The PlayStation 3 outsold the Xbox 360 in the U.S. in the first five months of 2008 after trailing Microsoft’s console in 2007. New exclusive games, such as “Metal Gear Solid 4,” and the rise of Sony’s Blu-ray as the dominant high-definition DVD player may enable PlayStation 3 to hold onto its lead.
One has to wonder just how much of an impact that has had on beating the Xbox 360 sales numbers at the start of 2008?
I’ve never seen the logic in purchasing a standalone Blu-ray player versus buying a PS3. The prices are about the same and with the ability to update firmware in the PS3 it’s a no brainer. What kind of ruthless salesperson tells an uninformed customer to buy a standalone Blu-ray player?
The PS3 improved sales are not all about Blu-ray of course, noticeable improvements have been made on the Sony gaming front. HOME still isn’t here, but several high quality games have been released plus PS3 customers received token achievement system support in the form of trophies with 2.41 for free last week. I still haven’t bagged any trophies yet, but hope to be able to change that soon.
Microsoft isn’t standing around completely flat-footed though, they are dumping the Xbox with 20GB hard drive at $299 and introducing a new standard 60GB version at $349. The Xbox Elite with 120GB sells for $449 and if you’ve got the dough, that’s the one to get. There hundreds of Xbox Arcade games, not to mention movies and TV shows; you’ll want the extra hard drive space. Sony’s Playstation Network still doesn’t hold up to Xbox Live. I realize it’s pay vs. free, which is a debate in itself, but why can’t I play great PS3 games like Super Stardust Co-op across the network with another player? When Sony answers this call, the real gamer competition will be on.
I wrote last year that I felt this coming holiday season would be the first time we’d have a true competition between the game systems. In speaking of who will be in second place that makes sense (I don’t see Microsoft or Sony unseating the Wii this coming holiday season). That comment assumed that the PS3 would have HOME which is due out (in beta, finally) this Fall. Microsoft will release their Fall update to the dashboard.
Meanwhile, the Nintendo Wii continues to kick both systems in the hiney sales-wise. Nintendo’s network is still a joke compared to Xbox Live and less so to the Playstation Store, but nobody seems to care. The Wii has catapulted Nintendo back into the game console manufacturer driver’s seat. So much for the one year lead Microsoft had with the Xbox 360. And I have yet to see Wii Fit in any store in stock locally. Step up the production already, Nintendo!
I’m not into ‘why I haven’t blogged’ posts and try to spare you the exercise. For future reference, I write when:
1. I have the time
2. Something external (another blog post, news story, new site/service, etc) moves me and/or
3. I have something (fresh, preferably) to say or share
With #3 I’m being more challenged lately. This blog has well over 1.5 million published words and has covered a lot of different web terrain. Fortunately it isn’t niche, so finding something to make us both go hmm for the rest of my lifetime shouldn’t be rocket science. It’s not as easy any more, though because I keep getting literary deja vus. I’ve got to get back to more deeper web exploration.
You don’t care, I get it, just publish mon, publish!
I’ve found the editor in me getting much more picky about what gets published though. That’s really the problem. I just looked in the draft queue and see I’ve written around a dozen posts since April 2. Blame the editor, that’s it.
I digress. Recommendation: use the Hmm search or click the archive links from the home page to revisit the keyword(s) of your liking. There’s a lot of gold in them thar hills. I’ve been thinking about creating a couple pages with links to heavily trafficked past posts. Maybe one for the highest rated ones too, as that function is getting used more than expected. We tried a rating post feature here before and it bombed. I wouldn’t say the second time is a huge improvement, but more readers and visitors are using it. That helps determine what you like and dislike, so please take the time and rate every post that you read all the way through.
Providing fresh material should be every writer’s goal and I’m seeing — right or wrong — this blog as more like a book than a place to repeat something said days, months or [gasp] years ago. The five year anniversary for this site is fast approaching (July 4, 2008) and then I’ll need to make the call what to do the next five years, health willing of course. A few ideas are percolating. I might bring in some hired guns, what do you think of that?
