Gamestop Marks up PS Vita Memory Card

Sneaky? Looks like it.

Today I accompanied my youngest brother to GameStop to buy a memory card for a PS Vita. Since he's a newly minted debit card holder, I let him handle the transaction on his own while listening on GameStop's typical process of trying to up sell stuff. After that while eating some froyo, I looked at the packaging, at the price tag showed "$34.99". That immediately struck me as odd. I swore I saw it everywhere else for "$29.99" INCLUDING on Sony's online store.

I then busted out my phone (ah the wonders of technology and the internets), looked it up on Amazon, low and behold, $29.99. Checked out Best Buy (another local store that will now earn this purchase), $29.99. What the heck? I immediately told my youngest brother, we're returning this. Oh the perils of being 16 yrs old and having a debit card. We went back, I told them flat out, "Hey, Best Buy has this thing for $29.99, you guys have it for $5 more?". To which they went to their snide response of "Oh really?". I gave them an unimpressed raised eye brow. They then suddenly started back peddling and said "Yeah we have no idea why our MSRP on this is $34.95". Since they didn't price match, we returned it (unimpressed).

So buyer beware!

Playstation Move Buying Experience

I just wanted to share my disappointment with my purchasing experience. Not at the fault of Sony, but of a retailing partner.

Today I embarked on a journey to look for the Playstation Move. In my area (Seattle, Washington), it was (understandably) somewhat difficult to procure.

So I walked into the local Fry's Electronics store (some may go "Oh here we go"). And there I got my first taste at Table Tennis on 'Sports Champions'. I had quite some fun and was impressed with response of the move and sure enough, I decided to go buy it. I approached the nearest Fry's Electronics Sales Associate, and asked him if they have any available. To which he said yes (somewhat annoyed that he had to get off of his cell phone to answer my question). But he said, they would only sell it to me at with a bundle (forcing me to buy a game I didn't want - I want this for MAG and Heavy Rain - and eventually LBP2 and a few others coming soon). When I told him I just wanted the PS Move bundle (and not their fluff), he said Fry's doesn't sell just the Move bundle. I'd have to dish out an extra $50 on their bundle if I wanted it. To which I shrugged, turned on my PDA and placed an online order on Best Buy for just the PS Move Bundle (the benefits of having 3G internet on my device).

While ordering, I counted no less than 6 other people (within that short period) who inquired but was immediately turned off (like me) due to Fry's trying to shove their 'bundle' down their patron's throat. Now that concerns me. What Fry's chooses to do with its lost business is literally their business. But this practice is enough to turn a lot of potential customers off. I certainly hope that SCEA has a policy against this (to which Fry's breached), but if not, they should. It hurts the launch by leaving interested parties with a sub par experience. I'm not the average consumer. I am somewhat informed of technology and I've been a loyal Playstation user (I've owned both the "fat" and "slim" version of all of their consoles). Most definitely aren't as dedicated as me.

Food for though SCEA. Protect your new ventures and take more control on your consumer experience with policies and education for your retail partners. Ultimately your end users/customers determine what succeeds and what fails. And every little bit inbetween counts. Food for thought...

X-Play Comedy Presents SessCrush: The GameCrush Parody

Awesome parody of a gaming "escort" service a while back. Hit full screen since the ratio seems to be busted on blogger's super narrow space...

Here's an article about said "escort" service (here). CAUTION. Link is potentially NSFW due to some revealing shots (which should have been a crime coz OMG). The "important" parts remained covered though (though most should have stayed fully covered).

Gran Turismo (PSP)

ZOMG! I want it even more now!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-gt-psp-60fps-video-blog-entry

Holy 60FPS of racing awesomeness!

For those who may not know, I am a BIG Gran Turismo fan. I've played every game in the series... :)

Now to get a PSP Go as well... :)

Mad Catz Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition Joystick

Today I finally received my Mad Catz Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition Joystick that I had ordered.

I bought this to replace my Hori Fighting Stick 3 that has kinda been beat up anyways.

