CES 2016 was the year Virtual Reality stopped being a rumour and became a product. The Oculus Rift launched pre-orders on January 6 — the first day of CES — while HTC and Valve confirmed retail availability for the Vive. For attendees who had followed VR through years of demos and developer kits, it was a genuine milestone: consumer VR was finally, actually, happening. The queues for VR demos at CES 2016 stretched across entire exhibit halls.
The other story of CES 2016 was Amazon Alexa. The Echo had launched quietly in 2014, but CES 2016 was where the ecosystem exploded: third-party Alexa integrations appeared in cars, TVs, refrigerators, and smart home devices across the entire show floor. The voice assistant race was on, and Amazon had a massive head start.
Drones remained a dominant category — DJI’s Phantom 4 was shown with obstacle avoidance, and dozens of competitors tried to carve out space. LG debuted its webOS-powered smart TVs with new AI features, while NVIDIA announced the SHIELD Android TV as a gaming and streaming hub. The first 8K TV discussions began emerging from Samsung’s booth.
CES 2016 will be remembered as VR’s commercial launch party — the moment the headsets stopped being prototype curiosities and became products you could actually buy. ces.tech