Geek Swagger.
Xbox 360
E3! I almost said “E3 News,” but it’s not really new, is it?
Jul 28th
I'm going to talk about what each of the big three put out during this year's mini-E3 and what excites me most!
Microsoft.
I really liked the way Microsoft handled their press conference. Their angle was to show everyone all of the games that will be out by the end of the year. This was them basically giving gamers a real reason to buy a 360 this holiday season by not showing what will be out next year or the year after that, everything they showed (including Xbox Live Arcade titles) will be out before this year's end. Microsoft did a real put-up or shut up show. Some people were disappointed because there were no huge surprise announcements but I came away from the presentation hyped for a ton of games that I'll be able to play by Christmas.
There were a few hardware announcements, including the much-awaited which attaches a full QWERTY keyboard to your controller for in-game chat. This won't be a big deal to me since most of the games I play revolve around voice communication, but anyone who's playing Phantasy Star should be excited. They also showed new . Again, not a very exciting announcement but they'll be nice to have I suppose. And finally! Their show stopper as far as hardware announcements go - a new . It's green with orange trim and has some of the Halo 3 forerunner designs on it. I personally think the thing is ugly as hell and the colors really clash but hey, Halo fans might want to pick it up.
The real highlight was the huge catalog of impressive games they showed off, including , , , , , , and . This only puts a small dent into the list of awesome games coming down the pipe, and as I've said they'll all be out before the year's end. A lot of people are saying that this might be the , and my wallet agrees.
Sony.
Sony had the most surprise announcements of the bunch. For that reason they had a lot of the attention and therefore stole the show this year. Their major announcements included a (temporary?) price cut for the 60 gig model of the PS3 as well as Killzone 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 previews. Killzone and MGS4 are the two games that might be able to get a lot of people to jump on board to buy a PS3 and the price cut helps consumers make that decision even more easily.
The had been leaked a little while before E3 went down so I don't know how much of a surprise it really was, but to have it confirmed by someone a little more in-the-know than was nice. I have to admit that I'm still considering getting one, mostly because of the price cut, but the anemic library of games is still the greatest deterrent. That's where and Killzone 2 come in, however, and are starting to change a lot of people's minds. Metal Gear is the type of franchise that causes people to purchase a console (if only for the one game) and . Arguably the best looking console game out there...maybe even a little better-looking than Crysis (though it pains me to admit it).
I came away from E3 with the opinion that Sony is starting to right their ship. They finally have some purchase-worthy games coming and the $100 price drop is much-needed. My only problem is that I've also heard that they have a new 80 gig model that they'll release soon at the original $599 price, while at the same time getting rid of the 60 gig model. So basically it seems that the price cut may only be temporary which is pretty lame. The only alternative would be to release the 80 gig model at the price cut price ($499) which might piss a lot of people off who are running out to get the 60 gig model right now at the same price. My official verdict on Sony for the time being is to wait and see.
Nintendo.
I'm concerned that my Nintendo discussion might be sort of brief, but I'll give it my best shot. Nintendo came out and had some new footage of some old games that we've known about for a while like and Super Smash Bros Brawl, as well as the sequel to the Metroid franchise - - which looked pretty cool. Their other "major" announcement put some doubt in gamers' minds however, and was decidedly less cool.
Nintendo showed off , a new game from the guys that made . It comes with a white pad that the player uses to perform various exercises which are then tracked over time to show the user's progress. I think this is a cool little app, but I'm not sure if gamers are going to be very thrilled about it. This seems to be another move by Nintendo to make the Wii mainstream and pull in new non-traditional gamers. That may work but it didn't exactly leave Nintendo fans breathless. After all, , right?
I came away from Nintendo's conference with a good view of some solid titles but much like Sony, from a gamer's standpoint, I'm still not sold. I really want to buy a second console (I'm an Xbox 360 owner) but I can't decide between the PS3 or Wii.
So that's it. My wrap-up of E3 '07. I'm most excited for Call of Duty 4 out of the whole lot...I'm a huge and they really seem to be knocking this one out of the park. It's not even out yet but I'll go out on a limb and say it'll be the Game of the Year.
Until next time...
Currently Listening To:
Currently Playing: ,
Microsoft, the PS3, and Crysis…where could I possibly be going with this?
Jul 6th
This is going to be a gaming geekery post extraordinaire. Let's get started.
I have to start by both thanking and giving props to Microsoft. A day or so ago Peter Moore letting all of us Xbox 360 gamers know that from now on, if your 360 fails as a result of the you're covered. Microsoft will foot the bill to have the 360 replaced. Not only that, but anyone who has had to have their 360 fixed in the past because of the RROD will be reimbursed! It's nice to see some positive news about MS. I've been one of the lucky people who bought a launch 360 and hasn't had any problems with it (so far). The reason I'm thanking Microsoft is that now I know I'm covered in case something goes wrong...as long as that something is caused by the RROD.
