Global Geek News Blog The home of more Global Geek News insight and opinions

Greetings Readers!

Anybody who has ever dealt with Best Buy likely has their own horror stories about the giant, myself included and now they have a new tactic. Best Buy is now charging $130 to set up your Playstaion 3.

What do you get for your $130? You will get your PS3 plugged in, have its firmware updated, have your user accounts created and have the parental controls set up. Basically, stuff you shouldn't even need to look at the manual to figure out how to do. Why does Best Buy insist on ripping its customers like this? I am also curious who is dumb enough to pay $130 for this?

Here is the picture in case you need to see this ripoff to believe it.

Best Buy rips off Playstation 3 customers. Credit: Kotaku

Follow Global Geek News on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Tagged as: Best Buy, Geek Squad, Playstation 3, PS3, Rip off, Worst Buy 2 Comments

28Sep/090

Expect Playstation 3 shortages this Christmas season

Greetings Readers!

If you are hoping to pick up a Playstation 3 for the 2009 holiday season for yourself or somebody else, you better do it while you still can because shortages are being predicted.

Thanks to the record pace that the PS3 has been selling at since the price drop to $300 and the release of the PS3 Slim, Sony Executive Jack Tretton says that if sales continue at their current pace, there will be shortages of the PS3 sales this holiday season because demand is outpacing supply.

It is baffling that Sony didn't expect such a surge in sales when a new unit was released and the price was dropped. Considering everybody had been hoping for a price drop for the past year, they should know that it was going to make for a huge boost in sales so they would have made production great enough to meet demand through the holiday season.

There is no news on when the shortage will happen but I know why Sony is planning it, free publicity. Whenever a major consumer product has a shortage, it gets a writeup on all of the major sites which is good for the company and the product. This is the only reason I can think of that Sony would pull something like this. By creating a shortage, you give the appearance that the hottest item of the Christmas season is going to be the Playstation 3, even when it might not be true. Despite the fact that I understand this practice, I still find it horrible because come Christmas time, some kid isn't going to have the PS3 he was expecting because Sony wasn't willing to ramp up production for the holiday season.

Follow Global Geek News on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Tagged as: Christmas 2009, holiday season, Playstation 3, PS3, PS3 Slim, shortage, Sony No Comments

28Sep/090

Sony sets the PSP Go up for failure

Greetings Readers!

As many of you know, I am a longtime fan of Sony's PSP and I was initially looking forward to its sequel which turned out to be the PSP Go, but unfortunately it appears that Sony has set the portable gaming device up for failure. There are three primary ways that Sony is setting the PSP Go up for failure which are the focus of this post.

First, the biggest problem facing the PSP Go is the price. Considering the PSP Go plays the same content as the original PSP, there is no reason that Sony should be selling it at $250 when the original PSP which will continue to be sold, sells for under $170. While the original PSP was $250 when it shipped, those were very different economic times than what we are in now and the general rule I go by is that if a portable gaming device is more expensive than the most popular gaming console, it is overpriced. While it is great not having to deal with UMD disks that are constantly breaking, I don't think that justifies the cost when you realize that the screen is also smaller and and despite your expectations that the battery life would be better since there is no disk drive, they are actually about the same as the normal PSP. Oh, and the battery is not removable which is another strike against the Go.

Of course the price point of the system is only one big factor in the overall price of the device. The fact that you will need all new accessories is going to be another major expense tied to the device. If that wasn't bad enough, it looks like the games will cost more to download than they do in UMD format for the original PSP. Are you kidding me? I am going to have to pay more for downloadable games than for games with considerable production costs? I should be saving money because I am not in need of boxes, instructions, disks and whatever else, not spending more to get less! I am tired of paying more and getting less. Speaking of paying more and getting less...

Did you think I was finished talking about how much more you are going to have to pay to own the PSP Go? If you thought so, you would be wrong. In the ultimate slap in the face to everybody who already has the original PSP, the UMD conversion plan that Sony had once announced has been cancled for "legal and technical reasons." PSP owners, myself included, had thought that the price to migrate would be fairly cheap since we could convert all of our PSP game collection to digital versions for the PSP Go. Instead, the greedy fools at Sony now expect us to pay for our games all over again. I guess they figured that if people bought all of their music again when they migrated from cassette to CD that we would be willing to do it when we "upgraded" from a PSP to a PSP Go. They would be wrong in that assumption.

