Saturday, October 20, 2007

CNET: 360 holiday season is 'mediocre'

Overall Xbox 360 outlook for the holiday season: mediocre.
Overall Nintendo Wii outlook for the holiday season: strong.
Overall Sony Playstation 3 outlook: moderate to strong.


Mediocre is clearly so much worse than moderate.

"Merry Christmas little Timmy, we got you a new Xbox 360 and a copy of Mass Effect. What the hell? There are three red lights on the system and nothing's on the screen, Christmas is ruined!!!!"
It's a very real scenario that no doubt has people afraid for their lives. Microsoft has even set up online and phone based grief counseling at 1-800-4MY-XBOX, just ask for Max, he's the experienced one.

With the Wii being 'bigger than Jesus', it seems logical that a $400 sense of security is much better than a $350 or $450 headache. Halo 3 was awesome, but in the fast world of gaming it's old news compared to the "greatest holiday lineup in history."

Friday, October 5, 2007

Major Nelson asks "What's wrong with Us?"

Major Nelson, everyone's favorite corporate shill who we love for telling us which new jpegs we can buy has said that we can ask questions and he might maybe, but probably won't tell the higher ups about them.

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The fact that they even have to ask shows how out of touch with reality they are. Or just willfully ignorant.

- The system still breaks, even that new, ugly, overpriced Halo system
- The 'tard' pack is inhibiting games from reaching their full potential and is ass-backwards, anyway you try to spin it.
- The DRM on Xbox Live means that the games you pay for won't be playable for all users when your system breaks and you're sent a replacement. You have to be signed into Xbox Live with the gamertag that purchased them or else they're reverted to trials. MS says "thanks for the money, chumps"
- Where are all the dedicated servers? What is the cost of Live going to again?
- Stop nickel and diming us you jerks.
- Why does it scratch discs?
- The locked down nature of the system, including wireless means that Rock Band's $170 bundle will only be wireless for PS3, not 360. More issues that can be fixed easily, but you're so hard-headed, you refuse to.
- Xbox Live costs money and yet is strewn with ads for non-gaming content. $50/year to see McDonald's and Sprite ads? This is the worst direction gaming can take.
- Why are you selling content that's already on the disc?
- Keyboard/mouse support isn't allowed even for OFFLINE gaming, requiring more stupid, inefficient workarounds. I completely understand why they don't let it online, but if I want to play 4/5 single-player games on The Orange Box with a superior method of control, I can't? Make the only online game of the pack require controllers, but why the hell aren't we allowed the CHOICE for offline games? Don't even get me started on RTS's; as far as I'm concerned, LOTR: BFME2, C&C3 and World in Conflict are PC only.
- Did I mention the system is still a defective piece of shit? Two years later and it's barely safer even with all the band-aids they toss at it, it's still a turd.

Sometimes I just wonder where all those dead 360s go after you send the coffin back....

Friday, September 7, 2007

New Sony marketing tactic uses 360 coffins

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Sony has been sending out boxes similar to the infamous "360 Coffin" with the words "Play now, not later" printed on them, an obvious jab at the lengthy repair process that tons of 360s have to go through, leaving gamers without a 360 for about a month.

That Sony! So sly and full of trickery!

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Free pictures? Not so fast!

As if paying for pictures on XBLM wasn't stupid enough...

MS is charging 37 cents for a picture.

A picture that's free on PSN and something Capcom even said would be free.

It's also something you could download to a USB stick and put on your 360 for free.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Now that Halo 3 has 4 player online co-op

I need a functioning 360 more than ever.

Get to it.

<3 Bungie.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

360 gets $100 price cut, in a way

If you buy both systems and the tard pack.

Looking to top Sony's stupid pricing, MS somehow does with this nonsensical bit, cutting $20, $30 and $50 off the tard, Elite and Premium systems, respectively.

In a way, it shows arrogance, but with Halo 3 coming in in less than two months, they can afford to. MS is just biding their time and raking in as much money as they can until the 360 returns from it's post-Halo 3 sales to its regular, average half-Wii sales.

Who knows when the 65nm/HDMI/functional? systems will be out? I'm hoping before Halo 3.

Bach says: We got a better design

I say: O rly?

Speaking to investors after having sold quite a bit of stock and dealt with a flurry of bad news, Bach was quick to point out that they've got things under wraps, really.

Speaking to investors, Microsoft's president of the Entertainment and Devices division, Robbie Bach, has indicated that the 360 has a new design that sidesteps the infamous 'Red Ring of Death' problem.

"It's a design challenge that we've had to work around and create a new design to solve that problem, and for the interaction of a variety of different components. And so that's a Microsoft design question, not some component manufacturer's problem or our manufacturing partner's problems. It's something we've had to work on. We know we have a much better design in the market now. We verified that."


I don't have anything to say to that, so I'll let these pictures speak for themselves.

Remember the last guy in the news who kept saying everything was fine when it wasn't?

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Coincidence? You decide.