Missing you
I do miss reading some of my friends when they don’t update their blog for awhile and wonder what they’ve been up to. I’ve been asked: hey, why no Hmm? Is everything ok? What’s going on? Those are questions that a 21 day off period don’t answer. I remember giving blog buddy Kent a friendly stick shake when he went AWOL and he’s been kind enough not to return the favor during my blackjack period.
The picture at the top of this post should answer where I’ve been — at least in part. Yes, I’ve been practicing playing my guitar instead of publishing blog posts. I have been writing a little bit here and there, but time where I’d normally be doing the blog exercise, I’ve been practicing so I can jam with the boys on Sunday nights offline. I’m hoping we get good or bad enough to shoot some compelling video because the Hmmcast is starting to grow some nasty looking cobwebs. It’s not much fun watching video, even in HD, of an average garage band, so that footage might never come to fruition.
The calluses on my left (playing) hand haven’t been there and needed to practice time to build up. This has turned me into one of those guys you see carrying around their guitar everywhere. I’ve always thought that was neat when I see people doing that. Every musician knows that practice is the only way to get better. Heck, any skill takes lots of practice. I’m stealing my writing practice time for guitar practice.
Oh, and couldn’t stand for playing live my 20+ year old electric guitar any more, so threw down for some Gibson Les Paul studio action at one of my new guilty pleasure stores: Guitar Center.
I’m a sucker for red guitars and this red wine style is a beauty. Oh, and it comes with a sweet case too.
What do you think? How many Hmm readers play guitar? I must admit with some embarrassment that despite buying this new guitar a couple weeks ago, it is still unplayed. I brought it home, told my kids they’d be cursed for life if they touched it, set the lock on the case and stored it away in a safe, dry place.
Now before you get on me too much, I bought it to only play live, not for practice. Maybe I’ll feel differently later on, but I’ve never owned a pro quality guitar. All my gear has been fairly low budget. I’ve wanted a really good guitar since I was 14 years old and the timing was right.
I also had a pickup installed in my Washburn acoustic guitar and it sounds great. I’m planning on bringing both of these guitars to our next jam session this coming Sunday night. I’m hoping to become regularly invited to the group which involves three other guys (two are younger, one is older). They asked me to play back after the first session so that’s a good sign. Much too premature to speculate on if we’ll ever get out of the garage. Last time I played in a band was back in high school, so lots of rust to knock off for me.
I’m compiling a list of songs I can play either in part or all the way through. Here’s the current list as of this writing:
Electric
AC DC - Back in Black, Dirty Deeds, Walk All Over You
America - Horse with No Name
Ben E. King (on bass) - Stand By Me
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Blue Oyster Cult - Don’t Fear The Reaper
Dokken - Alone Again
Iron Maiden - The Trooper
Judas Priest - The Hellion, Livin’ After Midnight
Metallica - Fade To Black, For Whom The Bell Tolls
Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train, I Don’t Know
Styx - Suite Madam Blue
Ted Nugent - Cat Scratch Fever
Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak
Acoustic
John Mellancamp - Pink Houses
Five Man Electrical Band - Signs
Ritchie Valens - Donna
Have you got some good guitar song suggestions to add? There are a bunch of songs I’d like to learn how to play and, in some cases, learn how to play again. The song list shrinks if you don’t keep practicing.
Bought a bass for son
You might have noticed in the list that I snuck a song on bass in there by Ben E. King. Stand By Me is a great bass riff and fairly easy to play. My son was having trouble learning the guitar so I bough him an Ibanez bass. He’s learned a few songs on there and seems to find it easier to play with his smaller fingers.
Our third Guitar Center purchase was a set of Simmons electronic drums and drum amplifier. They sound great and we’ve been jamming a bit with bass, drums and guitar. My son who plays bass is also working on playing the drums too. We got a double bass pedal for it.
Rock Band full albums
I think what has gotten me started back into this was the game Rock Band which I’ve given high marks in the past. And speaking of Rock Band, Harmonix which makes the game yesterday started offering the first complete album: Judas Priest most excellent Screaming For Vengeance available for 1,200 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. We bought this and played last night for a little while. Great stuff, this could give the music industry something to cheer for as I can see fans buying their album multiple times.
Worked for Judas Priest. Last night we took our youngest to dinner for his birthday and then we went and bough a CD. Which one? Screaming for Vengeance, of course.
