The DeanBeat: The gaming innovations at CES that go way beyond the consoles

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
January 17, 2014
Updated June 18, 2025
6 min

The 2014 International CES offered a lot of bright futures for gamers. Valve’s Steam Machines and the Oculus Rift’s new virtual reality prototype captured a lot of attention.

But the aisles were full of cool game tech. There was a large gaming showcase in the South Hall of the cavernous Las Vegas Convention Center, and it was full of small innovations in game technology. I’ll use this column to describe some of the lesser-known ones for those of you who didn’t have a chance to brave the crowds of 150,000 people and the 3,200 exhibits that covered 2 million square feet of space.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.