Fighting games is actually a genre that I really love playing. I grew up playing arcade games so Marvel vs Capcom, Street Fighter, and especially King of Fighters was pretty standard (as well as the other favorite arcade games like Metal Slug, Puzzle Bobble haha etc etc).

The nice thing with the Tournament Edition joystick is that it uses FULL SANWA parts. All the buttons and joystick are all Sanwa parts. The layout too comes from the official Street Fighter IV arcade cabinets. Mad Catz has essentially recreated the same layout and feel for use in your home.

It is nice, big HUGE, and sturdy. Has good gripping feet at the bottom, and big enough to sit on your lap (I actually prefer it). What can I say about the joystick and buttons. Pure precision. They are ultra sensitive, ultra accurate. The difference is huge between this joystick and my old $50 Hori (and at nearly 3 times the price, it better damn well be! LOL!).

Pics below:

Exclusive DLCs: Good or Bad?

Recently,Bethesda Game Studios (one of my favorite developers), announced that there would be 2 new DLCs (in addition to the three already out for Xbox 360 and Windows) will be released later this year. In addition to that, they finally announced that the current 3 DLCs will finally be released onto the PS3 and that PS3 versions of the upcoming 2 DLCs will be released after their Windows and Xbox 360 counterparts have been released.

First of all, I would like to share the joy that many PS3 owners of Fallout 3 are undoubtedly having. It is good to see that they are finally getting some love on big title multi-platform games side of DLCs (say that 3 times quick!). But then, I just have to question, why must PS3 owners wait? Now before you people on the internets start screaming 'PS3 fanboi' at me, please know that I have all three current consoles and I game heavily on the PC (I am a proud Fallout 3 Windows version owner). But is it true? I doubt that there is any of the "Company MS gives you $50 million to make exclusive content" involved in this (more on that later). I trully admire Bethesda and am willing to give them the benefit of a doubt due to possible coding differences with the PS3 (they do have to port it over right). But the question still stands? Why does a segment of your customers have to wait?

There are quite multi-platform games that I own. Among them are Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, Army of Two (not exactly a favorite), Rockband 1 & 2, Battlefield: Bad Company, etc. But what do these games have? Simultaneous DLC releases across their platforms. Bad Company released a big download pack (that was free) a while back that added maps and fixes and the Xbox 360 & PS3 versions were made available at the same time. Same with Army of Two (free episode).

A while back, it was announced that Microsoft paid Take Two (owner of Rockstar Games and publisher of GTA IV) a stunning $50 million USD for 2 exclusive episodes for Xbox 360. To put things into perspective, GTA IV was estimated to have cost around $100 Million to develop. So Microsoft paid $25 Million per exclusive episode.

Where does that leave the PS3 customers? I can understand Sony/Microsoft backing a developer for a game to be released exclusive to their respective platforms (LittleBigPlanet, Killzone 2, Halo series, Gran Turismo to name a few) but how can you offer games on other platforms (aka have honest customers) and yet turn around and alienate them?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not barking up, Take Two's tree (as far as I'm concerned, that was last year's news). I am just wondering why some companies choose to seemingly marginalize (whether unintentional or otherwise) their customers on another platform over another. Though I have to say, exclusive DLCs for a certain platform due to 'bribery' is just upsetting. I along with various other gamers out there share the anger with this. It really has to stop. If you have content to release, release it to your customers as a whole. Not as a platform. Back to Fallout 3. For the longest time, PS3 owners of the game were left out in the cold. The DLCs were pretty much announced last year when the game went gold. But only now have the PS3 owners discovered that they will get delayed releases of the DLCs. Again, I fully understand that the PS3 can be difficult to code (according to them). But still, how come only a select few has to wait?

Please stop marginalizing and dividing your customer base. They all paid the same amount of good hard earned money and they all deserve at the very lease, your equal undivided attention.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go steal a few more cars via text message so I can complete GTA IV to 100% on my PS3 so that I can go buy the DLC for my Xbox 360 copy (that I have already finished to 100%).