Not sure I mentioned it, but we’re on our third set of Rock Band drums now. The newest one seems more heavily reinforced and maybe (hopefully) will last more than a month or two.
Time for me to jump back into my reading list which shows 1,000+ in Google Reader and 1,446 in reBlog and grows by the hour. Before the day is done, I might cheat and mark all as read, but we’ll see how things go.
Please share in the comments below what you’ve been up to, especially if you’re a blogger. Are you publishing less blog posts these days? Playing music or some other hobby offline? It’s good to have some variety in your life.
This morning’s news that Toshiba is officially ceasing support of HD DVD and will shut down production in March signals a (small) victory for Blu-ray as many publications are touting, but also means the price of existing HD DVD inventory will plummet soon:
"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation
The writing was already on the wall with Wal-mart and Netflix saying they would only carry Blu-ray following the CES 2008 bombshell that Warner Bros. was going only Blu-ray. Now watch those PS3 sales soar even further.
Where does this leave the Xbox 360 which has the HD DVD as an add-on drive? Making a standalone Blu-ray Xbox 360 drive, possibly available in a few months, if you believe what alleged insiders told SmartHouse:
Insiders at Microsoft in the USA have told SmartHouse that Microsoft has already configured a standalone Blu-ray player that can be connected into an Xbox 360 and that subject to internal marketing and sales approvals the model could be on sale within 3 months
There is further speculation that Microsoft is working on a newer version of an Xbox 360 with a built-in Blu-ray drive, but I don’t think that will happen, at least in 2008. Microsoft would be wiser to continue to promote their Xbox Live Marketplace as a viable next generation movie download platform. They have the best online gaming and video area but Sony has HOME up its sleeve.
One big problem that Microsoft has is that their downloads are all wrapped in a DRM scheme on a proprietary drive while the PS3 supports using any hard drive. You can easily copy downloaded content on the PS3 to an external drive and can even run Linux. The Xbox 360 even with their 120GB hard drive is outclassed by the PS3 storage architecture.
Back to HD DVD, set your bargain bin sensor on high alert. In particular, watch for goodies like the Star Trek Original Series HD DVD sets. Star Trek Original Series Season One HD DVD (affiliate) I’ve seen the first season at the local Fred Meyer and hope the other two will be released. It’s possible all three will be available on Blu-ray.
More TV Seasons, please I’ve been saying for some time that one major weakness in both nextgen HD formats is the lack of TV seasons. A few TV seasons are trickling in on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, but not nearly the amount that are available in DVD. When/if this changes, Blu-ray might have a fighting chance for a little while staving off downloads.
It remains important when looking at the future of movies to remember collectors. People like buying and owning physical media. You can touch, display, there’s artwork and inserts and creative packaging. You can’t do any of that with downloadable media.
Smart marketing: in issue #80 of the official Xbox Magazine a disc contains three exclusive Rock Band songs.
Songs by Bang Camaro, Count Zero and Freezepop. We picked up issue #80 with disc at the local Safeway today ($9.99+tax), so if you hurry you might find it out there.
Wouldn’t be surprised if we see a bunch more exclusive Rock Band song deals. Bands should look to releasing their newest albums with a bonus exclusive Rock Band songs or codes for a redeemable new downloadable song inside Xbox Live.
We exchanged our broken Rock Band package at the local Best Buy today. Hoping this one makes it more than a month before breaking down. Rock Band still has major replay value, especially with the addition of new songs you can buy each week or find through deals like the magazine above.
Seen any other good Rock Band exclusive song deals? Share them below or trackback in from your blog with the info.
I captured some HD video of our sons completing the hardest and longest set of songs on Rock Band for the Xbox 360 on the expert difficulty setting.
The Endless Setlist which contains 58 songs took them 3+ hours to complete and out of a possible 290 stars (5 stars possible on each song) they had 275. A few songs they achieved gold star status on. Our youngest teen played bass and our middle teen played guitar.
Our family of five loves the Xbox 360, but we’re starting to think it, and you, don’t even like us in return.
