Videogame analyst PJ McNealy, CEO of Digital World Research, believes there will be five big trends to follow this week. Gaming will play an important role in the trade show, as usual.
1. What will Sony and Microsoft likely feature? Look for Sony to roll out its usual suite of news; something from their music division, new 3D TVs, more connected home devices, a dash of robots, a sprinkle of movie studio news, mix it all together, and then top it off with something from the mobile division with Sony Ericsson now under their control. The PlayStation Vita will likely be the headliner for Sony ahead of a February 22, 2012 launch.
Microsoft is quietly putting some of their news out ahead of the show about new content flowing through their Xbox Live platform. There continues to be rumors about a new version of the Xbox 360 hardware news coming at the show, but our position remains unchanged: Microsoft has been announcing “new” versions of the Xbox 360 console for a while now, including bundling TV tuner cards in with a version of the Xbox 360, and they will continue down this path. At some point, Microsoft will likely announce versions of a new box, either combined with a) a satellite TV service partner, b) a cable service provider partner, c) more over-the-top content solution partners, or d) some combination of a, b, and c. Will news come in January on this front? We remain healthy skeptics on that timing (recap of news from December is our position), but CES becomes more relevant to Microsoft and Xbox Live as it includes more mainstream media options beyond gaming.
On the TV front, given the perceived advantage in 3D TV sets by the Japanese manufacturers such as Panasonic and Sony over the Korean manufacturers such as LG and Samsung, expect to hear more about 3D in January. That said, until prices come down further, a single 3D TV standard is agreed to, and more content in 3D becomes available, in our opinion, 3D TV is still more of a 2013-2015 CES theme rather than 2012.
For the sake of being thorough on the topic of 3D, Nintendo continues to make its push for 3D gaming technology via its 3D DS (3DS) handheld, and is one of the rare exceptions where glasses are not required for game play. Nintendo just recently announced another string of games in 3-D that will be available for the 3DS in the first few months of 2012, which will help support any 3DS gifts under the tree this holiday.
3. Is OLED technology any closer to reality? OLED technology was announced a few years ago, with great fanfare, about how super, super thin TVs could be, led by the 11-inch Sony OLED TV XEL-1 for $2,500 in 2007. Since then, we’ve heard more about LED LCD TVs and 3D LED LCD TVs, but OLED will likely have a presence not only in TVs in 2012, but also in some tablet news and in some phone screens. Panasonic just recently announced a new OLED-screen phone for Europe will likely be featured at the show. And Sony's PS Vita features an OLED display.
5. Pico projectors remain a hot topic as the sizes get smaller and screen resolutions get better. The next wave of news will likely be around pico projectors embedded into smart phones, with plenty of examples of a Powerpoint presentation being projected onto a wall. The news here is likely incremental from last year, but as prices come down on the hardware, it means more media being played back from your phone…onto your wall.