Here's one more post to wrap up my time spent in Las Vegas covering CES 2010. At the show, I asked Capcom's VP of strategic planning and business development Christian Svensson to think about the conversation we could be having in January 2011, a year from now. I asked him to think about what Capcom would like to say it accomplished in 2010, if all the pieces were to perfectly fall into place.

"I'd love to say that we expanded the appeal of the Monster Hunter brand," he said, referring to the upcoming Monster Hunter Tri. "I'd love to say we have laid the foundation for future Street Fighter success with Super [Street Fighter IV]. I would love to say that Lost Planet has become cemented as one of the key Capcom brands moving forward and is not a one-title success story but has been really successful there. I would love to say Dark Void was successful enough to see a sequel."

Dark Void launched this week. The clock is already ticking on that one.

"I'd love to say...see, what else?" he continued. "What else that I can talk about?"

"Oh, I've got one," laughed Svensson.

I could tell I was in for another mysterious tease from Svensson. Ready? Brace for it:

"I'd love to say that some of the things that we announce in the middle of this year will have people exceptionally excited for next year," he said smiling, as Capcom public relations looked on with a cautious eye. "I can't say -- there's a project...it took a very long time to get certain things done."

Svensson made one last pronouncement, as one of Capcom's PR team shouted "I'm watching you!"

"I think people are gonna be extremely excited when they hear some of the stuff we announce later in the year," he concluded.

As with Capcom's secret Project Natal game (Steel Battalion!?), let the guessing begin!

Have something to share? Sitting on a news tip? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.

As I wrap up my reporting from CES 2010, I must return to some issues that won't go away.

Xbox Live deserves praise as a service, but being the standard for which other online gaming services are judged means its flaws come under repeated scrutiny -- for good reason. It's why I always find myself asking Microsoft executives a couple of the same questions whenever I'm given the opportunity to sit down with them: why is there a friends cap on Xbox Live and when will the entire service allow me to pay for content in real-world dollar amounts, rather than confusing Microsoft Points?

Some background on each issue.

You cannot have more than 100 friends on Xbox Live. I used to think this was an issue that affected only the most hardcore. I don't even engage in much multiplayer through Xbox Live. But I do use the service to keep tabs on what my friends are playing, what they're watching on Netflix and other social networking bits. Now, I have reached the friends list cap and find myself removing people I know. I published a story last year that reported the main holdup for the cap was Halo 2 players.

Microsoft's response?

"Phew," sighed Xbox group product manager Aaron Greenberg at CES. "God, I've been answering this question for so long. It's something that the team's looking at. It's more complicated than you would think. I know you have actually covered yourself in some detail and I think it is something that we're hoping to address. Exactly when that happens I can't say because there's some technical requirements tied to it. But I can tell you that, just like consumers, I share the same frustration and I, too, want more than 100 friends, and so know that we all want that and that we are working on getting that fixed."

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Look at the top-selling Wii games in December: New Super Mario Bros., Wii Fit Plus and Wii Play. Nintendo has turned Wii into a brand you can trust and Mario -- well, he's Mario. Capcom failed to get an original Wii franchise off the ground last summer with Spyborgs and Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles hasn't proven nearly as popular as its predecessor, Umbrella Chronicles.

At CES, I spoke with Capcom's VP of strategic planning and business development Christian Svensson about the company's lessons from Wii development in 2009. Capcom has been an avid, aggressive supporter of Wii development, but 2009 wasn't the stellar year they'd hoped.

"One of the things we've learned is that known franchises matter a lot to a Wii consumer," he said.

Spyborgs, for example, was not a known franchise. Capcom was trying to make it one.

"I would say Spyborgs was a challenge for us," said Svensson. "We knew it was high-risk [investment] in terms of doing new IP with a 'gamer game' on the Wii and it disappointed us, candidly. At the same time, we do have some bright spots here and there."

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The week wouldn't be complete without another episode of Feedback, right? Don't worry, readers, we're happy to oblige. Adam Sessler, Abbie Heppe, newcomer Jake Gaskill and myself headed into the studio to discuss the week's events, debate how much Electronic Arts has managed to improve its bromance co-op series Army of Two with the sequel, Army of Two: The 40th Day, and more.