I had a lot of hope for the PSP Go when it first was announced but I think that hope is pretty much gone. With the launch of the PSP Go later this week (Oct. 1st), Sony has set the system up to fail miserably. It certainly isn't any competition for the lower priced DSi or even the iPhone. I had planned on getting the PSP Go on launch day just as I did with the PSP, but considering the overall cost of the device, games and accessories, I now have no plans on purchasing the device. If you can't sell you system to somebody like me that collects game systems regardless of whether I play them or not, you have real problems. Get ready for all of the PSP Go is a complete flop stories.

Follow Global Geek News on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Tagged as: accessories, battery life, costs, failure, flop, Gaming, handheld, portable gaming device, price, PSP, PSP Go, screen size, Sony, UMD, UMD conversion plan No Comments

5Aug/091

EA is going to kill Command & Conquer with C&C 4

Greetings Readers!

Normally I don't discuss much gaming on here and when I do, I don't make a post about a specific game, but today is a bit different. For the past week, I have felt the need to rant about the horrible death that EA is giving Command & Conquer.

Before I get into the multitude of ways that EA is killing C&C, I want to quickly address the idea of having a loyal fanbase. Like many of my friends, I have been playing C&C games since they came out around 13 years ago (give or take), and while I haven't always agreed with every design decision, I have been loyal enough to buy the games and play them often for the great gameplay and stories. Unfortunately, EA has changed just about everything that has made C&C, C&C all of these years with the upcoming C&C 4. Gone is the gameplay that fans have been used to for over a decade to the point that many of the hardcore C&C fans that I know, and I know many of them from working in the C&C community for many years, have decided to boycott the game, myself included.

What makes this game so horrible that even fans that have been following the series for over a decade would boycott it? In short, everything. If you have played C&C at all for the past 13 years, you have a good idea of what the gameplay is like with base building, resource collecting, armies of varying units based on their strengths and weaknesses among other things like FMVs and music mainly from the awesome composer Frank Klepacki. Of that short list of things that are still going to be included in C&C 4 is just the FMVs. There will be no Frank Klepacki doing the music, no harvesting and no basebuilding. Essentially 90% of what made C&C itself, is now gone. Think those are the only changes? In the words of Billy Mays, "Wait! There is more!"

In what sounds like a move away from RTS, there is some kind of leveling system that will allow you to get new units and stuff through experience through both online and offline playing. While I will say this sounds kind of interesting, they say that there won't be any real advantage to the units you earn, they can just compliment your strategy. To me, it sounds like a balance nightmare. The whole idea of a respawning mobile base seems to be quite dumb. How exactly are you supposed to win if the base keeps respawning at the edge of the screen? And the most annoying thing of all, an online connection is mandatory!

With gamers constantly complaining about DRM, EA has decided to scrap their traditional DRM in favor of an always online model to fight piracy. At first, I wanted to celebrate the lack of DRM until I realized that this solution is just as bad if not worse. Now, gamers will be unable to play the game if they don't have an internet connection. Waiting for the cable guy to fix your internet connection? You won't be playing C&C4 to pass the time. Of course if the servers ever go offline and eventually they will, you are screwed completely. They try to hide this horrible idea behind the idea that being online will allow you to get credit for the time you spend playing so that you can get upgrades to different units but in reality, it is just their way of making everybody get online so that they know if you have pirated the game. Personally, I would prefer having the DRM back over this horrible idea.

The truly sad thing about this is that we still don't know all of the details, but as they surface in magazines, they keep getting worse and worse. The changes that they are making are a disgrace to C&C and a spitting on the grave of Westwood (The original creators of the series). I honestly think it is probably a good idea that they are saying this is the last game in the Tiberium storyline because they are screwing the game up so much in the name of attracting the casual gamer that nobody will want to purchase any future titles anyway.

Follow Global Geek News on Twitter and listen to the latest Global Geek News Podacast!

