OMG. They Didn't...

Unbelieveable:

Get a damn 360

I paid a fair chunk of change for the XBOX 360. Was it worth it? Hell yeah. Being able to hang out with my buddies back in NYC and chat over the head set already makes it worth while for me. Suck it up and just go get one.

Xbox 360 in Review

The machine has been out for 8 months, looks to be on track to have an installed base of 4-6 million units before competitors even hit the market... is it worth a buy?

Spending $400 on a machine where the primary function is video games, people who are not "early adoptors" need reasons to validate the purchase. (Unlike me and cataclyst... in this case, me more than him)

So are there enough reasons for someone who plays games to invest?

Depends on what you like:

If you are a fan of:

- JRPG (Japanese style RPGs: Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, etc)

The answer is No. While some games are on their way, if this is your primary love of video games, this is not the platform for you yet. Hold onto your money, wait to see if anything you like appears on the competitors, or some new releases. If you don't have a PS2, get one... there are like a million of these games on that platform. The PS3 will probably be better suited for this genre as well.

- Racing

Iffy. There are a few choices: Burnout Revenge, Ridge Racer, and Project Gotham 3. PGR3 and Burnout are both extremely solid games, but both are arcade style racers, Burnout being on the far arcade end of the spectrum and PGR3 pulling up the middle. There still is no sim racer available. This will be rectified with the release of Forza 2 later this year and a hardcore force-feedback steering wheel. If you like sim racing, wait some more time. If you just like arcade style racing, it's already pretty solid.

- Shooters (FP and 3rd P)

This is the genre that defined the original Xbox, and it looks like X360 will just continue to dominate this category. From Call of Duty 2, to Prey, to Chromehounds, to the upcoming Gears of War, and Halflife 2, and of course Halo 3. You can get an X360 right now and have tons to like and play.

- WRPG (Western)

One word. Oblivion. Two words. Mass Effect. Western RPG's found a home on the original Xbox, when previously they had existed exclusively on the PC. The X360 will likely dominate this category as well in the upcoming system wars. Right now, oblivion is the one trick pony, it is also available on the PC. If you have a rig that can run oblivion, you might want to still hold out on buying the X360. Mass Effect however, when it releases, will force you to take another look at the system. Yes.. it looks to be that good.

- RTS

This genre for most is best played on the PC. The PC will still be home to most RTS, the control scheme simply suits the games better. Lord Of the Rings convinced me that it is in fact POSSIBLE to play an RTS on a console, something I didn't believe in before, but if your love of gaming is RTS, you shouldn't be gaming on consoles. On the plus side, know that you CAN still enjoy this genre on your X360 if you like a variety of software.

- Music

DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), Karaoke Revolution, Guitar hero kind of games look to be appearing in force on the X360. They will likely all appear on both the PS3 and the X360. Until more details on the PS3 comes out, a buying decision might come down to the fact that on the X360 you can download new songs for these games online. There aren't ANY yet, so hold onto your money if this is your primary gaming love.

- Fighters

DOA4 is your only option right now. It is unclear if the X360 will ever get Tekken or Virtua Fighter. Next week, Street Fighter 2 will be released on Xbox Live arcade for $8 or $10 or something. Probably shouldn't buy a X360 right now for fighters unless you LOOOOVE DOA.


- Puzzle, quirky, diversions

I think X360 will have this category won hands down. Xbox Live Arcade features the ability to download and play $5-$15 games. Card games like Texas Hold 'em, uno, and Spades, or arcade shooters like galaga and new versions like Geometry wars and Mutant Storm. There are currently over 20 of these small titles, puzzle games like Astropop and bejeweled 2 and Zuma, and starting 2 weeks ago, they are releasing a new title every wednesday. They will hit over 50 titles by the end of the year. Now, if you want to spend $400 on a system to play Galaga... I would have to seriously question your line of reasoning, but it's nice to have the options. Geometry Wars alone ($5) has still probably logged more gaming hours than any other game on my system.

- Backwards Compatibility

The X360 is now backwards compatible with over 200 Xbox games and still growing, if you never owned an Xbox and want some cheap bargin bin titles that are still quality games, getting a X360 isn't such a bad idea.

In conclusion, there are a few very solid titles out for the X360. It is still in its first year of life, and I think it has more quality titles than either the Xbox or PS2 did during their first year. The PS2 had... errm.. nothing... and the Xbox had Halo. If spending $400 on a game system seems like a lot to you, then wait. The end of this year will be very interesting to say the least, and there are a lot of releases slated for the fall/winter time frame, and who knows what kind of stops are going to be pulled as the competition launches.