MIA, Gaming, RAID, and WTF ASUS....

Yeah I know. I've been missing for quite a while.

Truth be told, I blame the games. :p


Other than that, I am getting a lot more guitar play time (as I nurse my re-emergent thumb injury - timing I know!).

Other than that, my PC is finally getting some loving in the sense of new hardware. I have long wanted to replace my somewhat old Raptor X (and its 10,000 RPM SATA 150 fury). Main reason being that I am simply running out of space (it has 150GB unformatted). The obvious solution would be to simply get a 300GB VelociRaptor. Truth be told, I almost jumped on it thanks to Newegg's smashing deal (with the VR being priced at 220USD plus a nice Mail-In-Rebate to sweeten it some more).

But I posed a question. SSDs are fast maturing and with the capacity increasing and the price per Gigabyte steadily dropping (as well as the Godly performance of Intel's SSDs that they are championing and pushing heavily), would spending that much on a VR be worth it in say 6-12 months? My long standing position on SSDs is that I would migrate to them once Cost/GB matched that of a VR and that time may come pretty soon.

So as such, I decided to look for cheaper alternatives. I started looking around the various offerings and I pretty much decided on a WD Caviar Black or a Samsung SpinPoint F1 series drive. I didn't really need too big of a size (2TB+ on the Server) and they are pretty much the best at 7200 rpm consumer drives.

Or were they?

I decided to expand it a bit and wanted to see what viable RAID options are there out there? Specifically, RAID 0. I am not worried about redundancy as I have WHS to save me in my time of need (backups are done daily and the last 3 day, week, and month interval are kept on the server). I just want raw performance. So I tried looking at the WD Caviar Black and SpinPoint F1s in RAID 0. From there, I found my gem. The Western Digital RE3 SATA 3Gbs Enterprise drives. RE stands for 'RAID Edition' and this is WD's third iteration for this series of Enterprise class drives (thats server/workstation usage for you normal people). Simply put, the RE3s are basically Caviar Blacks (and their dual processor goodness) that have been extra tested for reliability (warrantied for 5 years at 100 duty cycle - aka full load for 5 years) and has been given some optimizations. Optimizations you say? What optimizations? Well, since they are RAID Edition drives, they have been optimized for Mult-Disk usage (aka RAID Arrays!). And my do they fly...

So coolness. I got them (well more like asked for them) for my B-Day (T-minus 10 days as of writing). When they arrived, I was so excited, I tore out my drive cage, dumped the Raptor X (though never wiped it - you never know!) and installed my new two RAID gems. Made some necessary changes in the BIOS and started up the Intel Matrix RAID screen to build my RAID 0 Array. Then when I tried to install Windows Vista x64 (was waiting for new hard drives), I started getting RAID errors and BSODs. WTF? Apparently, my lovely motherboard has a well known issue when it comes to SATA II drives when used in AHCI or RAID. Asus support was abysmal as always (wanted me to do an RMA but even I know the revisions do nothing and I have tried everything already). So here I am, 2 B-Day present RAID hard drives that won't run RAID (can't tell which is worse - a b-day present you can't use or hardware that you can't use).

Just great. WTF ASUS! SERIOUSLY! Strike two for this mobo (it has already murdered 6 sets of 2x1GB OCZ Reaper PC 1066 ram previously). Good thing I haven't nuked the contents on the Raptor X.

The only choices I have at this point is 1) Buy a new mobo or 2) Buy a RAID Controller card. Door numero uno is a no no (puns puns) as I know full well that I will be upgrading to Core i7 in a few months (or finding employment - whichever comes first - yeah still jobless - pewpy economy). So a RAID controller looked a lot nicer and I went with it. I made it a point, if I was going to get a RAID solution (and spend money), I might as well get a 'true' Hardware RAID Controller.

