Friday, August 19, 2005

A long time ago...

Wow, it's been a while since my last post. :( Kinda got caught up in other things, and there wasn't a lot going on.

The releases on the PSP had been very poor. I checked at work before the first of August and noted that we were getting 16 UMD movies, but only 2 games were scheduled for release during the month. You can say Sony had a tremendous launch effort, and within the 'launch-window' seen more games than the DS had out (maybe even up until this day). Alas they were hit with the same software shortage that plagued the DS, but Sony thought they could make up for it by selling movies. I personally have bought 3 UMD movies, and only then because they were cheap (used, on sale, etc..). I had intentions of watching them on the way to E3 back in May but that didn't happen. Since then I have found that with the base unit watching a movie isn't really an easy task, you have to have earphones or you can't get the unit loud enough in an environment with *any* extra noise. Some of this could be solved by using one of the many third party "docks" that have speakers built-in, but only in a office/room area, you could not use this on an airplane or in a car. I found this week on vacation that it is also uncomfortable to hold the PSP while watching a 2 hour movie in a car.

Speaking of vacation, I'm back and can easily say I really miss not having internet access during the week. I'm so used to surfing 5-6 days a week and keeping up on all the news that I felt left out this week, thank heaven for public libraries with internet access. At least I was able to get about an hour *fix* one afternoon.

Of course on the day I surfed I evidently didn't hit the big news of the week, that Micro$oft had announced pricing for the Xbox 360. I'm sure you've heard it by now but a "Core" system with a $299.99 price tag, and the "Value Pack" for $399.99. I see now that I'm back all the fallout from these announcements as some people are livid about this pricing scheme. Personally I feel it's pretty close to the $299/$360 prices that were floating around a month or so ago. After looking at the included items in the "Value pack" I don't really see as there is much to debate, if you want a Xbox 360 that's whats its going to cost you. The "Core" system seems to have been thrown out there just so they could say enter the next gen starting at $299! I will agree that some of the first party accessory pricing seems to be on the steep side ($50 for a wireless controller, or $40 for a memory card?). I guess that means I have about 3 months to come up with $350 (I already have a pre-order down).

The forum post I get a kick out of though are those that say they'll wait for the PS3 because the Xbox 360 is overpriced. Man if that $500 price tag that's floating around now comes true I can safely say I won't have one of those on launch day.

On the DS front you may or may not have heard there is a price drop coming. It's been verified by everyone except Nintendo (I think). The units will drop to $129.99 when Nintendogs is released this month, saving you $30 bucks, or you could look at it like your getting Nintendogs free. I don't know which one will have more impact although I think both will drive DS sales, something that hasn't happened lately. If you can find a Wal-mart that still has DS in stock with the bundled Super Mario 64, and the price drop that could be pretty sweet.

Last but not least I updated the side panel to reflect the last few movies I've seen. The last one being Deuce Bigalow European Gigolo. I had high hopes for this movie (as I loved the first one), but it wasn't too be. It had some funny parts, but mostly I got the feeling they were trying waaaayyy to hard to recapture the charm of the first one.

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