We played.
We saw.
We enjoyed.
We Wii-hood yesterday.
Yes, as I told you we tried a Wii, we played tennis, bowling, some baseball and golf (I even did a par 4 with a chip-in!). We created two Miis and configured all the widgets it comes with and we can say that the Wii rocks.
This last weekend I got to see the Gears of War cinematic trailer twice, on the tv and on the cinema. Apart from the fascination the trailer causes (or could cause you) what really got me was the song in the background. It was one of those moments where you wish you could have a way to know what song, title, artist and album was that playing (and yes Amazon I know you have something similar but does not really work), and for once I thought I could never know (it was a familiar song for those of you wondering). Today, when checking the news I saw one (actually three cause blogs tend to be repetitive) that talked about gears of war song. I clicked and I found that the song called Mad World by Tears for fears was rocketed to number one in the itunes chart sales (or number 4 according to the other blog or number 12 by the third one...). Scared? Keep reading.
The scary thing here is that how videogames are so into the culture that they actually help drive sales of associated items (and this one actually does not even happen to be in the game itself, just in the trailer). How much did MS pay for the licence? No idea, but how much is Mercury Records Limit (making). Oh yes, and what has a degree of 10 in scariness is how much is Apple making through itunes for this song, a golden member of the long tail. Yippe!
For your enjoyment a direct link to the itunes chart can be found at the bottom as well as the video (famous by now maybe) of Gears of Wars.
21st November.
9 AM.
Amazon.
Thousands of users hitting F5 frantically.
Message still says : We will email you when this item becomes available.
Image copyright of Atari
The above is an in game image of Test Drive Unlimited for the X360. I had written a long post about this but accidentally push the wrong button (ops!) so will make it very short this time. A great game, try it and challenge as many other players as you can (blackpanther, I will find you next time!) to win money, cars and houses. Ah yes, and if you try it let me know if the Ferraris really feel that way (I think this is the closer I will get to drive one) since I can say that the Mustang feels exactly the same way (I do not like it).
Game is out 8th September and you can find out more about it here www.testdriveunlimited.com
I just found (at Kotaku) the following screens for FEAR for the PS3 - that is the new and upcoming Playstation from Sony.
Not sure how the game compares with the PC version, any ideas?
I have always thought that Microsoft was not a good friend. A good friend does not make sure your computer grows slower every day. A good friend does not avoid you to use other software. A good friend does not create new operating systems that require upgrades every certain time. A good friend is not like Microsoft.
Since I like to have good friends I moved long time ago to Apple and their lovely shiny whitey devices. They feel cool, work and have the same performance throughout the years.
Suddenly, about a year ago (a bit less) Microsoft dropped the Xbox 360. I for once, felt interested in the machine, its prospects, its technology and more over its online capabilities (I had struggled with the complicated underworld of getting online to play games and abandoned the idea due to its complexity). I read about the machine going to be less powerful than competitors (aka Wii and PS3), about the shortness in stock (impossible to get one last Xmas and months after that) and some technical glitches the machine presented (as with every single new device, early adopters pay the duck!). So I waited and before the summer I got my own 360 and so far so good.
The machine is brilliant, stylist, works with HD TVs and the games so far are pretty good. Most importantly, you can play classics such as Galaga or Pac-Man. I would imagine that all of you reading this played any of those machines long time ago (I think I remembered asking for another 25ptas coin to try another time).
There are plenty of good ideas and stuff going on about the 360 (check out Major Nelson's blog) but there is one specific thing that called for my attention today: Looks like Msoft is opening up XNA (a sort of libraries for game programming) to all developers - wow I thought. I think is exceptional that the guys at Redmond have gone down this route. Congratulations, this is an entirely unexpected move.
You might wonder why am I talking about this here (no I am not paid by MSoft and this is just a first post of a pretty long series, I hope) but as you will see I have added my gamertag to the blog, so if anyone out there wanting to challenge me, you know where I am! I am looking for rivals!!!