Almost everyone I know who has a 360 has had problems with it of some sort, and a recent report said that the failure rate was (don't quote me there, I know that's not exact). As a result, I was pretty much planning for having to have mine fixed eventually...it moved from a matter of "if" it happens to "when" it happens, and I toyed with the idea of putting aside some money so I'd be ready when it did. This announcement has made the urgency of creating said "Xbox 360 Repair Fund" much less imposing. Thank you Microsoft for having the guts to admit you screwed up and to do something about it.
So...I recently read that this year at we might be hearing about a . That would drop the price for the 60 gig standard model from $599 to $499. 
Not bad...it actually made me consider getting one. I've been but I have to be honest, my interest has waned as of late. Nintendo is the Apple of gaming consoles, I know that if I finally found one and dropped the $250 to pick it up I'd see an announcement the next week about a new . So basically I said forget it, the Wii still doesn't have a whole lot of games out there made specifically for the remote/nunchuck combo and by the time they've built up that library the thing will probably cost $150 so maybe I'll pick it up then. For now I'm going to think long and hard about the PS3...having a player would be nice! Though the as far as I know.
. What can I say about Crysis ? It's probably my right now...even ahead of your 's and 's. The only problem is that my current gaming rig would wither up and cry in the fetal position if I even inserted a Crysis DVD-ROM...this game takes a to run. With that in mind I think I'm going to upgrade my gaming rig. I've been spec'ing it out and I think for another $300 I could have a machine that would destroy any games I'm playing now as well as run Crysis quite handily. The only components I'd really need to upgrade would be my processor (and therefore, my motherboard) and my graphics card. Here are a few links to what I'm thinking about using right now: , , and last but not least the .
Crysis requires a dual core CPU to run even with its minimum requirements if I remember correctly, and I'm still running on a single core so it really is time to upgrade either way. The mobo is just to house the CPU really, my current mobo is fine...but the GeForce 8600GT is a big leap up from my (mine was an XFX, the link points to a Biostar). Hopefully by the time Crysis drops (September, as of now) the hardware will have dropped in price or maybe better hardware will have dropped into the price range of what I'm looking at now. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
That's pretty much it, a long rambling post of what's happening in gaming right now for me. Just one quick note before I end this puppy, I ordered a couple upgrades for my Macbook earlier this week and they should be here sometime this weekend...if so I'll throw up another post about how the upgrade goes. From what I've read it's supposed to be pretty easy.
Until next time...
Currently Listening To:
Currently Playing: , , ,
Too true.
Jun 20th
When the and were fresh I had spare time to waste on them, but this time around, aside from the passing glance when I first heard about it, I haven't had a whole lot to invest into Bungie's .
It's undoubtedly for the better.
On the one hand I constantly feel like I'm missing out on something and on the other hand...well...it's just advertising, right?
Optional Extortion
Apr 19th
So, in case you didn't know I'm a gamer of both the PC and console variety. Right now as far as consoles go most of my time is spent with my Xbox 360, which is great. I love it. It has great games, a great online experience, Xbox Live Arcade is sweet, and so on. Being an Xbox owner I've often felt jealousy towards PS2 owners because they have access to a wonderful game called Guitar Hero. If you haven't played Guitar Hero it's a game played with a plastic guitar peripheral that looks like something you might have seen made by Fisher-Price as a kid wherein people with no guitar skills (myself) can "shred" to some classic tunes. It's a really fun game and it finally came to the 360, so needless to say I was very excited to pick it up.
The game itself is great and I definitely recommend it to 360 owners (especially if you never owned a PS2 and were therefore unable to play GH1 or GH2). My problem with it has to do with the down-loadable content, one of the biggest draws to the 360 version. Three song packs have already been released for download, each containing 3 songs taken from the original Guitar Hero game. Anyone who followed this game knew from the get-go that one of the major draws would be the option of enhancing the experience with down-loadable songs that would eventually be released, and that's great. My problem (and many other people's problems) is with the pricing scheme they chose.
Right now the price set on the individual down-loadable so
ng packs is 5000 Microsoft Gamerpoints which is equivalent to roughly $6.25 per pack...that's a little over $2 per song. That's right, to buy these covered songs (most of Guitar Hero's songs aren't the actual original renditions of the songs do to licensing issues) you pay more than twice as much as you would pay to download the originals from iTunes. I have no idea why they thought this price point would be plausible but that's what we've been dealt and Guitar Hero fans have to deal with it. Most (like myself) are deciding to avoid these re-packaged songs all together.
A lot of people I think have the opinion that no one should be getting worked up about this because, after all, you're not forced to download the songs...they're optional. Still, the fact that they think they can get away with micropayments of this magnitude is cause for a little noise in the gamer community I think. So if you bought or are planning to buy Guitar Hero 2 for the 360, please vote with your wallet and choose NOT to buy any of the downloadable content and maybe in the future Microsoft will rethink their pricing. Other than that, enjoy the game!
