The Thrifty Gamer

There was once a time when you had little else to worry about besides your gaming console’s hardware. Sure, there were peripherals – remember Sony’s Eyetoy? – but they rarely were the star of the show.

It’s now clear that the console manufacturers are quite happy with the hardware they have, however, and are planning to extend the current offerings for as long as possible. With no need hardware to attract attention, peripherals have become a center of attention, and there were plenty of gaming gadgets on display.

Much of the focus was on music peripherals, of course. They come in every shape and size, with a seemingly limitless number of arrangements, designs and options available. Apparently no one told these companies that most music-based franchises are seeing sales slump. Most of the musical peripherals were not particularly impressive, but there were several companies showing off “digital instruments” – guitars with real strings that are built to function with popular games.

One of the more interesting peripheral devices displays, and one of the first I came across, Penguin United’s Eagle Eye, a software and hardware solution that makes it possible to use a keyboard and mouse with your Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. The PS3 variant is already available, and the Xbox 360 variant is expected to arrive sometimes in early 2011. Eagle Eye directly binds controller functions to a keyboard, and the software allows for users to define key bindings. This information is passed through a hardware device that connects to the console.

The Eagle Eye representatives informed me that the technology only works well with wired keyboards and mice. This is somewhat limiting, but if you are a serious PC gamer like myself, you already rely on wired devices anyway. The demo stand I played with was fairly impressive. I was playing Call of Duty 5 on the PS3, but the controls felt precisely emulated the feel of a PC.

I’m also somewhat concerned that keyboard and mouse arrangements for consoles will be disabled via a software update because of the advantage such controls give to those who own them. Penguin United admitted that this can’t be ruled out as a possibility, but also stated that the console manufacturers have never disabled a control device before, even when the controller gave a player a definitive advantage (arcade sticks tailored for use with fighting games served as the example).

Another highlight of the show was the peripherals shown by Playseat and Thrustmaster. Playseat is a company that builds specialized seating for use with flight and driving simulations. The low-slung seats do a great job of replicating the feel of a race car and have mounting points for a variety of joysticks, wheels, shifters, pedals and other such peripherals. Thrustmaster was displaying off its line of flight sticks, which were showcased in a carefully constructed flight simulator chair complex with faux fighter instrumentation. This is not a production product, unfortunately, but the less impressive tubular racing seat next door was a production model.

There wasn’t anything in the showcase that stood out as ground-breaking, but it’s nice to see that the longer hardware cycle has its benefits, and I’m particularly excited to try Penguin United’s keyboard and mouse arrangement with my Xbox 360 when the product debuts later this year.

Written by M.S. Smith (88,010 pts ) in Console Gaming Blog
Last Edited on Jan 7 2011, 01:27 PM
Tags: eagle eye, ces, thrustmaster, playseat, gaming showcase

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