In this week's Feedback...

• I return from CES 2010 with news about the future of 3D in video games: it's overrated.
• We reflect on the avalanche of game announcements and delays we've seen in the past two weeks, including Ubisoft's potentially controversial new Assassin's Creed...with multiplayer?
• There's not much confidence that The Legend of Zelda for Wii is shipping in 2010, but that might be offset by Nintendo's decision to deliver Metroid: Other M before the year is up.
• Irrational Games becomes 2K Boston becomes Irrational Games. The world is right again.
• Find out if Army of Two: 40th Day is worth checking out, especially if you're going solo.
• A reader asks a particularly juicy question about the validity of Hollywood film directors (like, say, James Cameron) becoming involved in video games and whether there's merit to it.

Feedback, talking trash about the products shown at CES since video games decided to leave.

You'll have a chance to play Dark Void next week, but Capcom's high-flying new franchise was originally scheduled for last fall. Capcom decided to hold the game back, claiming time time would be used to further polish the game and let Dark Void launch in a less crowded market. Capcom did have a date picked out for Dark Void, however, but there was a problem: Halo 3: ODST.

"Dark Void was gonna be a fall [release] and truthfully, being candid, the date it was supposed to ship was the day [as] Halo 3: ODST," explained a laughing Christian Svensson, Capcom's VP of strategic planning and business development, during an interview at CES last week. "They're [Microsoft] like, 'ta-da, we're shipping, I don't know, I forget what it was, Sept. 27 or whatever' and we said 'okay, sounds like a perfect time to move Dark Void!"

Halo 3: ODST was released on Sept. 22.

Svensson moved Dark Void out of the shadow of Bungie's latest shooter, but Capcom's original statements about the delay weren't really far from the truth. The time did help the game.

"Truthfully, we put the extra couple months [to good use]," he said. "We did the PhysX integration on the PC side of things; some of that stuff was not necessarily going to be there at launch, now it is. We put that time to good use, for sure."

Dark Void launches next week on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Have something to share? Sitting on a news tip? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Project Natal might have a release window of during the holidays, but that doesn't answer the litany of questions that remain about Microsoft's entry into motion gaming. Since its E3 reveal, we've seen tech demos and examples of how Project Natal can graft onto existing gaming experiences, but Microsoft and third-parties have remained quiet on games developed for the ground up for Project Natal.

I asked Xbox group product manager Aaron Greenberg about this problem at CES last week, proposing that users can only remain interested in the possibilities of Project Natal for so long.

"I would say that right now the team [at Microsoft] is working really hard on making, bringing those experiences -- doing the development phase of that," said Greenberg.

Okay, so when will we see the games?

"I would expect at E3 we'll share a lot more of those types of details," he confirmed.

That makes sense. E3 it is, then. But potential must be realized. It's difficult to imagine a world where Nintendo didn't launch Wii with Wii Sports, bundled with the hardware or not. Wii Sports translated the potential of Nintendo's motion dreams into a simple, tangible, easily demonstrable product. As games start coming together for Project Natal, Microsoft must be in search of its Wii Sports equivalent.

I asked Greenberg whether Microsoft had found its Wii Sports for Project Natal.

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It seems like everyone is talking about 3-D these days. Between the success of Avatar to all the new 3-D TVs shown off at CES 2010, one might think that it's the next big thing. Will games start going into the third dimension? The Sess doesn't think so, which is why he used this week's Soapbox to talk about his perspective on the expected 3-D revolution. Would you like to play games while wearing prism glasses that make it look like things are flying towards your face? Or are you happy with the current state of gaming technology? Let us know in the comments.

Also, don't forget that as of next week, Sessler's Soapbox will be posted on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays. That means you get to listen to Adam's golden opinions a day earlier each week. Score!

