My 360 is safe (again), Simpsons no love & Kwik-E-Mart, plus the PS3 plumetts

Microsoft issued a press release today that upgraded the 1 year warranty (at launch was a 90 days, then last year was upped to 1 year) to 3 years on all Xbox 360 consoles. The 3 year only covers the 3 flashing red lights of death, but still makes me feel a little more comfortable knowing that my launch unit will be protected until November 2008. Since the red ring of death is the major problem with most systems I'm happy. :)

The Simpsons movie is coming, and the cross marketing is in full swing. I was ecstatic to see that Microsoft had announced a contest to giveaway 5 of those lovely yellow Xbox 360's that I posted a while back. The only catch is to get entered you have to play Cloning Clyde, and after digesting the official rules I found that you had to play a multiplayer match on Xbox Live to get entered (once per day, for 17 days).

This wouldn't be a problem since I have live, and plunked down the 800 points for Clyde (which isn't a bad little platform game) the first day of the contest. My problem came when I started playing and found that no multiplayer games existed on LIVE, evidently it turns out that Clyde (which hit the LIVE arcade 7/19/06) is somewhat of a has been. I logged on about 4 times that first night in the span of ~5 hours, and finally about 12am our time found 1 ranked game, I got stomped rather quickly but got my entry anyway. Yesterday afternoon I actually found a couple games going where both participants knew about the contest so word is spreading. I have added about 4 new friends to my list so hopefully someone will be on to play with everyday to get my entry.

20th Century fox also enlisted at least 11 of the nations 7-Eleven stores to 'transform' into real life versions of the Kwik-E-Mart. My boss sent me this link which goes to a flickr gallery of the new Kwik-E-Marts. Unfortunately the closest ones are Denver or Dallas, although since I know someone going to Denver next week I *expect* a six pack of Buzz cola, and a box of Krusty O's. :)

In other big news today Kotaku picked up on Speedy1961's DVDTalk weekly ad posting for Circuit City which eluded to a $100 price cut on the 60GB PS3 system. Then later this afternoon Gamedaily posted 'retail' confirmation of the price drop on 7/12/07, this coupled with the Blu-ray promotion where you get 5 free BR movies with player purchase (PS3 counts!) makes it an appealing deal.

The 'official' word from SONY will most likely come on July 11th when they hold their E3 press conference. Which reminds me that Microsoft is also 'Bringing it Home' again this year through Xbox LIVE we'll be able to get demos, videos, and other goodies from E3.