Comment: CES disappoints as Sony and Microsoft reveal nothing

The videogames industry had pinned a lot of importance on this week's CES in Las Vegas, so it's a bit disappointing that the show failed to deliver on either of the major announcements we'd hoped to see - with both Sony and Microsoft delivering pre-show events so light on content that you had to wonder why they bothered.

Sony was first out of the blocks, with a press conference at 1pm on the day before the show, and it got off to a promising start. That morning, SCE boss Ken Kutaragi told a meeting in Japan that PlayStation Portable would hopefully launch in North America and Europe by the end of March - but by the end of the day, we were none the wiser, as SCEA CEO Kaz Hirai's soundbite-filled presentation in Las Vegas had presented absolutely no new information about the company's plans for the system.

Instead, Hirai talked at length about the power of PSP as a multimedia device, dragging out the dreaded "convergence" word which many others are now trying to distance themselves from and curiously contradicting comments from EA executive Warren Wall, who predicted that PSP would be a success because of its focus on games, rather than on trying to be all things to all men.

By the end of the presentation, attendees still knew little about when PSP will launch outside Japan ("late March" remains the official estimate) or how much it will cost, although a $199 price point in North America remains the best guess of many industry commentators.

If that presentation was disappointing, however, Bill Gates' keynote had the air of a farce about it. Once expected to be the moment when Xbox 2 would finally be unveiled to the world, Gates' presentation saw the Microsoft chairman's banter becoming visibly strained as software demonstrations failed or crashed repeatedly - including some embarrassing technical hitches in his attempt to play forthcoming Xbox title Forza Motorsport against popular US chat show host Conan O'Brien.

No information of note came out of Microsoft's presentation for the games industry - instead Gates praised the success of the Xbox in the run up to Christmas, claiming that the console achieved 40 per cent market share in November and December (certainly a significant achievement, although it would be unfair not to mention the huge supply difficulties Sony's PlayStation 2 experienced during that period) and pointing to huge successes with software titles like Halo 2 and Fable.

Even if we knew in advance of CES that Xbox 2 wouldn't be making an appearance, the keynote was still disappointing; Microsoft is seemingly in a curious twilight zone at the moment, with nothing of note to talk about on Xbox apart from past commercial successes, the possibilities of talking about XNA pretty much exhausted, and Xbox 2 still not ready to take a bow in public.

Given Microsoft's inexperience in handling a transition period and the accelerated schedule it is pursuing for Xbox 2, this is understandable and perhaps even to be expected. Sony's reticence to tell the market outside Japan what it's planning with its biggest launch in almost five years, however, is less easy to forgive. The market needs to plan its first quarter, and first half, and the PSP price point and the number of units which will be made available in that timescale are crucial to that planning. The lack of information about the firm's plans, combined with the fact that the console is still incredibly difficult to get hold of in Japan, are leaving many industry insiders nervous about the PSP launch. Consumer demand for the sleek, powerful system will undoubtedly be there - but if the launch is botched, especially in terms of unit volumes failing to meet pre-orders, then everyone (with the possible exception of Sony's brand marketing gurus, for whom "no news is bad news") will be left smarting.