rAge 2009
rAge 2009
Panoramic View of the rAge event in the Sun-Dome
The past weekend marked the coming and going of the 7th consecutive rAge expo in Johannesburg South Africa.
For those of you who do not know what rAge is all about; rAge stands for “really Awesome gaming expo”. It’s a huge expo held at the Coca-Cola Dome in Johannesburg. Several of the big names out there in the IT industry have stands set up, either just for exposure or to make some decent sales, although I think that most are leaning towards exposure.
Combined with a brilliant display floor, presenting the public with the most awesome and newest gaming and PC technologies, rAge also hosts one of South Africa’s biggest LANs. I know they can hold a capacity of around 1800 gamers, however this year a record breaking 2,162 gamers participated in the rAge LAN! Thirty km’s of cabling was used, around 4400 power points and an 8Gb/s symmetrical link between the 1822 rAge LAN players and the 340 competitive Telkom DoGaming players who were located at a separate more secluded hall downstairs. There are major sponsored gaming competitions on the go every year, these include Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Dota, Guitar Hero and this year even Quake 3.
Several companies also take the opportunity to launch new products at rAge every year. This results in massive giveaways and freebies being thrown out to the public. The Catz Digital stand had a lucky draw where they gave away a 40” Sony Bravia TV this year! Three years ago Microsoft had the launch of the Xbox 360 at rAge; it was very successful and created an awesome overall vibe crawling with anticipation throughout the whole expo. This year I know the Play station 3 Slim was available to see and try out for the first time in South Africa. The Play Station stand also had some fine young ladies marketing the Play Station Portable GO (PSP GO).
In a nutshell that would be what rAge is all about. Basically, if gaming and technology touches your life in any way; rAge would be quite an experience of notable excitement. Stephan and I were there for a short while on Friday the 2nd of October, most of the day on Saturday and around the end on Sunday and we are very pleased to bring you some info about what went on during the weekend.
Because of my day job I could only be at the event for 15mins just before it closed up for the day. However at 13:30 Friday afternoon, Tx Daily writer and editor, Seagyn Davis headed over to the MSI stand where they had a new motherboard launch. He was lucky enough to be one the first 10 journalist at the launch and received the MSI P55-CD53 Motherboard for free! There will be more about this awesome motherboard on Tx Daily in the next few days.
I was surprised to see that there were a lot of people still at the event even 15mins before closing time. I had a good feeling about the event, there was definitely a good vibe going around. In the centre of the event floor a huge stage was set up with a huge projector screen. At the back of this screen was another screen where the Quake 3 Competition, hosted by Arena 77 in conjunction with Intel, Sapphire and ATI, was to be held throughout the following 2 days. I had a very quick stroll through the stalls and managed to get myself over excited for Saturday and Sunday.
A Big Part of the LAN area with the stands at the back.
We were there early on Saturday morning. I took way too many pictures and spoke too so many interesting people regarding so many exciting new products, technologies and events. I’ll be covering a few of the most exciting ones very briefly.
MiMoney
One of the first very interesting discoveries I made was a product (if you can call it that) called “MiMoney” I had the pleasure of a very beautiful and helpful young lady called Genevieve. MiMoney is a very new system in South Africa; it basically enables anyone with a cell phone to use their phone as a credit card. All you need to do is to register with MiMoney by using your cell phone number, name and ID number. From there on you can order Mr Delivery or even book movie tickets online, then choose MiMoney as payment option, the bill will then be charged to your cell phone bill at the end of the month or deducted off your airtime if you’re on a pay as you go system. There are no extra charges on your behalf to use this system, a R32 movie ticket will still cost you R32! At this stage there is only a hand full of companies who accepts MiMoney, but with names like Ster-Kinekor , Mr Delivery and MXit already onboard only good things can come from this.
Genevieve at the MiMoney and MXit Stand.
Mede8er
I was pleased to see Mede8er had a stand there as well. I have done a post on the latest Mede8er product on the Txdaily. It works with a hard drive inside or from a USB external had drive, and is able to play back all the modern media formats like MKV x264 files. It’s one of the leading if not top multimedia playback centres available on the market today, and it has a price that supports this notion very well. If you want more info go here.
Logitech
Logitech out-did themselves with a truly stunning stand that was huge. They had their new range of Guitar hero instruments for the public to see and try out; I can honestly say that there were people playing on the instruments all the time. There was not once that I walked past the Logitech stand without having to squeeze past a crowd of people. As for the new instruments, they are compatible with the Xbox 360 and the Play Station 3. They are of extreme quality, with the guitars being made of real wood and the drums being quite heavy and robust. On a personal note I can also say that they had the best looking gaming case at the expo. I’m struggling to find it online though? It had the same style as the Logitech G19 Keyboard, the CDROM opened with a dual action door on the case and it was brilliant, I did not get any pictures of it… Could Dean, Claire or Wayne please reply to this post and explain what case this was?
Logitech also had a competition running where one could win a set of their very high-end speakers. Logitech was very successful in finding a few very very attractive young ladies to promote the stand and the competition. I’m sure Logitech was very happy with the response they have received from rAge this year.