Tagged as: C&C, command & conquer, Command & Conquer 4, DRM, EA, Electronic Arts, fans, gamers, music, piracy, RPG, RTS, Westwood 1 Comment

23Jun/090

A cellphone can play Crysis?!

Greetings readers!

I happened to come across a video a short time ago showing that a cellphone can run Crysis smoothly. This is an accomplishment for even the best of gaming computers, rather less a cellphone.

At first I thought somebody was performing a miracle until I found out that this is apparently a new service called OTOY which is a new server side rendering service similar to OnLive. This stuff is really impressive, but from watching him use the controller, it seems a bit laggy. I can't wait to try out both services because I believe that if they are done right, they can usher in a whole new era of gaming. To check out all of the cool details, hit the link up top.

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

Tagged as: Crysis, Crysis on a phone, OnLive, OTOY, server side rendering No Comments

23Jun/090

Duke Nukem Forever still in development!

Greetings Readers!

In a headline that nearly made me wet myself this morning, according to kotaku, Duke Nukem Forever is still in development. Apparently newly filed court documents state that despite the fact that 3D Realms apparently shut down, development on the game continues. There is more to this story including the news of another Duke game canceled back in April called Duke Begins, so head over to kotaku at the link above and find out what is going on. Here is hoping we will see Duke Nukem Forever in our lifetime! Long live Duke Nukem!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

Tagged as: 3D Realms, Duke Begins, Duke Nukem Forever still alive, Take Two No Comments

10Jun/091

E3, the best Electronics Entertainment Expo in years, mostly

Greetings Readers!

As promised, I am here to share my thoughts on this year's E3. I'm not going to address every game that was talked about, but more of my thoughts from the main press events, so here we go.

Lets start off with Microsoft. This event was mind blowing! I found myself sitting in my chair several hours after the event still saying "holy crap!" The past couple of years have been a rather big disappointment from all of the major companies but this even alone makes up for all of it. Before I address Project Natal, which was the main "holy crap!" moment from the event, lets talk games and Xbox functionality. There were a ton of great titles that were announced at this years Microsoft press event, including Forza Motorsport 3, Halo Reach, Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Metal Gear Solid Rising and even a Beatles version of Rock Band. These were great announcements as many of the major titles including Halo Reach, Left 4 Dead 2 and Metal Gear Solid Rising were completely unexpected. In terms of games, it looks to be a very bright year for the Xbox 360. They also announced some great new additions to Xbox Live including Last.fm, Facebook and even Twitter integration. This will do wonders for making the 360 become apart of your social network life. They also announced better quality video streaming which is awesome too. Finally, the biggest announcement was Project Natal. This is Microsoft's one-up on the Wii motion controller. When this is released, you will be able to interact with your 360 and games with no controller at all, just by moving your body. If that wasn't cool enough, it can react to voice commands. I cant say enough about this, so head here to check out the demo of it.

Nintendo was the second person to present at this years E3 and it made for a great opportunity to take a nap. After the stellar event from Microsoft, Nintendo could have put just about anybody to sleep. The major problem with Nintendo's press event was that it was largely old news and not the announcements that people were hoping for. They spent a fair bit of time talking about the Wii Motion Plus which they announced and showed at length last year but doesn't come out until this week. Nothing spectacular was shown with this, just another demo of Wii Sports Resort which was also announced last year. The Wii Fit was also talked about at length and they announced a new expansion for the Wii Fit with some new exercises and stuff for those that still use the Wii Fit, all 2 of you. Other than those disappointments, this year was the year of Mario. A number of new Mario titles were announced including a new Super Mario Bros which allows up to 4 people to play at once and Mario Galaxy 2. Other than Mario which didn't seem to overly excite many people, the only other major announcement was a new Metroid game. While it looks interesting, I am not a Metroid fan so I can't say it had my jumping up and down and it didn't seem to get that big of reaction from the crowd. There was no news about a Zelda game or anything that people were expecting other than after the event, one of the Nintendo people said one was in the works. Generally, it was a complete snooze although a 4 player Mario does look interesting.

