Impressive Prototypes - CES 2013

As booths are taken apart and lights are taken down, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is officially over for 2013. People from all over the world gathered from January 8th - 11th for the event that took place in Las Vegas.

To start off, let's start gaming.

If you're really into gaming, computer gaming specifically, you may have heard of the company, Valve. Valve, who is popular for the 'Steam' community, had a lot of buzz going around at this year's conference. It was announced, that could be a big threat to Nintendo, that the company will be releasing a new game box shortly, that will bring PC gaming straight to the TV, without the need of connecting to a computer. The prototype doesn't feature everything like the Xbox and Playstation do, (like multimedia and Video-on-Demand services) but still poses a threat to Nintendo, as they just launched their social features only in December. Valve is working with Xi3 Industries to produce their console.

Nvidia's 'Project Shield' (Jered Newman / Time.com)

While Valve takes all the buzz for a new gaming console, Nvidia (best known for PC graphics processors and more recently, mobile chips) took center stage with their new handheld console, Project Shield. (Watch demo of the device) The device is a bit larger than the size of an Xbox gamepad, which features Nvidia’s Tegra 4 processor inside. A 5-inch, 720p touch-screen folds out from the controller, much like an older Nintendo Gameboy would.

Featuring an Android operating system, the handheld console has many different features. One feature that seemed to grab the attention of attendees of CES, was the device playing PC games over a home network. (With the requirement that the PC has a newer Nvidia graphics card.) Attendees were pleased to notice that lag was insignificant while playing games like Call of Duty: Black Ops II. The device can also play Android games.

Leaving games behind, let's talk about something that didn't catch quite as much buzz, but is still intriguing to hear about.

Courtesy of The New York Times 

This device is called ivee. Ivee is an alarm clock, but with a twist -- this clock has voice-recognition software. You say "Hello ivee," and the device responds with a "Hello." Then, you simply tell it what time to wake you up.

Not impressed yet?

Well, ivee can also connect to wi-fi connections. Connect ivee to your home network and it can serve as a voice-control central for any wi-fi capable device that may or may not already have voice-recognition software. Demonstrations included using ivee to change the temperature on a thermostat. Or using it to tell a Roomba vacuum to clean up in an area. Or use it in conjunction with a Belkin smart plug to turn on and off a lamp. The wi-fi also allows ivee to get simple information from the web, as well, such as the weather forecast for a nearby city.

As ivee is just in the beginning stages of being produced, not many companies have provided ivee with their application programming interfaces, or APIs, which still makes things a little hard. For things to really take off, the companies founder, Jonathon Nostrant, is hoping to work out some more business connections.

So as CES 2013 has closed it's doors, everybody here at VegasKidReviews has been impressed with the many impressive prototypes that may never be made for the public market. After seeing all of these new gadgets, I know that I can't wait to see what's going to be revealed at CES 2014!