Original review, update #1
So I’m now over a month into the Gamefly Xbox360 rental experiment, and wanted to share a few more observations.
Game availability: I don’t want to jinx it, but every game I’ve wanted has shipped out without any delay or short wait time. Perhaps this will change as people finally get their Xbox360’s — but for now, I have no complaints — and I know that availability is a major problem with some of the other game rental services.
Shipping Process: As I mentioned earlier, it took a week or so to receive the initial games, and I was concerned that the total return trip, confirmation of receipt, and then the shipping of the next game could really take a while.
But fear not ! Even for people like me in NYC, the total turn around has actually been less than a week for most of my games. How is this so ? Gamefly is using the power of technology to quicken the ‘confirmation’ / return process. They have partnered with the post office, so that as soon as the USPS scans the return envelope, they communicate that back to GameFly, and GameFly immediately ships out yor next game ( they call it FastReturn). pretty smart, eh ? here is the official blurb:
FastReturn will start the processing of your next game as soon as we receive confirmation from the U.S. Postal Service that a game has been returned in the mail. You may no longer need to wait until we receive the returned game in our warehouse before we send the next available game in Your GameQ!
How does FastReturn work?
When you return a game in the mail, the U.S. Postal Service will scan the return and send a confirmation to us. We will then send the next available game in Your GameQ BEFORE we have received the game in our warehouse.
Conclusion and thoughts after 1 month: So far so good. Between Xbox Live demos and new games arriving with GameFly I have no complaints. I think one immediate lesson of this experience is that it confirms that the day is drawing near where everything is on-demand. Why do we need NetFlix and services like GameFly ? With decent broadband access I’m happy to wait 2-3 hours to download a full game or movie. Don’t get me wrong, these serices have setup great businesses — but I wonder what these rental services plan to do when microsoft, sony, time warner, and others roll out full on-demand offerings ? Time will tell.
gamefly, xbox360
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February 5th, 2006
The folks at hdbeat put the Netgear XE104 through it’s paces, and have a very complete review of it. Devices like this Netgear, in theory, allow you to stream HD content over your network from a media center PC to your Xbox360. Makes a lot of sense, given how distributed our content is these days, and how we are trying to keep the living rooms as un-cluttered as possible. Unfortunately this device did not pass the test. The review concludes with this blurb:
There could be other factors involved and yes, one of them is the wiring in your house. Our house used for the test is only two years old, so it’s unlikely that the wiring is the culprit. Our XE104’s cost us $85 each, but we’re getting our money back. Simply put, these units just won’t cut it for HDTV streaming between a Windows Media Center PC and an Xbox 360 in our environment.
Read more.
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February 4th, 2006
Got a few emails about this, so I figured I would post. People are buzzing about the latest Tomb Raider game, and it’s ‘next gen’ engine that will debut this spring.
New screenshots were released today, and the trailer that has been out since October is probably worth checking out — especially if you are waiting on some xbox360 porn :)
If anyone knows when the demo will be out on Live please let us know. I’m sure many of you played the first game on your PC a few years back, but has anyone actually kept up with this series ? Maybe this new version will breath some life into the Tomb Raider franchise. Stay tuned !
Technorati Tags: xbox360, tomb raider
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February 4th, 2006
I’m sure all of us remember seeing the madden footage on MTV or ESPN back in late April 2005. The press was buzzing, and future Xbox360 owners were salivating ! Fast forward a few months, and Madden 2006 is in our hands, and my reaction is very mixed.
The good: Graphics are top notch, stadiums look great, and the game controls feel solid.
The bad: Features are weak. There is no owner’s mode or training camp, no spring training details, no goals, no team management , etc. The mini-camp is gone, although EA promises that it will return in ‘07.
The ugly: Jaggies, vysnc/video tearing problems, and slow downs ! I’m running with HD component cables ( plan to try VGA soon ), and I get jaggies, some video tears, and some slow downs at the end of plays ( obviosuly cables are not at fault here ). For a top game game like this, I would expect perfection.
Conclusion: If you must have a football game, go pick this up, since it’s the only game in town. For anyone else, this game was rushed out, so skip it this year, and plan on getting the 2007 version.
Technorati Tags: madden06, xbox360
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January 28th, 2006
Mega publisher EA Games has cut the prices for games by $10 to $20, according to a report issued Thursday by Banc of America analyst Gary Cooper. Games that have been cut from $49.99 to $39.99 include Burnout Revenge, NBA Live 06, NASCAR 06, Tiger Woods 06, The Sims 2: Nightlife, and the PSP’s Need for Speed Underground Rivals.
“At EA, we make pricing decisions on a title-by-title, market-by-market basis,” said spokesman Jeff Brown to Reuters. “As we’ve said in our quarterly reports, this point in the console transition is historically marked by softness in pricing.”
On thestreet.com, they did some quick research and noted:
The cuts apparently don’t affect games made for the latest-generation Xbox 360. Indeed, while GameStop’s Web site and Amazon.com, for example, are charging just $29.99 and $26.95, respectively, for Madden for the PlayStation 2, they’re both still asking $59.99 for the Xbox 360 version of the game.
