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Obvious Post of the Day: Don't Expect Gaming Bombshells at CES

Jeff Gerstmann
Commentary
Expect to hear a bit more about these dudes once CES begins.
Looks like TechCrunch's new policy of not signing up for embargos and press-only pre-briefs is serving them well, as the site has a bit of detail on what we can expect to hear out of Microsoft's Steve Ballmer during the company's keynote address to help kick off the Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday night. According to the site, the only real gaming mention will come in a brief note that two Halo games will be released in 2009. Those two would be Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST. So, yeah. We knew that.

Of course, no one can really fault Microsoft if the company doesn't bring anything surprising and new for the Xbox 360 to CES. It's not a gaming-focused show, and most of the tech press that would be there would be just as impressed by the old ODST trailer as they would by something brand-new, because they don't follow gaming close enough to care. The show's got a long history of half-hearted showings of games that were shown months ago to the games press.

There will be a few new things coming out of the show, though. We heard that Capcom will be on hand to debut a bit of new Dark Void stuff, and we understand that Sony Online Entertainment will be showing an updated demo of DC Universe Online. Those two things are probably the most compelling things I've seen so far, as both of those games look like they could be great. The PlayStation 3 will undoubtedly have some presence at the show, as well, and Sony's Jeff Rubenstein has posted that he'll be at the show doing something game-related. I'm just guessing here, but there may be some updated versions of games shown at E3 there. However, it's almost as likely that they'll just have some stuff that's already out running in a corner of the Sony booth, or a loop of the Uncharted 2 trailer or something like that. Like I said, it's not really much of a show for games, so there's rarely a real push for publishers to bring brand-new stuff to show. For attendees who don't play games at all, a kiosk running Resistance 2 is just as impressive as a kiosk running Killzone 2.

Expect those updates to start hitting around the Internet over the course of the week. We'll be watching from a safe distance, as well, as there's a guy in Vegas who wants to break Vinny's legs over a debt he racked up last time we were out there. The juice is running, Caravella!