Some of the highlights for me were…

• The demo of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I was intrigued by how the choice driven model that BioWare is famous for will play out in a MMOG. I, like many, have played several of their previous games and come to a critical decision point and saved the game before moving forward. I am very interested to see how this game develops.

• Need For Speed: SHIFT looked amazing. EA was running a competition in which the winner was eligible to win a BMW M3. Sadly it wasn’t the 1,000 horse power one pictured below. Actually, since I didn’t win maybe that’s a good thing or I’d be really depressed!

• StarCraft 2. I loved the original StarCraft and the next version looks even better. This is an amazing game and I can’t wait until it comes out.
• Activision’s DJ Hero looks like it is going to be a blast. I can imagine people enjoying a party with the music being provided by playing DJ Hero. I took a turn on the turntable and had a lot of fun, but I don’t think I’ll quit my day job.

Going to these shows is already so much fun because I get to do good business while checking out the newest game titles and technologies. Unfortunately, like the rest of you, I have to wait for these hot tiles to hit the shelves

Ultimate Ears and Logitech have a long standing history of getting out to shows and mixing it up with all the fun that is Warped Tour. This year is the 15th anniversary of the tour, so if you’ve never been to one, you really need to get there, as it’s basically my generation’s version of a Grateful Dead concert. The music and people come together to form a community of goodness.

As is often the case, I headed out to the start of the tour this summer to meet up with all the artists and take care of their Ultimate Ears needs. We take impressions onsite, answer questions and let people listen to demos. I also tell jokes, take bands to dinner and listen to lots of awesome music. This year, I was super excited for NOFX, Anti-Flag, Less than Jake, Underoath, Saosin, Outernational and Bad Religion. I also got to meet new bands like TAT and Therefore I Am. Really, there’s something for everyone, with music ranging from punk to ska to crunk (I think?).

Ultimate Ears even took the extra step of bringing out a bus on tour this year. It’s where all the coolest people hang out – or at least that’s what I tell my friends. Either way, we’re having a blast on tour. If you want to learn more, check out the Warped Tour Web site, and, if you find yourself at a show, track down the pit reporter Tiffany Mink (@minkus on Twitter) and tell her Logitech sent you. She’ll buy you lunch!

Ultimate Ears was definitely busy throughout the entire trade show. Our audiologist from Vanderbilt University took a record number of ear impressions for our company and we enjoyed a number of great conversations with people in the music business.

We also made some time for fun. The first night, we had dinner with most of the road staff from Rascal Flatts – what a fun group of guys! We also saw Chris Tuttle, a current client and keyboardist for Jewel, while grabbing coffee en route to the show. And we went to dinner with a couple of emerging artists, enjoyed some live music and saw Carrie Underwood eating just four tables over. Finished the week listening to Billy Reasons, a country music artist and UE custom monitor fan, at the Cadillac Ranch. He went out of his way to thank UE for our support and great products.

Billy Reasons

Good music, good BBQ and great business – what a week!

I spent most of the show watching my daughter’s face light up. She was in awe of the whole experience – the excitement of the lights going out, the screaming crowd, the anticipation before the first song, holding up her blinking Jonas Brothers glowstick, and of course shopping for her first concert t-shirt after the show.

That night with my daughter got me thinking about my first concert experience and how that memory will be with me for a lifetime. My first concert was Def Leppard on their Hysteria tour in August of 1988 at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. Ever since I was a kid I had wanted to go to live concerts, but my parents weren’t about to escort me to a rock concert. I had to wait until I was old enough to drive myself and get to a show without my parents knowing where I was! I piled into a small car with three of my closest friends and we headed to the show. I remember being amazed at how the show was put together, how well the musicians performed live and how much more alive the music feels compared to a pre-recorded record. I also remember how much it meant to share that experience with my closest friends. I didn’t have enough money to buy an official tour t-shirt, so I bought a cheap knock-off from some guy in the parking lot. Now that’s rock-n-roll!

I hope my daughter will have a great lifelong memory of her first concert and that music will continue to play an important role in her life, as it has in mine.

Check out more great coverage below:

• Tech review: Logitech adapter helps program PS3’s to remotes harmoniously – Dallas News
• Logitech Announces Force Feedback Flight System – PC Magazine
• E3 2009: Logitech Force-Feedback Flight Simulator – IGN
• Logitech Launches its First Force-Feedback Flight Sim Controller – Maximum PC
• Keep Computer Use Comfy With Logitech Comfort Lapdesk – Gearlog
• Logitech’s Flight System G940 joystick almost replaces flight school – Engadget
• Logitech Announces First Force-Feedback Flight Controller – Gearlog
• Logitech Flight System G940 – Ubergizmo
• Logitech’s Flight System G940 turns your living room into a cockpit – DVICE
• The Logitech Flight System G940: Large and in charge – CrunchGear
• Logitech Unveils Flight System with Force Feedback – I4U
• Logitech’s Force Feedback Flight System May Also Simulate Airsickness – Gizmodo
• Logitech introduces ’simulator-grade’ flight controller – CNET

On the eve of the show, Microsoft announced Project Natal, a system with a screen-mounted sensor (with “depth-sensing” camera and microphone array) so you no longer need a controller in your hand. The demos look impressive (though a bit gimmicky), however, in the hands of a creative game designer, it could be a novel living-room experience.

And in their Tuesday press conference, Sony announced a new motion sensing controller. The concept is a hybrid of the current “Wiimote” and natal camera idea. Sony’s spin on the concept uses their EyeToy camera and a hand-held “wand” controller. The live demo looked very compelling, and the system seemed responsive (a potential advantage vs. a camera-only solution).

