Save The Date
International CES
Jan. 8-11, 2009
Las Vegas, Nevada

Today’s kids have digital power like no generation before.

How can we make sure that they grow into creative, responsible digital citizens, and not just button pushers? Join us at CES Kids@Play for this important dialog. See the tools that today’s kids will use to build tomorrow’s digital world.

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News Introduction Industry News Press Kids@Play News

International CES happens once a year, every January, but Kids@Play lives on. This is the place to follow us all year long as we bring you reviews, opinions and advice about what it means to be a digital kid today.

A few trends worth noting:

This year we're going to see virtual worlds take hold like never before. Not only will these spaces provide rich, personalized characters and setting online, they'll have offline components that blur the line between virtual and real more than ever.

We'll see the Wii paid the highest compliment as vendors all incorporate motion-input into the user interfaces. Toys and CE devices will have kids swinging, tossing, picking, dancing, flying, and fighting their way through worlds without ever touching a keyboard. For educator's it's a Montessori field-day as kids use a more direct form of tactile input than ever before.

We'll see learning communities seek to reach kids both on and offline wherever they are. Five minutes at the bus stop? That's a chance to improve your vocabulary with a game or check in on your avatars for a moment. Whether it's a book, trading card, virtual world, action figure, video game, movie, or widget kids will find themselves surrounded by the characters they love.

Social responsibility will also loom large. Imagine that as you play you can be helping save a forest or educate a child. Altruism is a touchstone for this digital generation and the devices and entertainment they choose will adhere to their sensibilities.

Music doodads ala Guitar Hero, RockBand and Dance, Dance Revolution signal the importance of feeling the music, getting up an moving, and keeping the rhythm. This year they'll be more sophisticated than ever.

And finally, there's Internet Safety which has morphed from lectures to kids about cyber-strangers to a much more nuanced message of how to keep up their guard in their online lives.

If we play our cards right the digital world our kids inherit will solve problems and add a richness unknown to any other generation. That's why Kids@Play here for you.

Visit us always and often. Thumb through our industry news, press coverage and keep tabs on our CES family of sponsors, not just at CES in Las Vegas, but the whole year through.

--Robin Raskin