Sure, you like the fact that we keep reaching into our wallets to buy new systems and pay for the hottest, newest games like Bioshock, Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect. Halo? We’ve bought at least two copies of each: Halo (2) for the Xbox, Halo 2 (3 copies, one was played out) and Halo 3 (2 copies, one the collector’s edition). My current favorite game of 2007 is Rock Band. Many Xbox 360 games we buy on launch day like Madden 2008.
And let’s not forget Xbox Live where we have four active ($49.95 x 4) one year live accounts and one Creators Club ($99) account, not to mention purchasing almost 100 arcade titles to date across the four accounts.
We rent movies from Xbox Live too. Haven’t kept track of the numbers there, but it’s probably over a dozen movies and TV shows rented. And yes, we bought the HD DVD player too (haven’t received the promised 6 ‘free’ HD DVD movies either).
Does this qualify our household as a good customer? In our possession right now, we own five Xbox 360s. The last one broke (#4) less than 60 days ago and you won’t fix because it’s a few months past the one year warranty and not the red rings of death; we don’t have an extended warranty on that one either. The disc tray won’t load any games or DVDs. Xbox Live still works though. If we want that fixed you’re going to charge us $140. We decided in light of the hardware reliability history we would buy the Xbox 360 arcade edition with extended warranty instead for Christmas. You can see it along the right.
Tonight my son was playing Halo 3 and #6 Xbox 360 console went into red rings of death mode (picture top of post). Amazing. This is the fifth Xbox 360 we’ve had go bad since April 15, 2006. Let me list the complete dates and history of Xbox 360 consoles in our household because it’s starting to be unbelievable.
Xbox 360 systems that have died since April 15, 2006
#5: today, January 1, 2008 (Happy New Year, Microsoft!). Status: three red rings of death, unrepaired. Under warranty, we’ll call for replacement tomorrow.
#4: Xbox 360 broken November 3, 2007. Status: broken disc tray, unrepaired. We replaced system with Xbox 360 Arcade System.
#3: April 2007. Status: red rings of death, replaced three weeks later on April 23, 2007
#2: September 22, 2006. Status: red rings of death, replaced on October 20, 2006
#1: June 14, 2006.
We try to place the Xbox 360 so they won’t overheat, see the current placement of the most recent system to die:
We can place the Xbox 360 horizontal or vertical, but death is inevitable. I pity other customers who buy an Xbox 360 and do not buy an extended warranty. These systems are the lousiest design of any home videogame system ever.
Should customers have to face these kind of issues? Just how bad is it? Susan Getgood contacted me after the last Xbox 360 breakdown to get my feelings on this negative customer experience. When writing about how many have gone bad the last time, I wrongly thought that was our fifth Xbox 360 to go bad. Actually, nope, this one is our fifth to go bad. How crazy is that when your own customer can’t even recall how many of the systems have gone bad? At least now I can point to this post. I’m thinking about adding a broken Xbox 360 counter to the homepage, as well.
Our next one to go bad, probably within the next 90-180 days based on history will be #6. The most durable Xbox 360 we’ve bought so far is the Xbox 360 Elite which is on life support at 8+ months. We’ve been having random audio out problems and screen blackouts at inopportune times. I would classify the Elite’s condition as “hopelessly diseased.” Odds are that one goes next. We have the Best Buy warranty there and will just return to them for exchange instead of messing around with Texas.
Microsoft, I know you’ve promised customers that you’ll fix these broken systems for three years and that came at great expense to your company. I implore you to extend the scope of that three year warranty to cover any non customer abuse situation. We didn’t do anything to have the disc tray not load any games and yet we have one that’s no good. The other four systems all died from red rings of death in less than two years including today’s.
Shameful.
If this were likely any other niche than videogames, I would never do business with your company again. I wonder how many customers you’ve already lost because of these problems. With each Xbox 360 that dies, my loyalty in your platform wanes and any fun from when it does work is reduced immeasurably. It’s like walking into the greatest arcade in the world and getting punched in the face at the door.
At some point, and I’m not sure when, I’m not going to enter any more.
Sincerely,
A little less loyal Xbox 360 customer
P.S. Dear readers, feel free to forward this to somebody, anybody at Microsoft that actually might give a damn.
Yesterday you could start downloading the new Xbox Live dashboard update.
