Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

I popped the XBOX SpiderMan2 game into my 360 and was then promptly informed "This game is not compatible."

NOOOOOO!!!!!

I am going to offer it up to folks in the office, maybe one of them can use it.

Oh well, City of Villains is OK, but I will probably not play it much longer.

Games like City of Villains is something you need to play with a group of friends.

It is good to see that NCSoft has been keeping the content updated. My only real issue with City of Heroes was that it just got boring, login and defeat X number of a particular enemy.

Laterz

I had heard on the radio that here was going to be an "arcade" setup at the Austin convention center during the SXSW Interactive conference. The name of this part of the conference, ScreenBurn.

I don't quite know what I was expecting. And honestly what I saw was I guess sort of what I thought might be there.

You walk into the room and the lighting is a little dim, some of the most noticeable light was coming from the various kiosks and gigantic flat screen tv/monitors.

However, what peaked my interest and ultimately made me want to get down to ScreenBurn was that someone had walked by our booth with a copy of City of Villains.

Apparently, NCsoft was giving away copies of their games. I had played City of Heroes back when it first came out.

Also, when I first walked in there was a table full of games in front of me. I originally thought that was were I was supposed to get the CoV swag. Nope, it was a table being staffed by profession female gamers (mostly) that were doing a charity raffle for Big Brothers, Big Sisters.

They started to really sell me on the raffle, as soon as they said that they were taking donations, I was sold. Any game I might win would just be a bonus. However, I wish I had a $20 on me at the time, that would have allowed me to just pick any game off the table that I wanted. A ten-spot was all I had.

And to win a game at the 4:30 drawing I had to be present to win. Luckily, my booth mates allowed me to sneak downstairs in the nick of time to have my number be the first number drawn out of the fishbowl. Unfortunately, all of the Xbox-360 games had been given away the day before. But there was a XBOX Spiderman 2 game there. I am sure I will enjoy it.

Anyway, I am installing CoV right now. Probably get it all patched up, just in time for me to go to bed.

It comes with one month free play, so I will probably just play the free month then call it quits.

Laterz

Switching from the PC to the console.

Today's Penny Arcade comic strip is pretty funny.

But the post is actually the more interesting piece of the day for me.

"Tycho" talks about how more and more of his friends are abandoning the PC as their gaming platform in favor of consoles.

I have made this choice recently not to further upgrade my PC for gaming and to instead go with a Xbox360.

Back to the grind,
Laterz

Cash Register usually wins! Since I beat Marvel Ultimate Alliance I picked up Dead Rising, because who doesn't like to take on hundreds of zombies armed only with your wits, a digital camera and a random piece of mall equipment, like a cash register, park bench, or those cement trash cans.

I have been hoping to play some more Gears of War with Jeremy but our schedules haven't allowed for that, mainly my schedule. With the ice storm and Gina having a customer in town this week the nights have been a little unpredictable. Maybe we will get a few rounds in tomorrow.

I have to say that I wish they had built some co-op play into Dead Rising. The game is pretty fun just from the perspective of trying out all the different weapons. For instance lobbying two cans of soda in the forehead of your run of the mill zombie will take them down. Who would of thought that huh?

And while the golf club is some what of an effective long range type of weapon it is hard to aim the golf balls. I think it is pretty cool that you get to hear a little heavy metal when your beating up a crowd of zombies with the electric guitar.

I have died two or three times so far. However, the game has a neat feature that allows you to save the characters advancement in level. It means you have to repeat the game from the very beginning but you get to keep your level and xp, and with that the new skills and what not.

It does suck that you have to repeat the game from the very beginning, but since I haven't made it that far it isn't that big a deal.

Playing the game does remind me of all the great web comics that I read about when the game first came out. I would have linked the images directly, but they are pretty big.

Ctrl+Alt+Del
Steve's Day at the Mall Part 1
Steve's Day at the Mall Part 2
Steve's Day at the Mall Part 3
Steve's Day at the Mall Part 4

Penny-Arcade

Anyway, last night I managed to beat part of the game that I had previously failed a few days before. Very exciting moment. Then the 360 all of a sudden tells me that I need to check the disc since it can't read it.

