Virtual Adept

Here is a great article airing out some “dirty laundry” between Alienware and HEXUS, a hardware reviews site. Apparently HEXUS gave an honest review of one of Alienware’s recent PC’s, and now Alienware isn’t going to send them more review hardware. So reviewers take note: if you want to keep getting the nice toys you better just keep your keyboard shut about anything unfavorable to Alienware. And readers, keep this in mind when reading anything about Alienware PC’s from now on.

Update: Alienware responds to try and save face.

This is a good article that talks about reasons why they predict that the PS3 is going to defeat the Xbox 360. Here are some things that the writer forgot.

1. It’s all about the games. So far the PS3 has show little worth bothering with, and most of the things they have show that are worthwhile are also coming to the 360.

2. The 360 lead is a big, big advantage. The writer severely underestimates it. By the time Sony can field 6 million PS3’s, it will be NEXT Christmas or later. And that’s only if the PS3 is a runaway hit, and at the $600 price mark, I just don’t see that happening. I expect there to be at least 10 or 12 million 360’s in the market by this time next year.

3. $600 vs $400. Duh. No console that has cost so much has ever succeeded. And MS will be due for a price drop pretty soon making that disparity even greater.

4. Gears of War and Halo 3. These will be system-sellers, guaranteed. What will be a PS3 system seller in the next 6 months? Resistance Fall of Man is not one, let me tell you.

I could see the PS3 eventually overtaking the Xbox 360, but not until 2008 at the earliest. And I expect Microsoft to have a new Xbox out by 2010, while Sony will still just be ramping up PS3 sales.

This page sums up some good info about the hearing for Jack Thompson’s contempt of court proceedings.

Leveled up my mage Xashi on Argent Dawn from 22 to 24 today. I’m really just killing time until Melingko levels up to 42 or 43 or so, so that he can adventure with Ami, my 43 NE Hunter. I really need someone to come join me in WoW. If you are on Argent Dawn or want to be on Argent Dawn, a fantastic RP server, then shoot me a comment so we can hook up. Pick up groups can really be a pain sometimes.

A humorous article about someone’s experiences trying to buy Rockstar’s Bully for PS2.

YouNEWB.com is having a contest where you can win a copy of Gears of War for the Xbox 360! All you have to do is come up with a good caption for the picture shown on the contest page. Piece of cake!

Wow, EA, euphemistically known to the world as “Electronic Arts,” have sunk to an all time low lately. First, in case you missed it, BattleField 2142 for the PC has spyware in it. You should stop whatever you are doing right now and go sign the online petition boycotting EA for this. Gamers can not sit on their hands on this one, otherwise gaming as we know it on the PC is forever ruined. I love the burnout games, but I’m not buying another EA game until they remove this spyware and apologize for it. Oh man, I would have been soooo pissed if I’d pre-ordered BF2142 only to find it was spyware infested.

In other news, on Xbox Live Marketplace, EA games are starting to charge you for the cheat codes normally built into games for free for, oh, I don’t know, the last two point five decades I would say. EA has changed Godfather for the Xbox 360 to make you an offer you can’t refuse. Now if you want to be able to get money cheats or item cheats, instead of some code to enter, you have to buy them for real money on XBLA. Wee! So now EA just needs to make sure the difficulty is made hard enough to bump up those XBLM cheat sales, dontchaknow! Casual gamer shmasual gamer, EA wants to get PAID, digg.

At this point I would honestly not be too surprised to read that the execs at EA eat young children with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Here are some humorous links for you to enjoy.

AFK Gamer writes about the loonies in World of Warcraft.

New virtual-world travel agency. Okay I know this isn’t meant to be a joke but I find it funny.

A really funny satirical press release about a fictional Battlefield 2142 expansion pack.

 

 

You might remember a week or few ago when I posted about Sony’s plan to nickle-and-dime gamers on Gran Turismo 4. Well, on that subject, today I posted up a related article on YouNEWB so check it out if the concept of buying your games piecemeal worries or annoys you. If you’re okay with it then just walk away, nothing to see here.

Many of you are probably familiar with the big Hong Kong based gaming retailer and web-tailer, Lik-Sang. I have used them from time to time to import a game or hard to find gaming accessory. They always had good service and good prices. Sony has been suing Lik-Sang in multiple territories for allowing people to import Sony products into other countries. Sony won a lawsuit in the UK, and because of that on top of the cost of legal fees from other litigation, Lik Sang will now have to shut their doors. A great resource for gamers is no longer. Gee Sony. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Edit: Sony denies that they are the reason Lik-Sang shut down.

 

I recently resubscribed to World of Warcraft in anticipation of the imminent release of the expansion pack, The Burning Crusade. Well now Blizzard has decided to delay the expansion until January. Bummer. On the plus side, this means I’ll probably actually be able to log into the game over the holidays.

I started getting a kazillion emails requesting comment approval from a bunch of spam comments. You see, the way I have it set up, certain things you put in your comments can trigger the system to hold your comment for approval before it posts it. But I get an email about it showing me the comment and asking approval. I was getting a few hundred per day from spam bots. I found a WP plugin that should eliminate that and so far it seems to be working. It should be completely transparent to real people, but if for some reason comments functionality is not working for you, please email me.