EA Winter Showcase 2009 - In association with NVIDIA, Kobalt and SteelSeries

[neil@kobalt]

On Wednesday and Thursday this week Electronic Arts held their anual Winter Showcase. It is their chance to show off their latest and upcomming games on a variety of platforms (including PC, XBox 360, PS3) and is a press only/special invitation event.

Nvidia of course have a good history of supporting and working closely with PC game developers (see Batman AA coding for example!) through "The way it's meant to be played".

We were asked to supply some high performance desktop systems and laptops to really show off these games to a UK and European attendance. Of course we use Nvidia GPUs in all our laptops and even with the release of the ATi 5870s Nvidia still outsells Ati in our desktops by a margin so our relationship with Nvidia is very good. The fact that the guys I know at NVIDIA are a thoroughly decent bunch of chaps helps as well:D

I can't say too much about the games being showcased apart from the fact that Command an Conquer 4 (http://www.commandandconquer.com/) is looking pretty nifty and Star Wars : The Old Republic (http://www.swtor.com/) was so secretive the only way you could get a peek was to give the password in Binary to the R2D2 (full size) unit that was roaming around the event:eek: I'm not at all an MMO man but SW : TOR might change that!

Steelseries were also present with keyboards, mice and headsets running on all our PCs, keep eyes open for some related news here soon!

Anyways here are some pictures of mainly our prescence at the showcase:

The Front Door!

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/009.jpg

Two Kobalt Machines running the Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online section:

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/012.jpg

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/014.jpg

Kobalt X55-AC in Zalman Z-Machine:

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/015.jpg

Kobalt X58-hLQ in Corsair Obsidian with H50 CPU cooler and tripple rad for GPUs

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/016b.jpg

Kobalt Daedalus (Blade chassis) running C&C 4 with the other systems. Of course we left it running at the overclocked level Custom PC described as the fastest professionally manufactured PC they had ever seem!

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/018.jpg

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/019.jpg

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/020.jpg

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/021.jpg

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/024.jpg

The C&C PC room and main console area (spookily dark, thank god for ISO 1200:)) last thing Thursday

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/028.jpg

Main presentation area, the 100" screen run off a Kobalt laptop is just out of view on the left! Again, last doors so was pretty quiet.

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/23i.jpg

Random pic of a bin aside there was some really good artwork on all the walls from various games with netbooks running audio commentary for each.

http://kobaltcomputers.co.uk/kobaltevents/EAwintershowcase2009/28i.jpg

Cheers to James @ Steelseries for the last two pics!

[iemie]

Geez thats awsome stuff guys. I almost get tempted buying a desktop system again. Great stuff !!

:cool:

[Antland7]

Great pictures Neil, good to see more pictures on the forum. The artwork looks great on the walls.:) Thanks for taking the time to upload them.A thought just came to mind, gaming artwork would make a good xmas gift for friends especially all framed up, do any of you guys know where such artwork is available for purchase?

[Ran Sagy]

It's really awesome to see Kobalt's logo and presence among such giants as NVidia. I don't particularly like EA (as a publisher role), But thats awesome too :)

[MrDJ]

very impresive indeed. :)

[Pman]

hehe you should see iso 6400 on my Nikon D3 -- £1000 well spent :)

i have seen a few sneak peeks of C&C4 and that is the one that interests me