hex65000

@ Hyper Eye I have heard that you can install the extra memory into the commercially available XBox units (the solder pads are there, just no ICs), and you can take advantage of the memory upgrade in the form of minor performance improvements in the system. Of course, getting and installing parts with that fine a pitch to them would be a pretty harrowing experience, a better question is it even worth the bother? Hex. [ Just doing something or another... ]

Wash... Hex. [ Just popping this up after it drops off the first page. Which is around a 4+ day interval. I have better things to do than spam the forum. ]

The pm has been sent... Hex. [ First or last... it's still the end of the line. ]

It is all Wii gold box specials today on Amazon. Just a heads up. Hex. [ Finally decked out his Wii Fit last week... it sat in the shipping box for (get this) 15 months! ]

I always get nervous about rarity guides. I like to occasionally poke fun at Digital Press because if someone over there is selling something it almost always has a reference to the value and rarity in the guide. It's a dangerous thing in that "Guide != Bible" . You have probably seen my rant on the value of games and how I personally value games and it's just not worth repeating. Seriously though, I am still finding out about PS2 titles that I didn't know existed. I grabbed one of the Growlancer titles out of curiosity and preordered "Syphon Filter" and "Despicable Me" just because they seemed worth the $20 gamble. (Growlancer was a bit more... ) I am disappointed about the used copy of Red Faction I got, the seller was not up front on the condition of the disc. It's probably just fine, but still -- it's the principal of being clear on what you're selling. I think Puzzle Quest is coming today or Saturday. I hope to eventually get my DS version back from my friend. <shrug> Hex. [ Played Bayonetta last night anyway. It's like asking yourself, what if Kratos was a supermodel who was into torture and gunplay. ]

Some of these ending tonight... Hex. [ Wonders what he'll do this weekend that will be useful... ]

To get things back on track after Shawn dropped a deuce... Out of curiosity, has anyone else played Xyanide or Yager? Xyanide is a shooter that is reminiscent of maybe Robotron or Geometry wars. You can shoot in any direction and there are several branches you can take as you fly around. It's pretty and from a quick poke at Amazon you can download the soundtrack and it looks like it saw a PSP release at some point. Yager is an okay space/futuristic air combat game; I didn't get very far in the game. Some of the missions are pretty tough and you tended to be compressed for time to handle objectives. Still, what I saw of the story was good, as were the visuals. What I'd call a good cheap OK game. Both of these are available on Amazon under $25 new, and if you hunt around, Yager is likely to be really cheap. Both are decent titles for the X-Crate. @ Hyper-Eye: I had no idea you had done so much work with the XBox1 -- very cool. I'd like to poke my systems with a stick in my copious free time, and may PM you about softmoding my machine when I'm in a good space to do so. Hex. [ Does more damage just hanging out than he even knew he was capable of... ]

After reading two pages of back and forth, I'm still not convinced that this is for the "greater good" of anything other than EA's bottom line. Just some quick calculations... and related thoughts. $10 is ~$16.6% of $60. Regardless, only one person can use a seat (license) at any one time. If I buy a game, I cannot play it at the same time as the person I loan/sell the game to. Unless one of us is pirating the game. I've heard the car analogy before and I think it works quite well -- I'm going to roll with it. Let's see, only one person at a time can use a car or any other single person device (power tool, office chair, pair of pants) It was bought new at some point, and can be resold to another person with reasonable ease. Seems pretty simple to me. So, I bought my wife's car from her that she bought new from the manufacturer. Let's say she paid $20,000 for it. And that money goes to the auto maker to do with it as they see fit, and I buy it from her for $15,000. Oh no! The auto manufacturer didn't make any money off of me buying the car from my wife. It's a gosh darn tragedy! What will they do? Easy, they take away the unessential or convenient items from the car in the middle of the night. Radio, Sunroof, power windows, the rear defroster, and maybe some of the air in the tires to make my life harder if I don't pay their fee. So, based on the calculation above, I can use my less feature rich car that had more features before when my wife paid full price, or I can pay ~16.6% of the original value of the car which is around $3,300 . Of course, the argument is that they will use the money to encourage better designs and support the maintenance that must be occasionally done to the car. Another possible "elephant in the room" is that modern games are simply too expensive. We can go on and on about what it costs to produce a game nowadays and the number of people involved, but from a consumer standpoint I'm leery of paying $60 for a new game. You can do a ton of research and look at reviews until you're blue in the face. Even then, I know many members on this board regularly make fun of the big review sites because they are effectively corrupted by publishers vying for inflated scores on their latest offering. (Pay to play anyone?) Also, if you listen to Gamestop, you're told that the game you bought today is worthless tomorrow. Best to simply throw it away -- or better yet sell it to them for a pittance -- and buy what's HOT right this second, or better yet preorder it. Because EA may not produce enough copies of Madden YYZ. I for one don't get excited over spending $60 a pop for a game on a regular basis. Especially when something looks interesting, but has mixed reviews. I try to think in terms of risk/reward for my purchase. If the game I buy is a turd and I spend $60, I'm going to be hella pissed. At $40, still annoyed and I'll take it as a lesson learned. $25 and under it becomes a concern, but tolerable. This model is based SOLELY on my income and spending habits. If I had more disposable income, perhaps that scale would move up in price, and if I had less disposable income the scale would move even further down to where $60 had better be a good game or else. So in the context of this, I don't feel inclined to spend $60 for a new item when it comes out very often, and if that's the case, my options are wait and hope that the price comes down or perhaps see if I can score a used copy somewhere for an acceptable price. There is no "entitlement" Simply a reduced level of demand for a product that is below the supply price when it is new. EA is simply out to break this model. Also, while this is currently restricted to online play, it's not a big mental stretch to simply lock half the game out without the new activation code. It's just the beginning of the transition to media-less gaming. In the "free market" companies who are eager to adopt this model will wind up with fewer of my gaming dollars. I'm sure there will be enough people to support these models and keep them afloat. My nephew is easily one at this point in his life. I'd also say that a greater than average chunk of AAer's will rail against medialess gaming, but we are no longer the target audience. Our kids are, and we are simply an added bonus if they can fool enough of us long enough. Hex. [ Man, that was long too. What a drag. ]

