Posts tagged with "CES 2025"

A Tiny But Exciting CES Smartphone Controller Discovery→

One of my favorite surprises during CES 2025 so far was when Brendon pointed to a small device sitting on a table at the GameSir booth and asked ‘What’s that?’ It turns out it was a prototype Game Boy-style smartphone controller that doubles as a battery pack. As Brendon explained on Wavelengths yesterday:

GameSir’s concept is brilliant in that it’s a completely new form-factor for a mobile controllers, but also (though I didn’t confirm this) appears to be the kind of design that could work across both iPhone and Android devices. Even in my brief time messing around with it, the buttons and d-pad felt great, the shoulder buttons allowed for a pretty natural shelf for resting your hand on top of (similar to the Trim-UI Brick), and overall I left the booth blown away by it.

From our conversations with GameSir, it looks like a Kickstarter campaign is in the works and the device could be shipped in the first half of 2025. With emulators available on the iPhone since last summer, we’ve begun seeing more innovative controller solutions on smartphones, which I love. Be sure to check out Brendon’s story on Wavelengths for more photos of the GameSir prototype and his thoughts on it.

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NPC @ CES: Exploring the Future of Handheld Gaming at CES 2025→

Yesterday, Brendon Bigley and I walked over 8 miles on the CES show floor in search of ‘the next big thing’ in handheld gaming. We ended a long day against the backdrop of the Las Vegas Sphere to talk about what we’d seen and our initial impressions of what it all means to the future of handheld gaming.

Yesterday was a long, fun day of interesting and surprising discoveries that we’ll unpack further on next week’s episode of NPC: Next Portable Console.

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CES Is A Lot: A Gadget Roundup

CES kicked off Sunday evening with Unveiled, a press-only showcase of a subset of gadgets that I found a little underwhelming. It’s not that there hasn’t been interesting tech announced at the event, but it’s buried under strata of hype, over-the-top marketing, and a sea of buzzwords.

Most of all, though, every gadget is burdened with a fixation on artificial intelligence. I’ve seen a few interesting AI use cases so far, but most of what is described as AI simply isn’t. It’s just that in the speed-dating atmosphere between the press and gadget company PR, companies feel like they need an AI story in order to get attention. It also doesn’t help that gadgets are swallowed up by the cavernous, warehouse-sized spaces where they’re being shown off. The scale of CES (and Las Vegas for that matter) is huge and makes everything else seem small.

Still, there’s something undeniably fun about CES. Breathless announcements about answering your phone from your washer/dryer deserve the eye rolls they get, but the challenge is in the hunt to find the gems of CES. There is a signal underlying all the marketing noise, which is what Brendon and I will be on the lookout for today as the show floor opens for the first time. With so many products pre-announced, though, I thought I’d compile a roundup of what has caught my eye that I will be on the lookout for on the CES show floor.

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NVIDIA Announces GeForce NOW Support Coming to Safari on Vision Pro Later This Month

With a press release following an otherwise packed keynote at CES (which John and Brendon, my NPC co-hosts, attended in person last night), NVIDIA announced that their streaming service GeForce NOW is going to natively support the Apple Vision Pro…well, sort of.

There aren’t that many details in NVIDIA’s announcement, but the gist of it is that Vision Pro users will be able to stream games by visiting the GeForce NOW website when a new version launches “later this month”.

Get immersed in a new dimension of big-screen gaming as GeForce NOW brings AAA titles to life on Apple Vision Pro spatial computers, Meta Quest 3 and 3S and Pico virtual- and mixed-reality headsets. Later this month, these supported devices will give members access to an extensive library of games to stream through GeForce NOW by opening the browser to play.geforcenow.com when the newest app update, version 2.0.70, starts rolling out later this month.

This is all NVIDIA said in their announcement, which isn’t much, but we can speculate on a few things based on the existing limitations of visionOS.

For starters, the current version of Safari on visionOS does not support adding PWAs to the visionOS Home Screen. Given that the existing version of GeForce NOW requires saving a web app to begin the setup process, this either means that a) NVIDIA knows a visionOS software update in January will add the ability to save web apps or b) GeForce NOW won’t require that additional step to start playing on visionOS. The latter option seems more likely.

Second, as we covered last year, there is a workaround to play with GeForce NOW on visionOS, and that is the Nexus⁺ app. I’ve been using the Nexus⁺ app on my Vision Pro to stream Indiana Jones and other games from the cloud, and while the resolution is good enough1, what bothers me is the lack of HDR and Spatial Audio support (which should work with the Web Audio API in Safari for visionOS 2.0) in GeForce NOW when accessed from Nexus⁺’s built-in web browser.

The Nexus⁺ app supports ultra-wide aspect ratios, but HDR is nowhere to be found.

The Nexus⁺ app supports ultra-wide aspect ratios, but HDR is nowhere to be found.

With all this in mind, I’m going to guess that, at a minimum, NVIDIA will support a PWA-free installation method in Safari for visionOS. I’m less optimistic about HDR and Spatial Audio, but as I gravitate more and more toward cloud streaming rather than local PC streaming2, I’d be happily proven wrong here.

My only question is: with the App Store’s “new” rules, why isn’t NVIDIA making a native GeForce NOW app for Apple platforms?

