Anyone camp out for one of the new consoles?
They had a big promotion for PS3 at the local Fred Meyer (Kroger subsidiary) but as with last year's Xbox 360 promotion, none on sale, which is to be expected with so few in the US for launch.
I saw the Wii being demonstrated on all the TVs in the electronics section - that is to say a repeating DVD of Wii in action but it's not out until Sunday (tomorrow whenever that hits your time zone) and supposedly there are more of them for launch. Looked a bit junk to me to be honest and I'd rather have one of the bigger systems.
Saw some stories about riots, people getting trampled, mugged, robbed, shot and knifed for their new Playstation 3's although a couple of instances of the muggers/robbers getting some back from those in line that took along their own security measures.
All seems a bit silly really - simply have enough to meet the demand, so that people aren't expected to camp out for hours on end through the small hours, with copious amounts of money upon their persons. I seriously considered doing this last year for the 360 but got one within 3 weeks of launch anyway after I signed up for an online alert system.
The whole episode is totally daft. If PS2 was good enough when you bought that, surely you can wait a while for the 3rd one without freezing your nads off only to be disappointed.
We laughed here because there was a line of tents outside our local Best Buy last week and the UPS drive told us that they only got 28 of them. -)
Well #1 sons life depends on him getting a Wii from Santa at Christmas - right now to fill in the 5 weeks he made one from paper. idea So Mr Zed went to best buy at 5.45 am and stood in line. They gave out tickets beforehand and voila at 9.45 am we are the proud owners of the Wii that is hidden in our basement. The funny thing was though some person didn't even have the money to buy a wii but waited in line so was trying to sell his ticket so someone could buy the wii...........
Zed
Nice one by Mr. Zed - hopefully, you'll both remind son of how difficult it will be to get one of these by Christmas.
About 30% of the Xbox 360s last year ended up on Ebay. The reserves set on most were more than double the original price. The karma moments came around the end of January when Microsoft finally got it's manufacturing and logistics up to speed and suddenly, the systems started to appear (and stay) on store shelves - a lot of folks had made out already but the late-comers got stung and some had to dump excess systems for a far more reasonable price.
It was depressing to hear of local Costcos sending all their systems to one store 35 miles away, selling out in an hour and then seeing them on ebay, still on the Costco pallets as if they were all sold to the same person (which they basically were).
Well, after almost a year of Xbox 360 in standard definition, I've decided to retire my TV to my bedroom and get a 61" high definition set for the living room so that will my Chrimble present this year. I'll then replay all the games I had this year and play "spot the very big difference".
http//www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35853
I can see this happening a lot with the Wii
I'm probably going to wait for a year before getting a PS3. That way the price drops, there's a library of games and all the bugs will have been worked out of the system.
/only really plays the Gran Turismo and GTA games
It's true that when you wait, the prices drop. I've been slow to get games and am playing stuff I got last year or that came out in March. I've only bought a couple of games and they were rentals that I liked & kept and I got 10% off in addition to the fact they were less than half price anyway.
Bugs is a non-issue though. My Xbox has frozen about eight times in a year and they were all down to software bugs in games, not the system itself which has been fine (and is covered under 3 year warranty anyway). Console bugs were largely fixed when they did the March update (which took about 2 minutes) and then the Dashboard itself was upgraded further (adding 1080p and a few other changes) about 2 weeks ago.
I use my PS2 for playing DVDs mostly. I read the game review magazines and websites to see what games are coming out and 99% of the games out there bore the living crap out of me. The last FPS I actually enjoyed was Doom for the PS1 and the last game I actually spent money on was Katamari Damacy.
/still plays PS1 games
On balance, I probably play DVDs on mine more than games too.
You'd probably like "Saint's Row" on 360 - seemed a bit like GTA although I heard some say it was (gasp) "better". Lots of similar mayhem and when I played the first chapter in a demo, I was quite impressed with it (never played GTA though).
I agree that when I read the magazines and reviews, the vast majority of games do not appeal and are very boring to me.
I like not using my computer for games any more - it runs a lot smoother and I don't feel the need to upgrade the hardware every few months.
I have looked at the 360 - but there's only really been two games that have caught my attention, one is the aforementioned "Saint's Row", I've played that and even though it's a complete GTA rip-off, it's fun. The other game is "Test Drive Unlimited" which looks like a lot of fun, especially with the online race capability. I really thought I'd like "Dead Rising" but that wore thin really quick. Plays like "State Of Emergency" but a lot less fun.
I was excited about Dead Rising - right up until I played it and then heard about the time-pressure factor that is added. If you miss a key event at a certain time, then the game pretty much stalls and you can't progress.
I just liked tramping round the mall, finding different things to smack the zombies with so having to look at my watch every few minutes would really annoy me. I'll probably rent it when I'm done with Oblivion and see if it comes across a bit better than the reviews and demo I played.
Played the Test Drive Unlimited demo and it was fun, although I had more fun with driving the stuff in Just Cause, like technicals with .50 cals, helicopter gunships and even just plain cars or police cars.
You're wise to wait and see though - go with the winner of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war.
If you miss a key event at a certain time, then the game pretty much stalls and you can't progress.
Well, that's a seriously dumb idea. How did that make thru play-testing?
/and I thought Flight School in GTA:SA was irritating