And I'm sure most of those are probably sold at the store that still carries them around where I live. Of course, that store is also the one that insisted on selling Disgaea for the PS2 at 100 dollars up until the Greatest Hits version came out. It's back up to 49.95-59.95 at this point tho. Whether or not I actually buy from them however will depend on whether or not they have sealed copies of the games. At that price, I won't accept anything that's been even partially gutted. You could just get the GH version for under $20 new right now on Amazon. Or even check to see if any of the used copies they have for sale are the original print if you're set on that kind of thing. I know this discussion has occurred before concerning the Greatest Hits versions of stuff. Honestly, I went from preferring the GH version in hopes of it including any last minute bug fixes, to preferring the original version because it doesn't interrupt the flow of the collection cosmetically, to don't care because the originals are typically more expensive and the data on the CD seems to be the same. Usually the only irritating thing is the manual and CD art may be over simplified. I'm not sure if that's as true for the PS2 as it was for the PS1. If I come across an original version for cheap, I'll consider grabbing it, but it's not worth my time to actively chase them. (IMO) Hex. [ Wound up doing the button mash last night... ]

"Signature Series" Since it's a series of signatures, does that not imply that there is more than one person's signature involved? Just sayin'. I agree with Tempest, it needs some silver somewhere or at the very least a brushed metal look. Regardless, too rich for my blood. Hex. [ The Atari 2600 Titanium. The next generation of "big sexy"... ]

I'm amazed at the comments. It seems at least from the samples I read that EA isn't getting a lot of moral support for this move. That shouldn't shock most of us, but here's the thing. Remember the story about the kid who was taking Gamestop to court over Mass Effect 2? And how it was pretty much the same thing. Some downloadable snippet that he got screwed out of because it was used. What scared me there was all the comments who called the kid an idiot and that he should have bought it new and supported EA. So which is really the face of the modern gamer on the Internet? With the stuff like Capcom's "always on the Internet" requirement and these microtransactions that EA loves so I'm feeling pretty alienated. I admit that I don't know how well I can resist the many shiny things they sell, so we'll see, but right now I definitely feel less compelled to support some of these big publishers and their half-baked turds. That makes me sad because there is a part of me that is excited about "Transformers: War for Cybertron" but it's Activision running that show and it is starting to strike me as a Team Fortress derivative. As far as Gamestop supporting it, most likely they'll keep their crappy prices the same and put up a disclaimer that any D/L content may not be available with their used games. I believe that they work pretty closely with publishers, to keep the hype over the latest and greatest going, good quantity purchase discount prices and the like. To irritate one of the biggest publishers may be unwise for them. So they play yes men, keep turning a profit as long as there is some media to turn in, and they put up a disclaimer. A dollar says that's how this will play out in the short term. The point was made that it's not like we don't have anything to play. This is true. The problem arises with the collector mindset that there must be something to show for your effort in hunting down an item.I'm not sure what the result of total media elimination will result in. It's still too early based on the reception that the PSP GO had, but we (as a collective of gamers) are yet to learn that lesson of when the corp you supported shuts off the spigot you will end up with nothing except that you hope that you can buy it all over again for the generation they are selling you today. I hope that I am wise enough to spot that point and/or jump ship/rebel against a crappy licensing policy. Hex. [ By reading this post you accept the terms of the license agreement which tells you to start thinking for yourself dammit! ]

If you look at the other videos they have available, one of them talks about the costuming for the characters. While not nearly as cool, it's clear they really put some thought and effort into capturing the details of each character. (I didn't know that Akuma's belt was actually just a rope, and I caught the lettering on Ryu's belt, but not that it was the same characters on the signs you see on his stage in SF2) Hex. [ Must now make himself useful before the day is done... ]

Despite its problems, I kind of like the original XBox. When it came out, it had the most powerful architecture of the bunch. You had a hard drive to store your save games, and a few other nice-to-haves. However, it really is just a closed system PC. I typically did favor buying multiplatform games for this machine over the PS2 or GameCube. Too bad there was nothing spectacular in terms of RPGs. Metal Dungeon is pretty bad, and I haven't tried Blackstone yet. (Which I suspect is also pretty bad.) Driving, action, fighters, 3D platformers, and of course sports are reasonably plentiful though. So the plan is simple. Just like in the PS2 thread, post either in this thread or in the gallery your XBox 1 photos. I'm kinda archiving photos of my stuff in the gallery here. For the record, I just finished Stubbs the Zombie and Red Faction 2 over the past two weeks. Both were decent for what they are. You just have to remember that this isn't the "current gen" in terms of visuals and enjoy the ride for what it is. Hex. [ Hasn't decided what to start playing next. Eternal Sonata has been rotating in and out of my queue lately though... ]

Got tipped off to this through Facebook. Wasn't sure where to put this topic-wise, so if it needs to move, sorry about that. Just a 3 minute short clip on Youtube, but it's solid. Hex. [ Drank too much OJ this morning... ]

Well, I went ahead and uploaded shots of my XBox1 collection. Is there any interest in starting a thread for it? Also my DS, PSP, and PS2 collections can be seen in the gallery. There's a pending additional photo for the PS2, but I'm waiting for the games to arrive in the mail. Hex. [ Was playing Red Faction 2 and while he wasn't paying attention the story threw a curve ball... ]