We had to update three different Xboxes and the process was smooth across all accounts, taking only a couple minutes. I noticed a lot of lag and problems actually using the service yesterday, but the download part went smoothly.
The first thing I thought when seeing the menu in the new dashboard menu was that it was a bit like the PS3 blade menu. I’m not sure the whole hover over dropdown menu thing is all that great a UI to copy emulate, but now it’s available on both the PS3 and Xbox 360.
I’ve always disliked how when you move down on the controller to cycle through choices in the dashboard it’s too easy to move left or right and thus reset the menu. They should fix that.
Now onto the best news relating to this update: the Black Sabbath Rock Band song pack is now available under the Game Content menu.
440 Microsoft Points to jam on “Sweet Leaf” “War Pigs” and “N.I.B.” This adds to “Paranoid” which comes with the Rock Band game. This is the second song pack we’ve purchased for Rock Band. We also purchased the Police pack (three songs) and one standalone song: “Juke Box Hero” by Foreigner. Harmonix that makes Rock Band promised to release new songs every week and so far has stayed with that cycle.
Xbox games as downloads
Among the biggest news in the dashboard update is that some original Xbox games can now be purchased for 1,200 Microsoft Points as downloads under a new category called Xbox Originals. More are planned to be coming soon with seven games available as of yesterday: Crimson Skies, Fable, Fuzion Frenzy, Halo, Indigo Prophecy, Crash Bandicoot Wrath of Cortext and Psychonauts.
This reminds me of what the Wii is doing with the Virtual Console and the PS3 with the PS1 titles. It’s kind of a sad way to try and double dip for games you might already own. We already have two Xbox systems, I’m not sure how many Xbox games we’ll be buying as downloads, especially if these games aren’t enhanced in any significant way over the original titles. I’d buy NBA Jam either the original arcade game if it was made available or the Xbox.
Other new dashboard features
Xbox.com has a complete list of new features which include some increased parental features like a game timer. Although our teens are getting a bit old for these type features, parents will be in favor of having the ability to lock down the machine so it can only be played X number of hours per day or per week.
Also full screen movie previews and “enhanced video codec” are nice additions. We’ve rented several movies through Xbox Live and from what I’ve read the service is doing better than many movie rental services online. Would be nice to see them offer higher quality HD movies at no additional cost. We’ve never paid more for the HD movies they currently offer, they are already fairly spendy comparatively.
Xbox Live has two major free updates a year, one in the Spring and another in the Fall. Overall, this update adds a few nice things, but nothing that puts them any further ahead of the pack. Xbox Live is still the best online gaming service and could finally see some serious competition next year when Sony releases their 3D HOME interface. If Sony does a good job with HOME, we might see Microsoft move, but they are in the pole position.
And then there’s the Wii which is still selling a ton of new systems but has the worst online experience of the three players to date. I don’t get where they are coming from at all.
When it comes to the hundreds of reviews written I’ve yet to give any movie, TV show, video game, website, product and/or service the highest rating of A+. Absolutely there are A+ out there, and I’m sure the day of acknowledging some of them is coming, it’s inevitable. Could Rock Band be the very first A+? Maybe.
The picture above speaks volumes. For a moment I was reminded of our teenagers in younger years. Christmas in November happened last night. A magical, mystical moment.
Rock Band is available (maybe, supplies could be limited) in stores now and after one night of playing I think RB is the must have music-related game title for the holiday season. It is from a company called Harmonix who is made up of some former Red Octane (Guitar Hero) employees.
In the following deliciously SATIRIC post there is further explanation of the company division (remember: the Metallica lawsuit stuff is not true but funny considering the whole Metallica vs. Napster saga):
Red Octane provided the distinctive controller and Harmonix provided the game. The two companies parted ways in early 2007. Red Octane, now owned by Activision, is planning to squeeze the dying Guitar Hero franchise for every penny it’s worth while Harmonix has gone on to work on Rock Band, seen by many fans as the successor to Guitar Hero in spirit, if not in name.