Subscribe to G4's Sessler's Soapbox Podcast by clicking your preferred service:

You couldn't walk more than a few feet without running into a 3D-enabled TV at CES 2010. Sony was showing several demonstrations of PlayStation 3 games with 3D flipped on (Super Stardust HD was particularly impressive), while Microsoft was only showing one, an Xbox Live Arcade game called Scrap Metal. Plus, it wasn't the "new" 3D -- it was the "old" 3D. Does that say something about Microsoft's stance on the 3D revolution the tech industry was pushing at CES? I asked.

"From the technical standpoint, we are fully 3D capable. We have 3D games running today," said Microsoft's Xbox group product manager Aaron Greenberg to me at CES last week.

Greenberg conceded that it's possible Microsoft will embrace 3D...eventually. Maybe.

"As consumer interest for 3D grows, we'll grow with it," he said. "I think right now we're unsure what level of interest there is from consumers to really want a 3D experience in the living room. Many, many years from now when it becomes a reality, we absolutely can support it, we do support it today. If developers want to make more 3D games, they can."

In addition to Scrap Metal, Greenberg pointed to Avatar: The Game as another 3D-supporting game on Xbox 360. But in an unsurprising turn of events, Microsoft would rather encourage developers to look at Project Natal as a way to change the way games. He did admit the 3D works great at the movies.

"I think 3D is a great experience in the theater and I thought Avatar was fantastic," he said, "but there's a lot of challenges about 3D in the living room. I don't know about you, but when I play games or watch TV, I've got my phone, I've got all kinds of things going on. I get up, I get down, I'm looking outside at the weather and it's...I'm not in a dark theater, wearing glasses, staring at a screen. I think it's just a different environment."

Because the tech industry is pushing 3D so hard, however, Greenberg says Microsoft's technically on board. From a first-party perspective, they're going to remain on the sidelines for the time being.

"It [3D] is the hot thing at CES and we've got 3D on the show floor, so we've checked the 3D box if that's important to people," he said. "If it becomes really important and people want to do more with it, we're absolutely happy to support it."

Have something to share? Sitting on a news tip? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Outside of tech demonstrations and modifications of several existing Xbox 360 games, we haven't seen what Project Natal is capable of. Microsoft is keeping those games under wraps. But speaking with Capcom's VP of strategic planning and business development Christian Svensson at CES last week, I learned about Capcom's potentially ambitious plans for one Project Natal game.

"I can't talk about what we're doing on Natal right now yet because we haven't announced it, although we have announced that we're working on stuff," said Svensson, emphasizing his vagueness.

He was willing to tease a little more about one unannounced game, however.

"I think you'll see again a brand focus on what we're doing there [on Natal], perhaps a brand we haven't seen in a while," he said with a coy smile, as Capcom public relations eyeballed us. "That's exciting."

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Alright. Fine. I realize I'm no longer the target demographic for LEGO, even though I consistently find myself playing every single LEGO game that comes out and the upcoming LEGO Harry Potter is one of my most anticipated games of 2010. So when I realized CES 2010 would provide the first opportunity for me to go hands-on with the upcoming LEGO MMO, LEGO Universe, I smiled wide.

At first glance, LEGO Universe doesn't actually look very different from the LEGO games that Traveller's Tales popularized before it, a move the developers told me was done on purpose. Developer NetDevil wanted consumers who have played other LEGO games to come into LEGO Universe with an immediate sense of familiarity. As such, tiny pegs spawn from built LEGOs and the characters even stack them with a strikingly similar set of animations. It's the good kind of familiar.

Most TheFeed readers are probably in my camp, interested in the possibilities of LEGO Universe but unsure whether the game's design will actually make it interesting to play longer than 10 minutes.

The verdict?

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Announced at CES 2010, Microsoft will be bringing classic game emulation to the Xbox 360 and Windows PCs in Game Room. The service, which will be released this Spring, will initially have around 30 games available to purchase or play. At this point, Microsoft hopes to release 7 games a week with the final goal being over 1000 games available.  The Game Room is an actual 3D space for your avatar that can be customized and decorated. Your friends can even visit your personal arcade. If you don’t care for the virtual space, the entire experience can be navigated by menus.

