I just signed up to a new (to me) game trading site, called Goozex. This one works a lot different than GameTZ (which is still the best one imho). On Goozex every game has a value assigned by the powers at be at Goozex based on market demand and such, and so each game is worth so many Goozex points. You can even buy Goozex points on your credit card or PayPal account if you want to just use Goozex to buy stuff. But you also get points when you agree to send out games to other traders.
A lot of the games on Goozex don’t have manual or boxes tho, but it’s up to you when you ask for a game what you’ll accept (either full-complete or maybe if you want just the booklet and game, or maybe just the discs). And when you put your games up for trade you state what you’ll be mailing out, that way the system matches you up to traders. Obviously if you are willing to accept disc-only games you will get matches faster. The one down side it seems is that it doesn’t give you much time to respond to requests.
What’s the catch? A trade costs $1, so that’s how the site makes money. If you’re interested in trying this out I get some free trades if you let me refer you so shoot me an email address to send and invite to if you want to check it out. Also at this time I am only pointing out the existence of this site since my experience with it is very limited. It seems like a good idea and a workable system but I can’t make a strong recommendation yet. The site limits newbs to 2 trades at a time so it’s going to take a while to build up a reputation before I can do a bunch of trading on it.
Seems like most of the announcements at the “new and unimproved” mini-E3 gaming trade show have been less than exciting. Sony says we’ll get a new revamped PSP . . . that is basically the same as the old one, except a little thinner, a little lighter, and with a little more go-juice. Whooptie. Microsoft announces a completely underwhelming Xbox 360 Halo 3 Edition. I mean, 20gb HD?!! WTF? I had figured that the Halo 3 box would be at least as good as the Elite…. And then the games. Same games we heard about last year. Ok, yes, Assassin’s Creed looks great, but I mean, we already knew about that. Where are the announcements for games we’ve never heard of? Not much, at least nothing major that I’ve seen so far except for Lost Odyssey I guess. I guess the gaming companies are downplaying the importance of E3, which is fine, if all you want to do is have a lame show that no one can get excited over. Meh. Very Meh.
Here is a list of the new games being released this week thanks to videogameblogger.com for this great write up with all the links to the various game pages (blatantly ripped off, be sure and go visit his site, it’s great). Put my comments in as well.
Monday:
1701 A.D. (PC)
Deal or No Deal (PC)
Elite Beat Agents (DS) - not sure how well a rhythm game will work on the DS but looking forward to renting this one.
The Fifth Disciple (PC)
Final Fantasy V Advance (GBA) - must have! Love those old FF games on portables.
Reel Fishing: The Great Outdoors (PSP)
Tuesday:
Barbie in The 12 Dancing Princesses (DS)
Blitz: The League (Xbox 360)
Bomberman Land Touch! (DS)
Call of Duty 3 (PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360) - definitely going to get this one, probably for 360, but will wait for the Wii version to see if it’s better or not.
Digimon World DS (DS)
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (PS2)
Gears of War (Xbox 360) - this is a must buy, a real system seller! I won’t buy this at launch though because I’ve blow my spending limit already this month. Maybe get it as a Christmas gift.
Guitar Hero II (PS2) - waiting to see how 360 version turns out.
Hard Rock Casino (PS2, PSP)
History Channel Civil War: A Nation Divided (Xbox 360)
Left Behind: Eternal Forces (PC)
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (PS3)
Micro Machines V4 (DS)
My Frogger: Toy Trials (DS)
Polarium Advance (GBA)
Sega Genesis Collection (PS2)
The Sims 2: Pets (GBA)
SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Combined Assault (PS2)
SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo 2 (PSP)
The Sopranos: Road to Respect (PS2) - this one has me curious but will wait on reviews.
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent (PC)
Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (Xbox, Xbox 360, PSP, PS2, PS3) - definitely going to check this one out on 360.
Winx Club: Quest for the Codex (GBA, DS)
World Championship Poker: All In (Xbox 360)
Yoshi’s Island 2 (DS) - definitely will at least rent this one.
Wednesday:
Contra (Xbox Live Arcade) - frickin’ sweet!
Patriots: A Nation Under Fire (PC)
Thursday:
Disney’s Chicken Little: Ace in Action (PS2, DS)
Viva Piñata (Xbox 360) - while everyone is creaming over Gears of War I think this one has a good possibility to be very unique. I will definitely look at reviews and possibly rent this one.
What an AMAZING week of games!! It don’t get much better than that. And considering that just last week we had Phantasy Star Online, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Final Fantasy XII?! Dude, I’m in heaven.
So the latest news for Xbox 360 is that you can spend your hard earned money to download videos in standard or high definition. How much? Well, it sounds like movies will cost between 320 and 480 marketplace points, which is between $4 and $6. But most of the content that they’ve announced so far is TV show episodes, and I don’t know the pricing for that yet. I think that’s a bit crazy high. Supposedly HD movies will take up between 4 and 6 gb of your hard drive space. Considering that the 360 only allows 12gb for the user to begin with, I can see where this is going to be a very tight fit. Hopefully MS will come to their senses soon and announce a larger HDD upgrade for the 360. We need it. Bad.
Update: Sony had this to say about the new 360 video downloads (via Kotaku):
PLAYSTATION 3’s content is designed for everyone to enjoy right out of the box, no matter which configuration you purchase. We would never segregate or shut out any of our consumers from our entertainment experience because they didn’t buy the top of the line system. Both PLAYSTATION 3 versions available on November 17 include hard drives for downloading content.
That’s all well and good, Sony, but for $400 I can get HD downloadable content on my 360, either in the form of a 360 core + HD addon, or a 360 premium, and the cheapest I could do that (if I could do that) on the PS3 is $500. So solly, loo looooze!!! What idiots. No, Sony, you’re not “shutting anyone out” (/sarcasm). Assholes. As if I could even buy a PS3 before sometime next year. Sony, you need to just learn when to sit down and STFU.
A mouse pad any pedo could love.
Here is what happens when all your friends are World of Warcraft forum posters.
Weird Al loves da nerdy white boys.
Scatological arcade action.
Here is an online game guide for Bully.
Charging for cheats in Xbox 360 games wasn’t enough for EA, now they want to do it for the PC, too.
In days past, if you bought a game, you could go online and find codes to unlock content via cheat codes. Now EA wants to charge you for that privilege. Xbox Live Marketplace now lists approximately $50 worth of content-unlock codes for EA racing game Need for Speed Carbon. That means you spend $60 for the game, and if you don’t want to just play the game to unlock stuff, you spend another $50 to buy cheat codes to unlock the content. Cheat codes used to be free, but now EA wants to get PAID, dawg.
I think I may have already mentioned this before, but in case I didn’t, Rockstar’s latest controversial and most excellently fun video game for the Playstation 2 called Bully, about a wayward boy in a prep school, allows the main character you play to engage in kissing of other boys. Now Joystiq is reporting that the mainstream press has finally gotten wind of this, and of course, it is generating lots of controversy. The ESRB has already stated that they knew about this when they gave the game its “T” for Teen rating. The Joystiq writer makes a good point that Rockstar played this fantastically - it’s a highly controversial topic that is sure to generate sales, but anyone who publicly comes out against it ends up looking like a douche. Of course, our favorite lawyer, Jack Thompson, has already made himself look like a douche.
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.
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.
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.
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