Archive for August, 2005
31 is this years number. Am I happy about it? Ever since I hit the big “three O” last year I’ve honestly tried not to think about it. I miss being 21. Hell, 29 was great. Meh.
Last Saturday was my daughter’s 9th birthday, which again drives home my own birthday. She’s growing up so darn fast. We got her a full sized mountain bike as her big gift… 26″ wheels and 21 speeds. 9?! I was still riding BMX bikes until I was a teenager. Of course, I use to jump them and stack too… 
All and all, pretty mellow this year for both of us. She had a couple friends out for a movie and lunch, I got to work today. Can you guess who the big winner was? 
Although my Mom took me out to a nice lunch at Greens this afternoon. Yummy tofu! Thanks Mom!
August 30th, 2005
Do you have $700 to preorder an Xbox 360? EBGames sure would like to think you do. Ridiculous pricing. I really hate the preorder bundling that goes on. If someone wants to buy a system and a single game you can’t preorder it online. You’ll have to stand in line at 3:00am in front of Target in order to do so.
August 24th, 2005
The moment you’ve all been waiting for; the official U.S. Sony PSP 2.0 update is now available for your downloading pleasure.
Features include a web browser, AVC codec support, and wallpaper support. There are also several other changes included. Don’t forget that upgrading to 2.0 can not be reversed so if you enjoy homebrew on your PSP do not install the update at this time.
Download the update from Sony.
August 24th, 2005
Aspyr announced the cancellation of two games today, some CSI port and the expansion pack to the Black Hawk Down series. Neither of which I’d ever purchase but the reasons behind the cancelling of Delta Force: Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre is troubling.
The decision to put Team Sabre on hold was more of a monetary decision. The original Delta Force: Black Hawk Down game did so poorly on the Mac, there simply was no way Aspyr could turn a profit on the expansion pack.
Ouch. This is not good, not good at all in my humble opinion. Why? Well, Aspyr then stated they’re focused on bringing “A” titles to the Mac, like The Sims 2 or Star Wars Battlefront. Hmm. What if I don’t like the current “A” flavor of the month? What if I want something like Pirates! or KOTOR II? I’m a mobile gamer, I enjoy playing in various locations around the house or when I’m on the bus or away for the weekend. I bring my Powerbook and handheld consoles everywhere. I want to play great games on my Powerbook and I refuse to own another PC laptop.
Who decides what is an “A” title versus a “B” title anyway? I know the Black Hawk series sold somewhat well on the PC but why was the first game ported to Mac anyway? The game was released during a period where the Mac was getting a flood of new FPS (first person shooter) games, BH just got lost on the shelf. We need big titles, that have massive PC ad campaigns. We need simultaneous releases of big “A” titles. Blizzard has finally started to develop Mac and PC versions of their games at the same time. This was not always the case. I remember waiting for years for the original Diablo and Starcraft. Aspyr, I know you’re hiring developers amd I know Blizzard doesn’t have a huge team of Mac developers, but you need to start slimming down those porting times. We need weeks, not months of lag time. We need patches released in a much quicker fashion than never or years later. We’re still waiting for a Homeworld 2 patch for Tiger. What about Punkbuster support for Raven Shield? Star Wars Battlefront online fix? These are your big titles, where is the support? It took more than year for you guys to release the much needed Battlefield 1942 patch and look what happened? It created a fire storm of support for the year and half old title. Yet, you’re still selling it for over $60 with the expansion pack Secret Weapons. Where’s the complete deluxe package like the PC has for $20?
I really hope that Mac gaming continues to “survive”. With the dismissal online feature set of an “A” title like Star Wars Battlefront lacking GameSpy support (that hurts big time) not to mention it being a year behind the PC and console versions. How can people be buying Battlefront without GameSpy? Hell, the PS2 version uses GameSpy AND allows you to play on any available PC server and the Mac version can’t even manage to get Mac to Mac play working out of the box correctly. Add in Apple moving to Intel chipsets, the future doesn’t look so bright for the Mac publishers staying power. It’s very frustrating to be a Mac gamer sometimes and when I hear about game cancellations it gets even more aggravating because of all the missed opportunities I see. Someone needs to right this ship and do it fast.
August 23rd, 2005
Microsoft announced the XBox 360 pricing and configurations today much to the despair of their loyal fan base (all 3 million of them). M$ decided to pull a very stupid move and fragment the user base by having two configurations, one with a hard drive and one without. Earth to Microsoft, you do realize Sony tried this by shipping a hard drive after market and it crashed and burned. What in the hell do you think is going to happen with this fragmentation? Without a hard drive you won’t be able to download stuff from XBox Live, hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t even log into XBL without a hard drive. You won’t be able to get updates or patches to games, try demos or buy from the XBL marketplace… stupid, stupid move M$. Dumb.
Major Nelson of XBox Live fame is getting a lot of attention today, go give him some more. And for the record, I hadn’t planned on getting a 360 at launch, I’m certainly not going to now. Avoid at all costs people.
August 17th, 2005
After going up to Grass Valley this weekend to visit family and pick up some, we all came home Sunday night with the flu. Yuck! Apparently we left some behind in GV too 
We’re finally starting to feel better again and I’m heading back to work tomorrow so things should be back to normal soon, whatever normal is anyway.
August 16th, 2005
Update: Download the 2.0 firmware from Sony.
Sony has posted a message on their official U.S. Playstation boards, stating that the Sony 2.0 PSP update will not be available until the week of August 15th. So for everyone hitting Snapturtle today for the update, sorry fellas. Try again on Monday.
August 12th, 2005
A Korean man died from playing a game more than 50 hours straight online. Wow. Sadly, this is not the first time something like this has happened in Korea. Online games are extremely addictive. This guy quit his job to play more online games, instead he lost his life. Sad.
August 9th, 2005
CGW and 1Up.com have a feature showing you where to download 102 free games, including the old school yet still great Maniac Mansion. Some of them aren’t technically free as they’ve listed free trials and mods for retail games.
August 8th, 2005
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