The lovely ladies at the Logitech stand.
Sapphire
The next very exciting stand was the Sapphire stand. They had a 3 monitor system set up with a bucket racing seat and all. The new Need for Speed was the game you could try out, it was running on AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 5800 graphics card with Direct X 11 support and the works. We had a quick chat to Len from Sapphire, based on the pricing Len gave us for the HD5800 it seems like this card is about to take the market by storm. Len also mentioned some interesting facts about the new DisplyPort technology which is the next big thing after HDMI and DVI as it’s a royalty free concept.
The Ladies of Sapphire
Quake 3
The quake 3 competition hosted by Arena 77 in conjunction with Intel, Sapphire and ATI was also quite a big attraction. They had a nice big stadium chair setup going with the players facing the audience. It was very exciting to see the revival of this fast paste action filled game. Games these days have lost the kind of excitement that one experiences from games like Quake 3. I did truly enjoy watching a few of the games which were played over the weekend. I do have to say that it was a bit disappointing that there were constant interruptions while trying to watch a game. There was even a point where they had a tedious talent show on the stage while a game was being displayed on the screen… Even some of the best games, where players like Ph4ntom were playing, only the last 5 minutes of the game were shown? Since he’s the number one Quake 3 player in South Africa this was quite disappointing.
The Quake 3 comp Stage
Players up to 15th place received prizes in the competition, the prizes consisting of high-end motherboards and CPU’s sponsored by Intel, ATI graphics cards, liquid cooling systems and AVG antivirus. The main prize went to Stephen “Ph4ntom” Cloete winning a trip to Dreamhack in Sweden. Congratulations Stephen!
Sony
Sony had a pretty impressive stand, with a few upcoming titles and the Play Station Slim on display. They also had very knowledgeable young ladies promoting the PSP GO. The PSP GO looks very stylish and more compact than the first one. It also doesn’t have a CD ROM anymore so all your games will be downloadable onto its internal hard drive. Thanx Bianca, for explaining that to us so professionally.
The beautiful Sony ladies!
KULT Fusion Anime lounge
Over at the KULT Fusion Anime lounge there was a huge sheet of paper for fans to draw some fan art on, I’m not sure if this was linked to a competition or just for fun. There was also an abundance of anime fans in costumes representing their favourite anime characters! Some of them went really big and did look awesome! Well done too every one of you!
Incredible connection and Asus
Incredible Connection and Asus had a combined stand (very clever). It seemed to me like there were always people buzzing around their stand which was a shop as well. It might have been because of the extremely attractive ladies doing their promotion and assisting customers…
Incredible Connection and Asus staff.
Guitar Hero competition
There was also a huge Guitar Hero competition running on Saturday. It was sponsored by Samsung, and brought to you by PenQuin International and AGASA. Players engaged in 1 vs 1 battles in Guitar Hero World Tour on Xbox 360 for a chance to compete against the winners from 72 other countries in the World Cyber Games Grand Finals taking place in Chengdu, China from 11-15 November 2009. I’ve honestly never seen anyone playing like these guys who participated! It was something out of this world! Much Respect.
Guitar Maddness
Telkom DoGaming Competition
Telkom had their DoGaming Competition in a hall downstairs which was secluded from the rest of the event. They also had a whole bunch of Xbox 360’s set up downstairs, there was even a soccer ball kicking game and foosball tables! I would have liked to do more coverage on what happened in all the games that were played in the competition section of rAge but unfortunately it’s quite involved and I did not have enough time. Anyone reading this can feel free to either comment with some results or even post a link to a site where we can view the results.
The Secluded Telkom DoGaming Competition LAN downstairs.
Hospitality Suite
There were 2 Hospitality Suits for VIP and Media members. Logitech’s suit was truly something worth mentioning. They had a Play Station 3 set up, a bar, snacks, coffee, tea, the works. A very welcome sight when you’ve spent hours walking around taking pictures and talking to countless people.
I was quite happy to be at rAge once again this year. There was alot of exciting products and people, a lot of prizes and freebies! And an insane amount of money was given away to Competitive Gamers and the public a like. I think the event was coordinated perfectly, I honestly can not say that I saw any lack in organization in any aspect of the event. There were an abundance of beautiful promotion ladies, even more exciting products and plenty of activities to have kept you busy the whole time.
Well done NAG, TS Communications and all the other parties involved in rAge 2009. I think it was a big success!
And all good things has to come to a end...
Here are some more pics that I took at rAge Expo 2009
This was posted by eben who has posted 7 items.
→ Eben Trollip said on: October 8, 2009 at 3:03 pm
We have someone working on a seperate post regarding the Competition. As soon as it’s done it will be up!
→ Wayne Holt said on: October 12, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Hi Eben,
The case to which you refer to on the Logitech stand was the Acer predator machine and is aviable exclusively through TVR (011) 807-1390
→ Eben Trollip said on: October 12, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Thank you very much Wayne. Much appreciated
→ South African Piracy – Tx Gaming said on: October 16, 2009 at 9:55 am
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