Yeah, I didn't get a chance to save or anything. So I will have to go back through and fight my way back to that boss and hopefully, be successful in beating him again. Luckily I have gotten into the habit of saving as often as I possibly can.

I will keep you posted on the story line. I mean there definitely seems to be more storyline going on that just "Zombies invade mall and eat everyone in it." Not much more storyline so far, but there is something about parasitic insects as being the cause of the zombies.

Laterz

Over the last 3 weeks or so I have been on a search for an Xbox 360 or a Nintendo DS Lite.

In doing so I have had the opportunity to see the shelves stocked "full" with plenty of PS3 and PSP systems.

At the Best Buy in Long Island (not sure which, but near Bohemia) the portable system case was full of PSP units. So many in fact that they had actually "spilled" over into the part of the shelf that should have had the DS Lite systems.

I also saw scenes similar to these pictures.



I envision the employees making small forts out of the all the PSP and PS3 boxes that they have.

On one of my many calls to Toy R Us while searching for my Xbox 360, I asked (as usual at that point) "Do you have any Xbox Premiums or DS Lites?". The answer was a little different this time around.

"No, but we have plenty of PS3s, do you want one of those?" asked the clerk.

"Nope. That is quite alright." I told him.

I mean, I have always considered myself a gamer. But as Jeremy and I discussed recently, neither of us are what we would consider "hard core". I mean up until recently I have actually shunned console gaming. But I definitely have caught the fact that Sony has been screwing the pooch when it comes to servicing the gaming community lately.

I mean in terms of the PS3 there are a few things that really strike me as fsck ups.

#1. The damn thing is too expensive. Yes, I dropped a nice chunk of change on my 360. However, that is still cheaper than the PS3.

#2. They missed their delivery dates, too many times. I mean the 360 might have shipped a little early. I remember reading some articles about patches that the 360 needed. Maybe, as a PC gamer I have been trained to understand that the disc I buy at the store doesn't mean the fscker is gonna work out of the box. I don't think there has really been one game I bought in the last couple of years that didn't have a patch released by the time I was actually able to buy it at the store.

And now that consoles have internal hard drives and are really more like PCs than their grandfathers (nintendo, atari 2600, etc). The patch phenomenon is something that console gamers are just going to have to live with. I mean my 360 downloaded the latest "update" when I turned it on.

However, I know some of the delays with the PS3 was that they decided to use a bleeding edge technology, the Cell processor. I mean yeah, way cool. But come the fsck on guys. It is untested, it is expensive and it is overkill. Which leads back to point #1. I am sure they could have gotten all the horsepower they needed for the PS3 out of a AMD 64-FX2 or similar processor that has already been put through it's paces. And it would have shaved a few hundred bucks off the price I am sure.

#3. They are Sony. This last point, I think might be my own personal opinion more so than a consensus. From the things I have read Sony has become to arrogant when it comes to gaming or technology in general.

The whole Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD. I had a Sony Mavica. I loved it, but I paid way too much for it. At the time I didn't know much about cameras but I knew Sony was quality. And it was quality. However, that is when something hit me. The Sony Memstick was a proprietary memory format and was (still is) more expensive than the SD and other forms of flash memory on the market.

I remember when the Sony mini-disc was the thing that you had to have. It was going to replace CDs. I knew a few folks that had it. But I never bought one, because my CD players was just about as good (with improvements in skip protection.) and when I got my MP3 player that really made the mini-disc player pointless.

The lesson here I guess is Sony likes to come up with new technology but force it as a proprietary move. This hasn't panned out for them well.

Let's review the list:
1. Betamax vs VHS
2. Mini-Disc vs CD / MP3 Players
3. Mem-stick vs SD-Cards
4. UMD vs DVDs?
5. Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD
6. PS3 vs Xbox 360
7. PSP vs DS Lite

Items 5 - 7 can consider to be still open fights. But I am pretty sure the UMD format has had the second to last nail in the coffin struck. If I can find the article again about which movie maker said that they will no longer be pressing discs in the UMD format I will post it here again.

I think Sony had a smash hit with the Playstation and PS2. But I think their arrogance made them stumble and fsck up.

But who knows, if the right game title comes out and is only available on the PS3. All those PS3 forts might have to come down.

But I know that this past x-mas all I wanted was a 360 and a DS-Lite, not a PSP.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

No, this is not a Star Trek entry about the Borg.

