone at Mitsubishi to ask.
.........
Ok, that TV was 52 inches and tall as hell. It cost 3 grand, which I'd actually have no problem spending, if I still had a working Xbox 360. For now, I can only dream how awesome TF2 would be on that behemoth.
Flo Mobile was also there. If you don't know who they are, they're promoting a new service that lets you watch TV on your phone, for when you HAVE to watch House MD during that commute. It lags like crazy, by the way, but if they can fix the lag, it might enjoy some success.
As far as gaming goes, that's it. The rest of the booths were dedicated to computer and cell phone technology. The Lenovo booth had some great computers, including a dual screen laptop and a notebook with 4GB of ram.
And as for the rest, here's what FNB had to say: "The Windows phone is bulky, Zune HD is cool and the HP DVR box is awesome."