Initially, games will range from classic arcade titles to consoles titles from the Intellivision and Atari 2600. For a full list of the launch titles, skip to the end of this story. For pricing, the model is a bit different from anything Microsoft has done before on Live. For 40 MS Points or 50 cents, you’ll be able to play a game once. That’s right, just like dropping two quarters into an arcade machine, Microsoft will allow gamers to insert credits into these classic titles. It makes sense if you want to try a bunch of games before buying, in order to find something you like, but 50 cents a pop could add up before long.

If you want to purchase a game, it’s going to run you $3. This enables unlimited play and placement of the game in your arcade space. It won’t, however, allow you to play that same game on your Xbox 360 and PC. If you want cross-platform play, the price will kick up to $5, but will allow you play the game on any supported platform according to Microsoft’s Frank Pape, senior director on the project, which might not be limited to the 360 and PC, though no new platforms were announced at CES. If I had to speculate, I would look to Windows Mobile as a possible platform. Live was just announced for Windows handsets and it would give Microsoft some ground against Apple’s iPhone and its growing game library.

Keep reading for more on Game Room.

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That's it, folks. Another CES is in the books. Brian Leahy and I headed to Las Vegas last week to cover the first major event of the 2010 season, a show that's moved further away from video games every year, but remains a technological institution that's influence on games is undeniable.

Before CES 2010 kicked off, we made three major predictions about the gaming trends that would come out of the event. With the CES doors now closed, it's time to ask...were we right?

1. In A Post-Avatar World, 3D Is The Next Big Thing

WHAT WE SAID: "At CES 2010, it will be shocking to find a device that isn't incorporating 3D technology somehow, whether it's in your television, computer monitor or the phone that's resting in your pocket. It's the new tech buzz, the new HD. Even if it's not priced consumer-friendly, if you're not thinking 3D, you're crazy."

WHAT WE SAW: That depends on who you talk to. According to the tech industry, the response to Avatar means it's full-steam ahead for 3D in the home. You could not walk five feet without bumping into 3D something or other. That's not exaggeration or hyperbole, but a reflection of how amazingly prominent 3D was featured at CES 2010. With the next-generation disc wars over, the industry needs something new to push. At CES 2010, it was 3D. Games, music, movies, sports -- it was all shown in 3D. The only medium missing was books, which is something I'm sure they're working on, too. The technology was not consistent across every TV, every medium, and every piece of eyewear, however, meaning the 3D experience changed every five feet. Plus, while CES is supposed to be a "consumer" show, nothing at CES 2010 looked like it was ready to show up on Wal-Mart's shelves. Most people are just getting around to picking up a vanilla HDTV. They might buy a 3D-capable set eventually -- but it'll be by accident. CES 2010 did little to provide evidence consumers want home 3D, only that the tech's there.

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Slowly but surely, Netflix is establishing itself as the de facto streaming movie service. It's been a massive source of interest on Xbox 360, recently found a way to appear on PlayStation 3 (thanks to a disc loop hole) and seems to be on the cusp of its next move: Nintendo.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told reporters (via Gizmodo) at CES the likelihood of Netflix partnering with Nintendo was "excellent," though Hastings declined to elaborate further.

Rumors of Netflix making a Wii appearance have swirled for months. With PlayStation 3 out of the way, it sounds like Netflix is making final moves before expanding to yet another platform.

Source: Gizmodo

Have something to share? Sitting on a news tip? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.

We're just a few weeks out from Mass Effect 2, but at CES last week, BioWare was already chatting up plans for the third entry in the currently-proposed Mass Effect trilogy to IGN.

"We are already at work on Mass Effect 3," said Mass Effect 2 project director Casey Hudson about the next game. "'[We're] building the first bits of the story, putting that together."

Even though Mass Effect 3 will finish out the current story arc, the massive success of the franchise makes it seem unlikely that BioWare will be shelving the series anytime soon.

Source: IGN

Have something to share? Sitting on a news tip? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.

There are actually several areas loaded with couches, massage chairs and other relaxation contraptions hidden away in one of the exhibition halls in CES. I may have taken this picture to poke fun at the folks who decided to take a load off, but now I wish I was in the picture...

Have something to share? Sitting on a news tip? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.