Why a Hardware RAID? The ones that are included on the motherboard (usually via the Southbridge chip) are not 'true' hardware RAID. Why? Well they utilize the system's CPU cycles and use the system's RAM. Hardware RAID will have its own dedicated CPU and cache to minimize the dependency from the host system's resources. Therefore, there is usually a difference in performance with Hardware Controllers. Also they aren't reliant on software on getting stuff done (software gets corrupted, hardware doesn't - they just break haha). Also system migration will be a lot easier. I won't have to do a full reformat (at least in theory) when I migrate to Core i7 as the HDDs are on an isolated system. Probably just need to reinstall drivers and everything will be dandy. The fact that the drives are on an isolated system has quite a few benefits. Any instability (*cough* Overclocking *cough*) from my system will have a reduced chance of corrupting my hard drives, any system slow downs won't impact the drives, etc. I will fully explore these as time goes by.

So what did I get?

Meet the 3ware 9650SE-2LP. It has a 500MHz PowerPC processor and 128mb DDR2 ECC RAM on board and uses a PCI Express x1 connection (way more than enough for 2 drives). I didn't really see the need to get more than 2 ports as I just need some RAID 0 action and I don't need huge amounts of space (or else the storage I will need on my WHS will increase as well... :| ). Once I get the bad boy, I will slap it on and get my Array and Vista x64 installed. It will be fun to play and experiment.

Rest assured, I will update on this on Monday as that is when my RAID controller arrives. Fully expect some benchmarking (HD Tune, Winbench, IOmeter) between my Raptor X and the 9650SE-2LP + WD RE3 combo to see just how much 'objective' performance I will be able to squeeze out of this.

Stay tuned my gracious readers (if you guys exist that is). You may now collect the melted brain that has been undoubtedly oozing out of your ears in the due course of this blog post.

PS: Looking back at this post, I think it's safe to say I made up for some lost time huh? :p Typed non-stop in one sitting (didn't really take too long - my 80wpm typing FTW!).

A time to game

GTA IV Multiplay weekend is here!


Let's go play some!

Fallout 3

Pre-ordered the Collectors Edition. Added the counter.

What can I say. I have been counting the days since I first saw/heard about this game.

Now all I need is to scrounge up some dough for a few upgrades (second Raptor X/150 for RAID 0 action and perhaps a 4870 GPU).

MMmmmMMmMMmmmm..........

I <3 my PS3

The Playstation 3, is my absolute most favorite piece of electronic hardware ever! Never has a console been so versatile, so user friendly, so powerful, and so feature rich!

It has been over a year since I've had a PS3 (left it behind when I moved out here). And my how much has changed! There are more features added.

Among my favorite is that the PS3 now detects Windows Media Servers. In this case, it detected my Windows Home Server and from there, I can stream my MP3s and watch my movies through the PS3. Awesome!

The Playstation Store has been revamped as well. I can't wait to try stuff out and play around with Remote play... :D

Updates updates!

First and foremost, I have been away for the past 5 days visiting the family in KS. Good times. Did some DIY crap, gamed a lot, got a brother a new guitar (a freaking Les Paul at that - God dammit!), and bumpy flight back.

Let's start things with a bit of gaming.

GTA IV
I finished the 100% completion on Saturday. Did not sleep that night at all. I arrived at 2am Saturday, bro's graduation started at 8am so we had to leave @ 7:15am (aka 7:30am Scott Standard Time), so I hooked up the Xbox 360 and started playing at 5:30am and I started. At 7am, I achieved 100% completion! Just in time for me to take a shower and get ready! Needless to say, I was a zombie but I have met the contest requirement. I rock! I have no life! WEWT!

Guitar
I now have this impeccable urge to buy a new axe... My youngest brother just got an Epiphone (Gibson's budget brand) Les Paul Studio. DAMMIT! I played on that awesome axe all weekend and weekdays (that I was there). Now I am dying for my very own Gibson/Epiphone. Though I am abandoning my previous desire to get a Floyd Rose equipped guitar (I down tune far too much and it would be a royal Pain In The Ass).