Rock Band is available for the Xbox 360 and PS3 and costs $169 for the Special Edition on both systems. As written yesterday after midnight we were only able to find the PS3 version, but later in the day at Best Buy we found plenty of Xbox 360 versions (we’re going to take the unopened PS3 Rock Band Special Edition version back to Wal-mart so somebody else will get a chance to buy). After buying the warranty from Best Buy for $29.99 and tax this was one of the most expensive games we’ve ever purchased at just over $210 USD. Only games more expensive? A few NEO-GEO games. For another 60 or 70 bones one could buy a Nintendo Wii. I would definitely recommend the warranty on this one, particularly because of the drums. Those skins will get pounded figuratively and literally.
The Rock Band game itself sells for $60 and you can use your Guitar Hero II controller, but the real fun is with the whole band trying to jam together including: vocals (microphone), drums, guitar and bass (which is also played on a guitar). You can name your band and then go on a world tour playing gigs. You earn fans and virtual money while completing and more and usually harder to play songs. Also, Harmonix plans to sell new songs over Xbox Live every week.
Amazon also shows the drums ($79.99), microphone ($20) and wireless guitar ($79.99) will be available January 31, 2008. So if you want to bang the drums in the meantime, it looks like your only choice is to pony up for the whole Rock Band package. If you add up those prices for individual purchase buying the Rock Band package is a better deal anyway.
Note: according to the instructions you can plug in any USB microphone, but that’s the least expensive accessory of the bunch.
Those are two of our three children who I happened to walk around the corner yesterday and see fixated on the Rock Band box, reading intently. They could — and usually would — have been playing Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 on their two Xbox 360 in the family room but where were they? Reading the side of the game box, anxiously waiting to unbox and start playing. I knew they were interested. I was interested. Even our oldest teenager who doesn’t play many video games (but loves music like me) was into seeing what Rock Band was like.
Meanwhile in the kitchen my wife was busy cooking dinner. I motioned to our oldest son to go get our video camera so we could record the unboxing. He returned and we started filming.
Inside the Rock Band box
Opening the box we discovered a number of smaller boxes and components:
- microphone with USB
- box with Fender Stratocaster. The guitar comes in two parts. You need to slide the top guitar tuning pegs on, otherwise it’s complete.
- biggest box with drum, drum pedal and master USB cord. You have to put this together, but it’s easy to do and can be done in less than five minutes. I’ll cover that step-by-step with pictures below.
- box with USB hub. This 4-way USB hub allows connecting all the instruments and microphone so your four piece band can jam.
How to assemble the Rock Band drum kit
The separate parts to the Rock Band drum kit include:
- drum pedal
- (2) black base pieces
- (2) small aluminum poles that connect the black base pieces
- (2) two adjustable riser poles
- drum pad as one connected piece
STEP 1. connect the two black base pieces with the two small aluminum poles together as shown below:
STEP 2. Connect the two adjustable riser poles to each side of the base. There is a latch in the middle which unclasps to allow raising and lowering the poles.
STEP 3. Connect the drum base to the top of the riser poles and fasten into place with the clasps at the back of the drum kit.
STEP 4. At the bottom place the drum kit petal in the groove along the base poles and connect the cord to the back of the drum kit. That’s it, your Rock Band drum kit is complete!
How to connect the instruments to the Xbox 360
The 4-port USB hub requires an additional power outlet. It’s one of those fat, square plugins that will hog two spaces on a power strip. Plug that into the power and the other end into the USB hub. Now plug in each of the instruments (drums, Fender Stratocaster, bass) and microphone into the USB ports. With all instruments and microphone plugged into the 4-port USB hub then connect the USB to the front of the Xbox 360.
Note: you only need one instrument or the microphone to play. You can go solo with any of the three instruments or vocals, but we wanted to play as a complete band. Then you are working together to beat the game.
Now insert the Rock Band game and prepare to start rocking. We warmed up our band with multiplayer free play which lets you choose from a half dozen or so songs to get used to playing. I played the drums (easy to medium), our middle teen played guitar (expert), our youngest teen played bass (hard to expert setting) and our oldest son brought the pipes (easy to medium).
Out of the gate, we struggled a bit, but kept at it. I really like how different difficulty settings can be used for each player, that made the game more accessible for everybody. A few of the songs tore our group up, particularly me on the drums and our oldest son doing the vocals on songs he didn’t know. Thankfully there is a “save them” feature which enables the better players in the group to bring back those who fail up to three times. We needed those saves.