Not to be outdone, Nintendo also had news involving camera technology. Ubisoft announced their new fitness game Your Shape for Wii, a personal trainer that tracks your body movements and gives you feedback on how you are doing.

Overall, there was lots to see at the show this year, and even a new hardware announcement (Sony’s new PSP Go handheld). Although attendance didn’t seem as crazy as the last “big” show in 2006, it does seem that E3 show has re-established its place on the gamer’s calendar.

GDC is about the art, science and economics of creating games (in stark contrast to the summer E3 show in Los Angeles, which is all about hyping and selling games to the retail channel. In addition to the keynotes, tutorials and lectures, GDC occupies two halls at the Moscone Center: the North Hall is the Expo, where the industry demonstrates its latest and greatest; across the (very busy) road at the West Hall is where the wheeling and dealing takes place in rows of anonymous-looking, gray meeting-room cubicles. Although missing the razzmatazz of years gone by, GDC 2009 doesn’t seem short on substance. It wasn’t until I was standing in a surprisingly short line for lunch at the Metreon today that I realized that maybe the attendance really is down on last year’s 18,000 registrations.

The running theme I see this year is new ways to deliver content. Unlike the music and movie industries, the gaming industry has been actively planning the move away from physical media distribution for many years. Game downloads from PlayStation Store, Xbox Live Arcade and PC services such as Steam have been growing fast, but an innovative new service called OnLive was announced at GDC which uses a wide broadband connection to stream games on demand – thanks to clever video compression. Since they “host” the game itself on a server and stream just the video, the OnLive service lets you play games on a TV set, a Mac or a PC – and breaks out of the expensive hardware-upgrade cycle that has frightened so many gamers away from the PC. I was flattered to see their GDC demo making use of the Logitech ChillStream PC gamepad – although they have designed an attractive dedicated controller for their service when it eventually goes live. I wish them well, and although the road they are traveling has many left on the wayside (the Infinium Labs Phantom and Turner’s Gametap immediately spring to mind) it seems like they have a solid business plan and unlike The Phantom, they’ve been doing their development (seven years of it) away from the media spotlight.

There were also other innovative game delivery mechanisms on show. The Qualcomm-funded Zeebo console uses a 3G wireless phone network to download games to a low-cost TV console that is targeted at emerging markets (initially Brazil). And the omnipresent iPhone is gaining traction as a gaming platform, with an announcement from EA Mobile that many of its top franchises are now available for iPhone. And no gaming trade event would be complete without Nokia’s nGage booth – complete with cat-suited booth-babes.

So although not quite partying like it’s 1999, GDC 2009 does give the gaming industry plenty to look forward to over the coming year.

Cheers,
Ruben

For me, the great news coming out of CES is that it is really happening, and it’s happening in an incremental, practical way without the consumer really even realizing it. Virtually all new blue-ray players have ethernet jacks. LG has a TV allowing you to connect to the Internet and stream movies. Gaming consoles are connected to the Internet so that you can stream movies or play on-line with people around the world. Samsung has a set-top box that streams movies and Pandora and sells with a 2.1 virtual surround sound system – all very impressive. So in the not-so-distant future, it will be impossible for consumers to buy entertainment electronics that are not connected to the Internet. This is where the Squeezebox comes in.

The Squeezebox is your connected music player. It replaces your traditional radio because you can get local radio on the Squeezebox; it replaces your CD player or iPod doc because it streams all your music you own (including iTunes-purchased music now that Apple is DRM-free, but I will elaborate more on that in another blog post); and it replaces your satellite music player for services such as Sirius or other specialty music services because the Squeezebox plays them all – including Pandora, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Deezer, Slacker, etc.

So my take-away from CES is that (whether we know it our not) we are all well underway to living in a connected home with our entertainment driven from the Internet and delivered conveniently to our living-room sofa, kitchen countertop or bedside table. It is making life incredibly cool.

Because of the sheer accuracy of the physics model that Polyphony Digital and Logitech’s engineers have put into the GT5 game and its matching force-feedback mechanism, you can actually experience how it feels to drive the GTbyCitroen. The game accurately models how the torque and power curves are delivered to the road, and how the spring and damper rates translate into its handling dynamics on the streets of London or though Laguna Seca’s famous Corkscrew. And what’s more, you can then (virtually) step out of the Citroen and into a Lotus Evora or a Ferrari 599 Fiorano for a back-to-back comparison of these dream cars.

Kazunori Yamauchi, the charismatic genius and studio head who created the game, has been a long term collaborator in the design of our racing wheels. Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to spend some time with him in Tokyo during a promotional shoot for GT-TV. Kazunori turned up for our meeting in his (then) brand-new red Nissan GTR, the model of which you can see being driven in that movie. Incidentally, in another case of life imitating art, he also designed the instrument display in the real GTR. No wonder Motor Trend has said he is more influential in the car industry than the CEOs of Honda or Ford.

And on the subject of Nissan, the much awaited new 370Z is due to be unveiled at the LA Motor Show this week. However, if you have a Wii and you want to drive it while you await delivery, just pick up a copy of Need for Speed Undercover – the 370Z already in there waiting for you, motor running.

As you must have realized, I’m a self confessed car-junkie (or “Petrol-head” as us Brits would endearingly say), so amongst all the current woes of the automotive industry, it is exciting to see the growing convergence of car-culture with possibly the most influential strand of modern pop-culture, video gaming. And it gives me an immense amount of personal satisfaction to see how we’ve played our part – through our passion for improving the simulation accuracy of Force Feedback over the many years.

Drive safely!