MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh attended the recent Consumer Electronics Show and has come back with this look at some of the hardware she saw on her trip.

Gaming Hardware at the Consumer Electronic Show 2009 in Las Vegas was a bit of a mix between a “new and improved” with little innovation and marked absence. The Media Showcases held by Pepcom and Showstoppers were a little sparse in the Gaming arena, with only a few companies at each event showing their gaming goodies. The majority of hardware was targeted at the console market. Microsoft only showcased their Xbox games and the Gamezone at CES was sponsored by MumboJumbo, a casual game publisher. With that, onto the noteworthy:

I enjoy attending the Media Showcases. The vendors know they are talking to the press and are happy to provide the esoteric information we sometimes seek. Such as: No, I’m not interested in your six-pack of USB drives or OEM ready PC components, talk to me about the latency of your high-performance SDRAM modules for gamers please.

Read the CES Hardware Roundup

Collectively unimpressive.  Nothing that gets me excited about buying a new computer this year.  Maybe I'll wait till 2010.

Oh man, logitech fails.

The G13 is like a bad copy of the N52, it has more buttons, it's cooler, but the pad is so unconfortable that you loose it completely, why didn't they copy the N52 on that too adapting it to a more natural thumb position? Plus, unlike the N52, the G13 doesn't have your palm in a good position, on the N52, your fingers fall on the keys so naturaly, the G13 requires you to put your hand almost rigid, and that sucks in long gaming sessions.

And then, a revamped G9 with 5000 dpi? That's all we need...not. I had the G9 at 3200 dpi and had to decrease the mouse speed in order to use it with my 2 screens, the precission was great, but dpi has already reached its max status for today's resolutions.

What logitech needs to do is to release a customizable gaming mouse with non eagle-claw hand position and better quality on their materials and drivers. The friggin logitech driver of my G9 wouldn't let me write spanish characters properly.

Plus the G9 was a faulty mouse for me, the mouse kept working worse as I was using it, and now I'm a very happy Roccat Kone owner.

The USB1 adaptation is a good change imho, since, when you're installing an OS, your actual G9 wouldn't work.

I would have liked to see the rampage performance with i7 though.

What bothers me ,i that i do not think any of the developers play at all.

I cannot believe there is not one mouse that loses that horrible puny/little scroll wheel.I have beenstruggling ever since these new laser mice have come out,they are too sensitive,and when you set them less sensitive they do not react any good at all.My old three button mouse makes ALL these mice perform and look awful.First of all these laser mice are all too skinny,this makes you cramp your hand into a little ball to use the things and secodnly the scroll wheel is ALWAYS too stiff and it makes you sort of hold your middle finger in the air waiting to use it,very uncomfortable after even 20 minutes.

The problem is not a problem if you could actually find a 3 button mouse anywhere,a scroll WHEEL is not a button lol.The 3 button gamers mouse[logitech] was wider/more comfortable and had the 3rd button not some wheel that is uber stiff and not practical for gaming.It was designed to game and came pretty close to being perfect.How many times do we actually use the scroll wheel i would say for myself it is like less than or equal to 1% of the time.

That gaming pad Logitech shows off there even made me laugh.They say that is better suited to gaming?the things sits on an angle that would leave me cramped in 5 minutes.

The ideal setup would be something that fits like a glove,natural,comfortable and could utilize all 4 fingers/thumb for a 5 button setup instead of 3,and never having to move any finger ,making it more practical.

Gaming hardware was indeed collectively unimpressive this year.  In the previous CES and the one before, I had an opening and a closing "round-up" of various gaming hardware.  Not this year.  The Razer mouse did impress me as they have broken the wireless latency barrier and it's a dual mode mouse.  Wired as well as wireless.

It's so sad to see many of the companies that took the time, trouble and expense to have a presence at the CES could not even be bothered to properly address, much less properly answer, Ms. Koh's questions and concerns.

In my day, I'd have obtained the names of the individuals who failed to properly represent their companies and their products and then I'd have used those names in letters of concern/new product inquiry sent to the CEOs of those companies, respectfully requesting the information that their people at the CES were unwilling or unable to provide. 

Kudos to Razer for doing it right.

I know companies are tightening up and cutting back, but why bother being at the CES at all if little effort is being made to represent the company's image and products in the proper light.