After four or five times playing the free form songs we hit the World Tour mode. You need to name your band. We called our group Men Without A Cause. Before we knew it, dinner was getting cold, but nobody cared. We just kept playing and playing, going through different gigs, getting booed and cheered.
For a brief moment last night it was easy to forget we were playing a game. I was in a rock band in high school and it reminded me of the experience. We were really riffing off each other. What a great experience for a video game and worth repeating: the most fun I’ve ever had playing a music video game. Better than Guitar Hero? Yes!
If people can get past the price point and see this as the awesome multi-player party game it is, Harmonix will have a huge hit this holiday season. If you’re thinking this might make a great Christmas gift for the family then don’t walk, run to the store now and buy it. Amazon is showing temporarily out of stock for the Xbox 360 Special Edition but has Buy Rock Star Special Edition for the PS3.
Now everybody in your family can be in a rock band. I know what I’m going to be doing over Thanksgiving besides eating turkey. Sorry, no groupies pictures yet, we need to tune up our stage presence. Rock on!
Three levels of difficulty are offered: easy, medium and hard. I haven’t beaten Shredder 11 on ‘hard’ yet. Would like to see somebody put Star Wars chess in the Xbox Live Arcade. Speaking of Chess, there is Chessmaster on the Xbox but nothing on the Xbox 360 so far that I’m aware of.
So if Microsoft won’t publish a chess arcade title, why is Ubisoft waiting on Chessmaster? …. Ubisoft wants to allow cross-platform chess play, running on their own servers. Xbox 360 users pipe in through Live. PC, Mobile, PS3 and Wii users pipe in their own respective ways. And anybody who wants to can play against anybody else, regardless of platform. It’s CHESS, for crying out loud, not Shadowrun. It shouldn’t be hard to implement, technically. Bureaucratically, however, it may be extremely difficult.
If this theory is close to reality, that’s sad. In the meantime if you want to play against human opponents online, Free Internet Chess is one good destination. I like their motto: “we do it for the game, not the money.”
While doing grocery shopping today we came across this bottle of Mountain Dew Game Fuel ($2.28 at Winco):
I looked around to see who else had already written about this and saw a fair amount of commentary and some pictures of the cans (Jake at 8bit Joystick has a nice review) and some on the plastic bottle which were part of a Halo 3 promotion and supposed to be produced for only 12 weeks from the middle of August. However, a cursory search didn’t reveal many folks talking about the aluminum bottled version (more rare?) — although a search on eBay revealed a few sellers ($4.99 a bottle + $6.99 shipping? Ouch.) — so I decided to create this post with pictures. Check your local Winco, they had a whole bin full of them at our local store in Puyallup. Still seem kind of pricey at $2.28 a bottle to me, but they feed into the whole collector’s thing.
There is an official website that goes along with this promotion at mountaindewgamefuel.com where you can learn more about the drink. 230 calories per bottle, and then there is this promo video which makes me a bit nervous tasting what’s inside.
As for the taste? Kind of like Cherry Pepsi, but sweeter. Did I get the sugar shakes like the gamers in the vid? No foaming at the mouth, no.
Keep in mind I’m a water guy, preferring an icy glass of water over other drinks. I tried the Game Fuel with an open mind but just too sugary for my tastes. If you can find it at your local Winco or have already tried it, what did you think of the taste?
And what about these promotions? Seems like a good branding opportunity.
I’ve seen the first season at the local Fred Meyer and hope the other two will be released. It’s possible all three will be available on Blu-ray.
Does this qualify our household as a good customer? In our possession right now, we own five Xbox 360s. The last one broke (#4) less than 60 days ago and you won’t fix because it’s a few months past the one year warranty and not the red rings of death; we don’t have an extended warranty on that one either. The disc tray won’t load any games or DVDs. Xbox Live still works though. If we want that fixed you’re going to charge us $140. We decided in light of the hardware reliability history we would buy the Xbox 360 arcade edition with extended warranty instead for Christmas. You can see it along the right.
STEP 4. At the bottom place the drum kit petal in the groove along the base poles and connect the cord to the back of the drum kit. That’s it, your Rock Band drum kit is complete!