So no discounts yet for us Xbox360 owners. Might want to try renting a game or download a demo before dropping $60 for a single title.
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January 23rd, 2006
If you have Xbox Live, walk — no run, and download the demo !
Fight Night 3 on an HD setup is simply an incredible looking game. Definitely one of the first truly ‘Next Gen’ games we have seen.
Release date is scheduled for late February, but you can play the demo now or check out these amazing screenshots:
Technorati Tags: Xbox360, Fight Night 3
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January 18th, 2006
We posted earlier about our game rental research, and how we selected GameFly. Now for an update.
Two games shipped on Jan 3rd, 2006. They both arrived on Tues Jan 10th. Given that it was shipped in CA, and I live in NYC, I was expecting it to take about a week, and was not surprised that it arrived on the 10th.
The games arrived in nice red envelopes with GameFly branding. I didn’t have a chance to open them up when they first arrived, and when I returned home later that day I could not find them ! Turns out my wife mistook the envelopes for AOL CD junk mail and tossed them ! I was quickly able to retrieve them from the top of the kitchen garbage, but a warning to all of you out there, they do look very much like promotional / junk mail :) I also was concerned that since they were marked as coming from GameFly that they would be targets for mail theft.
Inside the envelopes were pre paid envelopes for shipping it back. No instructions are included for the game, but they do post all the info on the GameFly site (ex: PGR3 ) — which is a nice touch. I now also have the option to purchase the game for $44.95, which if I choose to do, GameFly will send me the original case and manual.
I’ll post another update once I get a few rounds in of returning and requesting other games.
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January 13th, 2006
According to the the theinquirer.net, HD porn is on it’s way to the Xbox360.
A production company, High Def Home Entertainment (HDHE), in conjunction with Arrow Productions, is set to release “Deep Throat” in 720p HD. They will ship 2 DVDs, one standard low-rez and the other encoded with Windows Media (WMV) 720p files.
As we all know, the Xbox360 is the only mainstream home electronics device capable of playing windows WMV files.
The inquirer story recounts that:
Arrow was in the middle of cleaning it up when they found the original masters, so they threw out what they had done and used the clean copy. They ended up with the first new copy of the movie in decades, all in glorious HD. For the XBox360. Only for the XBox360.
There is also another story here discussing plans by another company, Lurid, to also provide porn in HD. They were showing off their latest setup at the AVN show this year:
Lurid was giving away an XBox360 on their stand because it is one of the only consumer devices out there that can do HD movies at the consumer level. In the above picture, they are streaming smut from a MCE05 PC to an 360, and as you can clearly see from the pictures, the quality is great. You can see every little [not a chance that this will make it in, so I will censor it myself], and the donkey too. Without Microsoft and the XBox360 team, we would not have true high quality filth, thanks guys.
Porn has been the killer app for film, vhs, dvds, and broadband internet access. Will it be the same for the Xbox 360 ?
Technorati Tags: xbox360, hd-dvd, hd porn, Deep Throat, Lurid, High Def Home Entertainment warning: some technorati links may not be work-safe
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January 13th, 2006
As we discussed the HD-DVD add-on the other day, we had no idea that Blu-Ray was even a posibility.
But Peter Moore, Microsoft’s dean of all things Xbox, made some shocking statements to a Japaneese site called ITmedia. Moore was quoted as saying that Microsoft would offer their external DVD player in Blu-Ray format if somehow the standard war settled on Blu-Ray.
Microsoft reps were quick to go in to damage control saying:
“Microsoft firmly stands behind the HD-DVD format as the best choice for our consumers, the question of whether the Xbox 360 has the flexibility to adapt to consumers’ needs is a different issue entirely.”
The statment also mentioned that the Xbox 360 is:
“a future-proofed system–one that allows us to add features as consumers demand them.”
This next gen DVD format war will be interesting to watch - that’s for sure !
Technorati Tags: xbox360, hd-dvd, blu-ray, hdtv
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January 12th, 2006
Peter Moore — Microsoft’s head of Interactive Entertainment — made some very bold statements at CES this year. Along with the HD-DVD announcement, Moore made the claim that 90% of Xbox 360 owners either have an HDTV or are planning on buying one within 6 months. His exact quote was:
“In fact, Xbox 360 is the killer app for HDTV adoption. It’s driving HDTV monitor sales. A recent study concluded that 9 out of 10 Xbox 360 owners have either purchased or intend to purchase an HDTV in the next six months. And 90 percent of them say that it was Xbox 360 that is the primary reason for making that purchase, 90 percent of them say it’s about Xbox 360.”
GamesDaily Biz and Ars Technia made mention of it as well. While all of us here have embraced the next gen console, and feel that getting an HDTV is a must, we do wonder if that 90% is accurate.
Technorati Tags: xbox 360, hdtv, hd-dvd
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January 9th, 2006
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