  1. I’d love to know from people who know more about this stuff than I do whether Safari 18’s support for the WebRTC HEVC RFC 7789 RTP Payload Format makes a difference for GeForce NOW streaming or not. ↩︎
  2. I’m actually thinking about selling my 4090 FE GPU in an effort to go all-in on cloud streaming and SteamOS in lieu of Windows in 2025. But this is a future topic for NPC. ↩︎

Espresso Displays Announces the 4K 15 Pro Portable Display

Source: espresso Displays.

Source: espresso Displays.

Late yesterday, espresso Displays announced the addition of a new portable display to its Pro lineup. The espresso 15 Pro joins the company’s 17 Pro, which was released last year. Highlights of the 15.6” display include a brighter 60Hz 4K screen and a new stand, along with features from the 17 Pro like touch sensitivity.

Source: espresso Displays.

Source: espresso Displays.

The display, which is enclosed in an aluminum body with two USB-C ports, is capable of 550 nits of brightness over a single USB-C cable, a 100-nit improvement over the larger 17 Pro display. The new Stand+ will enable the screen to be elevated much higher, too, thanks to a clever design that can be folded up into a travel-friendly configuration.

The espresso 15 Pro will be shown off at CES starting tomorrow, where I’m hoping to spend some hands-on time with it. Although I haven’t seen the 15 Pro yet, I have tried the 17 Pro and espresso Display’s standard 1080p 15” portable display, which came with the same Stand+ as the 15 Pro model. Both displays are well-built, lightweight, and easy to use, making them great complements to a Mac, iPad, or even an iPhone for anyone who wants a second screen. I’m particularly interested in the 15 Pro, though, because despite its great resolution, the 17 Pro is a little bigger than I typically want to carry with me, and I expect the added brightness of the 15 Pro will be a nice addition, too.

CES 2025: What to Expect from NPC and MacStories

Today, I began packing my bag full of the gear I’m bringing to CES. I’m excited because it’s shaping up to be a very NPC CES.

Brendon, Federico, and I started NPC: Next Portable Console because we each sensed that handheld gaming had reached a tipping point. Thanks to the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, companies around the world have spent the past year experimenting with new ways to make gaming more portable.

I’ve covered CES from afar for years at this point and always enjoy it. Sure, a lot of CES amounts to incremental changes to TVs and new attempts to embed screens into kitchen appliances. But if that’s all you see, you’re not paying close enough attention. The fun of CES is discovering what’s new and trying to separate the vaporware from truly innovative ideas. Plus, Weird CES never disappoints, bringing truly bizarre gadgets to life that everyone should know about. Who can forget Qoobo the headless cat robot?

This isn’t technically my first CES. Until the mid-‘90s, the show was held in Chicago and New York, and it was open to the public. I went a few years before it moved to Las Vegas and had a blast. That was a long time ago, but with the rise of handheld gaming, the time felt right to return.

Over the summer and into the fall as the rumors of new Windows and SteamOS devices gained momentum, it became clear that handheld manufacturers were targeting CES for splashy announcements. That’s the main reason Brendon and I are heading to Las Vegas. We’ll be roaming the show floor to see what’s coming next and get a sense of where handhelds are heading in 2025 and beyond.

However, as excited as we are about portable consoles, that’s not all we’ll be covering. There’s a lot more to CES, so we’ll also be on the lookout for the latest in smart home hardware, AR glasses, headphones, speakers, anything with an e-ink screen, and more.

What we plan to bring to you here and on the MacStories YouTube channel is something uniquely NPC and MacStories: insights into what to expect from the next wave of portable videogame hardware and the other gadgets worth keeping an eye on in the new year, plus a sprinkling of the weirdly wonderful “what were they thinking?” hardware.

To follow along, you can find our coverage on MacStories.net under the tag ‘CES 2025’ and this dedicated RSS feed. You’ll also find two playlists on our YouTube channel: ‘NPC @ CES’ for handheld gaming news and ‘MacStories @ CES’ for everything else. Plus, be sure to visit Brendon’s blog Wavelengths for even more coverage from him.

What’s in My CES Bag?

Packing for CES has been a little different than WWDC. The biggest differences are the huge crowds at CES and the limits the conference puts on the bags you can carry into venues.

My trusty Tom Bihn Synapse 25 backpack isn’t big, but it’s too large for CES, so the first thing I did was look for a bag that was small enough to meet the CES security rules but big enough to hold my 14” MacBook Pro and 11” iPad Pro, plus accessories. I decided on a medium-sized Tomtoc Navigator T24 sling bag, which is the perfect size. It holds 7 liters of stuff and has built-in padding to protect the corners of the MacBook Pro and iPad as well as pockets on the inside and outside to help organize cables and other things.

Tomtoc's medium Navigator T24 sling bag. Source: Tomtoc.

Tomtoc’s medium Navigator T24 sling bag. Source: Tomtoc.

I don’t plan to carry my MacBook Pro with me during the day. The iPad Pro will be plenty for any writing and video production I do on the go, but it will be good to have the power and flexibility of the MacBook Pro when I return to my hotel room. For traveling to and from Las Vegas, I appreciate that the Tomtoc bag can fit everything I’m bringing.

A surprising amount of stuff fits in the T24. Source: Tomtoc.

A surprising amount of stuff fits in the T24. Source: Tomtoc.

With little room to spare, my setup is minimal. I’ll write on the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, carrying the iPad with me tethered to my iPhone for Internet access. That’s a tried-and-true setup I already use whenever I’m away from home.

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