Late Night Consoling
Over the weekend I had a bit of a crisis, as when I popped in my shiny new review copy of Morrowind: GOTY Edition into my Xbox it crashed on me repeatedly. At first I assumed I had gotten a dud game disc, but after looking around online I was horrified to discover that I had fallen victim to the dreaded Thompson Drive. Apparently buying a launch Xbox was something of a crap shoot, and I was one of the unlucky ones to wind up with a craptacular Thompson DVD drive. Apparently after a few years of solid use the thing starts to go south, and the first place you'll see this is with a select few game discs, one of which happens to be Morrowind: GOTY. Other problem games include GTA: Vice City (which I verified on mine), Crimson Skies, Rainbow Six 3, Amped 2 and a growing legion of others as well (including an increasing majority of new titles). I also started to see issues in other games, as The Simpsons: Hit and Run kept telling me I had a defective disc. So I found myself presented with two options: I could either send it back to Microsoft and pay $90 for them to fix it, or I could just go buy a new console. I opted for the latter. So yesterday I bought an Xbox memory card and transferred my save games and Xbox Live account over to it. Then I marched into my local GameStop with my Xbox and explained the situation to them. As the console worked perfectly fine with every game they tried in it, they were happy to buy it back, and gave me $100 for it. I then bought a new one for $79 (minus some additional credit I got by selling some other stuff), and when I plugged in this new system, it worked like a charm. And as an added bonus, I now have two ho-hum games to play on it. Apparently this is a very widespread defect, as shown by browsing the Technical Issues section of the official Xbox Forums, and I'm very disappointed that Microsoft has never made any real concessions to unfortunate souls like me who had this problem. The best I heard was from a couple of people who got Microsoft to pay for the repairs, but only after filing a formal complaint with the Better Business Bureau. But I'm too impatient for that, so I'm just glad to have a working system again.
| Final Fantasy XII Unveiled It seems like today there's only one real news item, and that's Square Enix's official unveiling of Final Fantasy XII. Aside from the expected story and character revelations, there were some interesting new details released, including word that the Final Fantasy game the kids in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance are crooning over is in fact FFXII, and that the game utilizes a true 3D camera (a series first). Most distressing for this FF fanboi is the news that Nobuo Uematsu is going to be limited to writing a single song for the game's soundtrack. For details and images, head to GameSpot, GameInformer, 1UP, GameSpy, IGN, and of course, FF12.com, Square's official site for the game. Oh, and we've got shaky cam footage of the unveiling video up at FileShack, courtesy of Ruliweb. |
| Wal-Mart Dropping GameCube Price? GameSpy Daily is reporting (by way of an anonymous source) that uber-retailer Wal-Mart is planning on offering a special GameCube bundle in time for next week's Black Friday, which is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. If correct, the bundle will feature a black GameCube with the Zelda pack-in and carrying case for a mere $80. |
| EA Dominates GameSpot has posted a list of the top 15 game publishers of the year, and as you would expect, Electronic Arts is well in the lead with nearly $600 million in sales and some 20% of the total market. Rounding out the top five are Nintendo at #2, followed by SCEA, Atari and THQ. |
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| Tecmo Making the Money Thanks in part largely to the continued success of the Dead or Alive franchise, Tecmo announced today a hefty profit for the first half of 2003, which is a whopping 40% more than the same period from last year. That's not bad considering this is one of the rare Japanese developers who have firmly committed to the Xbox platform. |
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| Acclaim Losing the Money On the other side of the coin is Acclaim, which announced losses of $4 million on revenues of $41.3 million for the second quarter of the year. That's never good to hear, but the more ominous number is that total revenue figure, which is down from $54.1 million from last year. Ouch. |
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| New Kirby in the Works I haven't heard a whole lot of positive buzz about Kirby's Air Ride (aside from its LAN support), but nonetheless, Nintendo has apparently confirmed that a new Kirby game is in the works. Note that this game will have to be made without the input of creator Masahiro Sakurai, who left Hal Labs earlier this year. |
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| Unlock Snoop Dogg in True Crizzizle Team Xbox has posted instructions for unlocking the playable incarnation of Snoop Dogg in Activision's True Crime. Actually, they're really not all that helpful, as the instructions start off with, "collect the 30 bones scattered throughout the city." |
| Blimey, that's an engine! |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
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| 1UP is the latest site to preview the Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition disc, which should be arriving in stores this week and Cube.IGN has new media from Gotcha Force and 1080 Avalanche. |
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| New shots from Sega's Nightshade are up at GameSpot and Games Are Fun has new shots from Phantom Brave. |
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| CVG has posted new footage from F-Zero: Legend of Falcon. |
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| GameSpot has new impressions of Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (PS2, Xbox) and new shots from Star Trek: Shattered Universe (PS2, Xbox), CVG has new shots from Sonic Heroes (GC, PS2, Xbox), Cube.IGN goes hands-on with the same game and Team Xbox goes hands-on with R: Racing Evolution (GC, PS2, Xbox). |
Console Game of the Evening: Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest for the NES. "While the first Castlevania was purely action, Simon's Quest added the element of adventure that would be used more thoroughly in later games. Plus, the night and day concept was cool and creepy." (submitted by slax0r).
