Sunday, July 08, 2007

The Mole: Peter Moore is your friend


Money, money, money, money...MONEY! - If you don't visit xbox.com very often you might have missed the open letter from Microsoft big wig and gaming tattoo aficionado Peter Moore. In it he addresses the annoying problem some 360's have had of getting up off of your entertainment center and dying a tragic death. If you've ever had a hardware failure with three red flashing lights (aka The Ring of Death), Moore has some good news for you. Effective immediately the 360 warranty has been retroactively extended to three years and applies to new or previously purchased consoles.
.
What does this mean to you? Nothing if you haven't had a problem yet, but for guys like my brother (who a couple of months ago had to send his 360 to Microsoft to get repaired) it means you'll be getting a large chunk of change back. It also means that if you have any problems with your new or used 360 you can send it to Microsoft and they'll repair it for free (as long as its within three years of the purchase date). Go to http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/petermooreletter.htm to see Moore's letter and a link to the detailed warranty FAQ.
.
Still #1 in Australia! - Coming as a surprise to absolutely no one, the Wii is the number one selling console in Japan. What is a surprise is how bad its thumping its Japanese competition, the PS3. According to an article on cnnmoney.com, Wii's are outselling PS3's 6:1. In April the ratio was 4:1 and in May it was 5:1. Ouch! So how is the Xbox 360 doing? Not good, the Sega Dreamcast is still more popular.
.
Random Crap - The magazine Entertainment Weekly graded each next-gen console in a recent article written by gaming journalist Geoff Keighley. Here's their midterm grades: Xbox 360 - A-, Nintendo Wii - B-, PlayStation 3 - B-. Look through the magazine at a Barnes and Noble or Walgreens for the reasoning behind the grades...Sierra recently announced that "World in Conflict" will be out for the PC on September 18...rumors have been floating around online that a $100 price drop for the PS3 is going to go into effect the week of July 15. Sony has denied it but its long been rumored that the PS3 price will go down sometime this year and with E3 right around the corner, the timing sounds right...Atari is working on a video game version of the block stacking game Jenga for the Wii and DS...a new "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" trailer will be shown at E3. Yeah!...SCEA recently announced that a Blu-ray version of "Warhawk" will sell with a Bluetooth headset for $59.99 when the game goes on sale August 28th. There will also be a version downloadable from the PlayStation Network, no price on that has been announced..."The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening will appear as the final boss in the "The Simpsons" video game.
.
And finally - Eli Shayotovich, an Associate Editor at GameDaily will be my in-studio guest (and by in-studio I mean sitting in my kitchen, in front of my laptop) for this weeks podcast. I'm pretty sure E3 will come up.
.

No comments: