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Posts tagged PS3
Is there anything Best Buy won't do to screw its customers?
Sep 29th
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.
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Expect Playstation 3 shortages this Christmas season
Sep 28th
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.
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Global Geek News Podcast #36
Sep 6th
Here are the shownotes for episode #36 for the Global Geek News Podcast.
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Stories:
- EA spends 3x more on marketing than development
- PS3 selling more units than the Wii after the price drop
- US Government says all music downloads are theft
- Utah law punishes texting drivers with 15 years in prison
- Don’t like the results of a vanity search? Don’t sue Yahoo
- Wi-fi cafe users love Apple and like to spend
- The Kindle is more environmentally friendly than actual books
- Amazon makes up for 1984 book deletion
- Watching TV while surfing the net? You aren’t alone
- Top developer reveals sad Android Market sales figures
Tip of the week: How to fix the YouTube jumpiness in Firefox
Host: Jeremy Bray & Wesley Faulkner
Blu-ray sales up 91% this year
Jul 17th
Good news coming from the Blu-ray camp, sales of Blu-ray disks are up 91%. If that wasn’t good enough news, standalone player sales are up 25%, bringing the total number of blu-ray playing devices in the US (Including the PS3) to almost 11 million. The sad thing is that half of that number is PS3 consoles instead of a bunch of standalone players which are getting cheaper all the time. 
By itself, that number sounds significant until you realize that there are 260 million DVD players floating around not counting the ones built into computers and I doubt even counting the ones in game consoles. Eventually Blu-ray will likely catch up but not anytime soon at the rate they are going.
I have always stated that the problem with Blu-ray is price and lack of advertising and I still stick to that. As long as Blu-ray movies are 3 times what you can buy a DVD for and players are above $75, they will fail to see big numbers. Also, there needs to be more of a push to show consumers why Blu-ray is so much better. The only advertising for blu-ray I have seen is in a movie theater. If the companies pushing Blu-ray address these two issues, they will soon see a big move in the right direction, otherwise DVD will be hanging around for a long time. [via Electronic House]
Hulu stops working on the PS3
Jun 29th
CrunchGear is reporting that Hulu no longer works with the Sony Playstation 3. I have heard numerous accounts of this so far although there seems to be no definite answer as to what is going on just yet. I have heard several reports speculating that this could have been broken in the latest firmware update (2.8). I have also heard reports saying that they have dugg deaper and found that the PS3 is being specifically blocked by Hulu. When you try to watch a video on Hulu, you get this message: “Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconveinence.”
Personally, I have only used Hulu on my PS3 a couple of times because it is not a very good experience on the PS3. As fas as I am concerned, it isn’t a great loss but I am sure there are a few people out there that liked to use the PS3 to watch Hulu content. I have not verified this myself but I will when I get home from work and then report back on tonight’s recording of the Global Geek News Podcast.
Of the stories I have read, nobody has been able to get a comment from either Sony or Hulu on this issue yet.
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-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray
E3, the best Electronics Entertainment Expo in years, mostly
Jun 10th
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?
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-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