This is about the fact that I have finally got my Xbox 360.

I hooked it up last night and played a few rounds of Gears of War with Jeremy. It was fun, I still have a lot to learn about the game play, the 3rd person shooter can get a little disorienting when your in close quarters combat.

I also played a little Marvel Ultimate Alliance last night. I really liked that game when I was in NY, so I had to pick it up too.

Course, I probably should have left the Xbox @ the store, as I have a ton of other stuff I need to work on. But after waiting so long, I couldn't just leave it there. Now, I have to practice some self discipline and not play it ever waking moment I get.

Well back to the grind.

Laterz

Apparently I misjudged the popularity of Xbox 360 at Christmas time that or I misjudged the supply and demand capabilities of Toys R Us.

The three Toys"R"Us stores around here are all sold out. Now, I know that the 360 is a popular system, but I didn't think it was going to be completely sold out popular, I figured there would be one left on the shelf for me.

However, there are plenty of 360s over at Best Buy and there are plenty over at Target. So why am I so hung up on Toys"R"Us?

Gift Cards.

I have $500 in Toys"R"Us gift cards. One of the perks from NetworkIP is that we get to buy gift cards to various stores for 25% off.

So that is why I am stalking the 360 at Toys"R"Us.

And today while reading my regular round of comics, and "Real Life Comics" was making fun of Home Depot, in that they are selling Xbox 360s. I thought they were joking. No, no they aren't. I went to www.homedepot.com and there it was, it appears they are only selling it online though. Which is fine, because the price they are charging is well above the price in every other store out there. I think they might have screwed up on that, as the accessories are all basically the same price as everywhere else.

Jeremy and I have decided to get DS Lites as well. He and I are going to be hanging out in NY next weekend and that should give us a chance to play head-to-head. I forgot to mention that Toys"R"Us is all out of those.

And before I get off my soap box about Toys"R"Us, back in 2002 they restructured shutting down about 64 stores. I think I know why they had to restructure and it has to deal with the fact that their infrastructure is fscked up.

I mean here are a few things.

#1. Supply Chain
I walk into a store and ask them about the 360. They tell me they are out, they then tell me that they don't know when they will get more. This is explained to me to be due to the fact that the manufacturer just sends them product whenever. Ok, fine I guess I can give them this. But, as popular and old a brand as Toys"R"Us is you think they would push for manufacturers to at least give them some sort of "We will have some more this week, just not sure how many."

#2. Inventory Management
When told that they are all out at store #2, I decided that I didn't want to drive all the way south to store #3 to hear the same thing. So I asked the guy "Hey can you tell me if the other store has any in stock?" His reply, "No, but here is their phone number."

There were two things wrong with his answer. The first is a general customer service problem, good customer service (given there was no line behind me in the checkout lane) would be that he should have called over there for me. The second is, it is 2006 and there are nationwide store chains all over that can lookup the inventory in another state, yet these guys can't tell me what is in stock across town.

#3. Online and Brick-and-Mortar unification
This is related to inventory management. But the ability to look up a product on the website and see if it is in stock at a store near you. Shit, there is even then the ability to buy the product online and pick it up at the store nearest you. This is an amazingly novel concept. They do not have this functionality.

#4. Alerts for when they get restocked
I also asked one of the clerks if I could get on a list or something to be notified when a product comes back into stock, the answer was "No". Now, I wasn't expecting them to notify me by phone that would be retarded. But come on, let me drop my email into a database. Again, this comes from having a fairly automated computerized inventory control system.

In general, I fully understand why Toys"R"Us had to restructure. They have not embraced technology to build the efficiency that they need to compete against WAL-MART or BestBuy or CompUsa. Go and take a look at CompUsa and you will see what I would consider the standard of how a nationwide brick-and-mortar store needs to operate today. Their website is integrated with their inventory system. They have a nationwide inventory system that allows them to lookup product at other stores.

I mean, Toys"R"Us was sold the fsck out. So their brand still carries a ton of weight with consumers. I mean the BestBuy that is within eye-sight of the Toys"R"Us had a bunch of 360s. And I know not everyone has $500 gift cards in their pocket that is forcing them to buy from Toy"R"Us.

End of Rant.

Laterz