But, if a close friend of yours says "Buy it now for this game and come play with us. You had better listen to him..." So that said... "Buy it now for Chrome Hounds, and join our clan... the war awaits!"

Spyware king: Direct Revenue

I found this article about Direct Revenue to be absolutely facinating.

I'll write more about it soon, but the question is, is Spyware giving people some sort of value, or is it a complete parasite? A bug in the economic system? How do we fight it? Lots to think about.

First Impressions

The amount of value we place on first impressions is astounding.

It is biological, it is something that we cannot help but do, it is part of the entire "Future Discounting" phenomenon that organic life has adopted for survival.

Every aspect of our life is affected by it... an interview, a first date, meeting the parents, playing a video game.

New Xbox 360 game: Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth
Old PC Game: Total Annihilation

Similarities: I messed up first impressions of both. With TA, this led to a complete and utter abandonment of the game.

Either that, or competitive play against friends is unviable.

Regardless, it's a great game, I highly recommend it.

I can honestly say, I have NEVER seen a RTS literally toss 200+ units into the air in all directions in a massive explosion before, and it is truly a sight to be witnessed. And I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that they nailed using a controller for this type of game. I didn't think it could be done, but they did a phenomenal job of it.

Not sure if it's quite enough to make me download

IE 7 definitely looked much better than any other IEs I've seen so far watching Gig demonstrate it on his laptop. But the quick search box has been with Firefox from the beginning, and it's a plugin based system where you can find quick search for pretty much everything from google to amazon to ebay to even specific blogs. As for RSS feed reader, Firefox has plugins for those too. I think what I'll do is download some RSS feed reader plugins for Firefox and see if they are any good.

I think I'll have to download the Defender software. I've been largely ignoring the whole spyware issue besides the Norton Anti-Virus I have running. I shudder to think what kind of junk is installed on my machine!

The Beta Machine

Internet Explorer 7 Beta.... Check

Windows Defender Beta 2... Check

Windows Media Player 11 Beta... Check

My work machine just got a new HDD (last one failed completely) and I've taken this opportunity to completely patch, shield myself from spyware, and get a little daring.

First up:

IE 7 Beta:

First off, it looks incredibly slick. They've streamlined the toolbars to take up a fraction of the space they used to, and crammed even more functionality into that space. They've stolen the tab idea from Firefox, I can't comment on whether or not it functions better than Firefox in that regard, but I have a feeling that it is easily on par.

It has a built in RSS Feed reader, which is actually VERY well designed. I think google's reader edges it out just a little in terms of User Interface (more a matter of preference), but I was pleasently surprised that it is so nicely integrated.

But Kudo's to MS for including a quicksearch box. Unlike the myriads of "toolbars" you can download that take up a tremendous amount of space, often add malware or spyware, and provide this functionality, MS includes in a very unobtrusive box. What impressed me is not that they included it, but that it is user controlled... MS could easily have forced their own search engine on the end user, necesitating downloading those other toolbars, but they allow you to use the box with ANY search engine.

They've apparently also reworked all keyboard shortcuts so that users who prefer to stay away from the mouse can navigate very quickly from the keyboard. I'm not one that would be able to validate those claims. All in all, I personally think IE7 is VERY well worth the download. I'd especially like to hear the review from an avid firefox user... Cataclyst? What're your thoughts?

Windows Defender:

Also highly recommendable. Very solid anti-spyware software. From experience, beta 2 still struggles with some of the most evil of malwares, but seems to offer very good real-time protection and some nice user controls (similar to powertoys) as far as what boots when windows boots, damn those pesky registry based startup programs. I think between IE7 and Windows Defender, spyware just got a kick in the nuts. I'm sure they will find new holes to exploit, but in the mean-time, I'm popup and virus free.

Media Player 11:

No clue yet... never been a fan of this player as it is a huge memory and CPU hog, had horrendous playlist support, but I'll mess around with it and provide feedback later. It looks completely different at the very least, but I have no idea if that's just skin deep.

Holy snap here comes WiMax!

All 900 million dollar's worth for it.

More Google Goodness

Google now provides stat tracking!

It's actually pretty cool, you can see how many times people search for a given keyword, and it'll graph it over time, give you links to related articles, and then place those links on the graph so that you can see if the spikes in searches correlate with something that happened at that time period.

You can even compare multiple entries and see them all graphed together. Useful for things like comparing searches for HD-DVD and Bluray, or PS3 and Xbox 360, or which is more commonly searched for: tits or boobs. What I find particularly interesting is that tits is searched for FAR more frequently than boobs, but in news references, boobs dominate tits. Good to know.