Finally, the last to present was Sony. Unlike Nintendo, this one was pretty exciting too although just slightly below the Microsoft event. They demo'd a bunch of major new games that nearly all look amazing including Assassins Creed 2, Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker and even my personal favorite, God of War 3. There were a ton of great looking games announced but they took a back seat to the two major announcements, the PSP Go which I have already blogged about here and here, as well as their own version of motion control that looks like the Wiimote's uglier, more powerful cousin. While it kicks the butt of the Wii motion control, its not quite as impressive as Project Natal. Overall, they put on a great event.

Between Microsoft and Sony, this was an amazing year at E3 which Nintendo gave everybody a great nap opportunity. This certainly looks to be an exciting time for gamers over the next year and I can't wait to play the many games that are coming out. What did you think of everything that happened at E3 this year?

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Tagged as: E3, Games, Gaming, Mario, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, press conferences, Project Natal, PS3, PSP, PSP Go, social media, Sony, Wii Fit, Xbox 360 1 Comment

9Jun/091

Is the PSP Go’s digital direction the right direction?

Greetings Readers!

Yesterday, I talked a bit about the PSP Go and the fact that you will have to buy your accessories all over again. Today, I want to address Sony's new digital direction with the PSP Go.

Like I stated yesterday, I have two PSP-1000 units and love them greatly. While I love them and am often attached to the hip with them thanks to my carry case with a belt loop, the curse of them is the UMD disks. Honestly, I don't care the least bit about how much weight or size that the drive adds to the PSP. I don't even care how much more battery it uses by running compared to a digital version of a game, but what I do care about are having working disks. If you have had a PSP for any length of time, you are probably well aware of the UMD breaking issues. For those that don't know, the clear plastic on the front of the disk has the tendancy to partially break causing the disk to be out of place and only play a small percentage of the time. This is extremely annoying when you spend $40 or whatever on a new game. The fact that this has happened to nearly my entire UMD collection is the sole reason that I only pirate games on the system now (I freely admit to being cheap but it has no relevance here as I have always enjoyed paying for games compared to other forms of entertainment).

I am not alone in this as many people have taken to the haven of piracy to be able to play their games when they want. This is obvious when you look at the PSP piracy numbers. Luckily, I think that Sony has partially solved this problem with the PSP Go and its lack of a UMD drive. Personally, it takes away my reason for pirating games because the UMD problem will no longer exist except on my old PSPs which I will continue to play thanks to the wonders of homebrew. Sony's decision to go digital only is a great way of combatting the UMD issue and piracy at the same time. Of course when it comes to piracy and hacking, this will likely mean very little. If you have followed the hacking and homebrew scene as much as I have since the first days of the PSP, you will know that often within days, if not hours of a new firmware release on the PSP, the hackers have not only bypassed the new security measures, but they are adding the new features into their own custom firmware. While I expect it to take a while for the hackers to break the PSP Go, I have complete faith in them that they will be running thier own code on the device within a month (this is my official prediction).

Unfortunately, the move to digital presents a new problem, storage. UMD disks are capable of storing 1.7GB worth of information. While not all games use that much space, when you consider the fact that the PSP Go has a 16GB internal drive, you are going to run out of space very quickly. With Sony's announcement that you will also be able to download movies and tv shows to the PSP, that internal drive is looking even smaller. I believe this is going to be the main problem point for the PSP. Sure, you will still have the Memory Stick Pro Duos that you can put in the device, but any pirate will tell you that having your content on them is a major pain. Speaking for experience, having to put games on Memory Sticks will end up with you having a small pile of memory sticks with little knowledge of what content is on which stick. If this wasn't bad enough, the sticks still aren't that cheap for larger capacities. I will admit that they have come down considerably since the time of the PSP launch when you were lucky if you could get a 1GB stick off of ebay for $150 (same when the 2GB came out and so on), but it still adds a large chunch to the overall cost of the device. If you only have a few games, this isn't really an issue, but if you want to use the device for gaming like it is intended, this could be a real hassle.