Lexus GS450h
My oh my. I love that hybrid. I drove from the airport. First thing I did, flip it on to 'Power' hybrid and 'sport' suspension (I know my way around the car as I have test driven the GS430 and IS350 previously). Needless to say, I floored it (aka Pedal to the Metal) onto the highway. WHOAH! Thats FAAAAST for a luxury sedan. Good job Toyota utilizing the 100% torque of an electric motor in conjunction with a V6! And just think! The cars I want to get have faster 0-60 times! I can't wait!

So yeah, I'm going to the guitar store....

Will it be an Epiphone Slash Signature or a Gibson Explorer or an Epiphone Les Paul?!

Who knows! Gonna bring Ms Ibanez and her coffin along for a possible trade in. Stay tuned!

GTA IV 100%

So yeah, Rockstar games had this one contest that initially ran the course of the first week following the launch. Whoever beat 100% of the game would get a custom made key to the city.

I gave up and didn't play the game at all for 5 days. Last monday (6 days after I gave up), I found out that it was extended.

DAMMIT! 5 wasted days!

Now I am rushing to complete crap. Might not be able to finish it tonight so I will have to lug my console with me to Kansas to finish (flying there tomorrow for my brother's graduation).

Boo...

I better get this...

Grand Theft Auto IV - a week in

Boy oh boy oh boy!

I finally beat it. Has to be the longest GTA thus far! :o

Already dumped 42 hours this week into it. So I had no life this week. :p

My Analyst (Brian) at work was surprised I actually held down my work (and was productive too LOL).

I'm pooped. Finishing up the side missions though I doubt I can make the 100% contest that ends tomorrow night. The rest of the world gets an extra day (LIES!). My completion rate is at ~70% right now and thats with the main story down. Seems the last 20+% is the hardest to earn (stupid 200 pigeons, unique stunts, etc etc etc).

Blah.

But I had fun.

I'll post more about GTA IV but it's attention to detail was mind blowing. Thank you Rockstar Games. The small things do add up.

Finally pics of my Special Edition GTA IV (with awesome license plate)!

Grand Theft Auto IV

Yeap.

Grand Theft Auto IV is launching tomorrow (at the strike of midnight actually). Though you will not see me in line at such an ungodly hour (I kinda have to be up at 5am). This game will most likely be a game of the year candidate (there are still a few blockbuster titles coming out though). How much of a blockbuster you say? A pretty good one.

Grand Theft Auto is a game series of which I am a devout follower of. I have been playing (and continue to play) most of the games in the series multiple times. The Grand Theft Auto series is no stranger to controversy. Undoubtedly, this time around, there will most definitely be something of contention as well. In fact, before it launched, there was already some sort of sparks flying around. In all honesty, I really do not see what the ruckus is about. It's a game...

The thing I love most about Grand Theft Auto games is its humor. There is a lot of satire in the game. The missions are nothing short of hilarious. In the past, graphics wasn't really a selling point. Just the merits of the game.

But that will change now. This new installment will feature a beautiful new graphics engine (R.A.G.E). It also features a very unique style of physics called Euphoria. This is very different than the traditional rag-doll effects.

I am crazy stoked. I hope I get mine as soon as possible. I game a lot, but I have NEVER pre-ordered a game in my entire life. GTA IV is an exception to that. I dished out money for the Collector's Edition. This is one game I have been waiting for a long time and I am sure it will not disappoint.

Playstation 3 Rumble Bundle

Do pardon the crappy attempt at a pun (I can fair better).

This just in!

Kickass!

I've been waiting for the bundle. But it looks like it will come with a game that I am eagerly waiting for. Metal Gear Solid 4! (I am a die-hard Metal Gear Solid fan).

Dual Shock 3, MGS4, now all I need is GT5.

Rest assured, I will be picking up a PS3 (well another one) this summer (especially since the others are with the family).

Wewt!

EDIT: Hopefully my stupid wrist will be all dandy then....