Ultimately, I think this is a good strategy despite its flaws if for no other reason than it fixes the UMD issue. While I will admit that details are still a little scarce, I think this is the direction that they must head but if they don't do it right, it will screw the customer severely as well as themselves. Here is to hoping that they do what is best for the consumer instead of their bottom line!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

Tagged as: digital content, digital downoads, download movies and tv shows for the psp, download psp games, hackers, homebrew, piracy, PSP, PSP Go, Sony, storage, UMD, UMD breaking, Universal Media Disk 1 Comment

8Jun/090

The pain of the PSP Go, the necessity of new accessories

Greetings Readers!

Over the years, I have managed to collect more gaming platforms than I can keep track of. With only a couple of exceptions, I have owned or still own every major gaming platform to be released. Some of them, I have multiple of, especially Gameboys which I seem to collect for some strange reason. With the thousands of dollars that I have spent over the years on new consoles and handhelds, there is one thing I always dread the most, having to buy new accessories. In this case, I want to talk specifically about the PSP and the PSP Go. This applies to pretty much every system with a few exceptions but I am going to focus on these two for now.

Like every year, I pay extremely close attention to the E3 coverage. I have even been known to take most of a week off of work just so I can sit and watch the wall to wall coverage that all of the major gaming sites have of the annual event. While I didn't take any time off of work this year, I still watched nearly all of my usual coverage thanks to being alone at work. I will write another post or two about my complete thoughts from the event but right now I want to focus on the PSP Go. Much has been discussed about the PSP Go going completely digital with its content, something I will discuss further in another blog post and on the next podcast, but it seems that the main thing people are talking about is the price. People seem to be complaining that $250 is too much, but clearly they need a little history lesson, so here it is.

The PSP launched on March 24, 2005. When it launched, it was priced at $250, the same is what the PSP Go is going to sell for. Despite this price point that people now claim is too high, that morning it still had people lined up at early openings of stores. I know this because I stood in line and was the second person in town to get my hands on one. Not long after, I purchased a second one slightly used although not noticeable for a number of reasons, but price was never a huge factor for me. If it was over $300, I would have complained, but for what you got at the time, it was a decent price point and it still is. The reason it is still a great price is because of all of the new features and the power of the device compared to the Nintendo DS or DSi. From a technical aspect, the PSP can run circles around the DS. Between being able to play better looking games to being able to play movies, music and even stream audio over the web, it not only justifies the price difference but it laughs at the DS while doing so. The PSP Go vs the DSi is no different. I will admit the DSi has some nice new features including the cameras, but it still can't compete in terms of value with what you get in the PSP Go. The PSP Go is not only as capable as its predecessor but it now it has 16GB of internal storage and bluetooth in a device a fraction of the size and weight of the original PSP. While the DSi added some nice features like the cameras, the technical specs weren't boosted to allow it to compete with the PSP. For some reason, Nintendo doesn't seem to mind inferior hardware as proven with the Wii and GameCube and if you really want to go back, we can put many of the Gameboy systems in that category as well considering the Sega GameGear was superior in nearly every aspect but size and battery life. Anyway, it should be clear that I think it is worth every penny of the $250, especially when you compare it to the handhelds that Nintendo offers.

The most annoying thing about it for me is the fact that you are going to need all new accessories for your PSP Go since the ones from your PSP won't work with it. While I certainly understand the need of new cases since the Go is considerably smaller, I don't understand while the miniUSB that was used in the original was taken out of the Go in favor of some kind of multi-use port. The new port will still plug into your computers USB port, from the pictures I have seen, it looks identical to the plug in the Zune. I don't see any reason to change it other than to make people buy all new accessories which really pisses me off. I am a loyal enough customer to purchase a bunch of accessories over the years in the first place, I should not be punished by having to buy all of them again just because you want more money so you change the hardware to force me to buy something new. Accessories aren't that cheap and if you already have people complaining about the price, just how mad do you think they will be when you make them purchase all of their accessories all over again? If you want to catch up to the DS which has outsold the PSP 2:1, this is not the way to do it.

All manufactures need to heed this message. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. If it is not a necessary change, don't make it for the sake of making money. Either use it to add value make no change so that the barrier of entry for a new device is as small as possible to increase the adoption of your device. Anyway, enough of my rant. Tomorrow, I will talk about the PSP Go's digital download move followed by my thoughts on E3 with a few other posts splattered in between.