October Sales Data – Christmas Season Predictions

Nintendo down 50%, Sony Leads The Month Sony led the month of October with over 990,000 unit sales pulling ahead of Microsoft by almost 230,000 sales in the last two weeks.  Two contributing factors to Sony pulling ahead were most likely the launch of the Playstation Move, Sony’s motion controller, and anticipation of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360, with people opting to pre-order the Xbox 360S 4GB and 250GB bundles with the Kinect device. More… Read On »

Stores Gearing Up Early For Black Friday With Deals

Online retailers are gearing up early and offering “Black Friday” deals well ahead of the mark this November in an effort to boost sales for the holiday season.  Retailers are starting to push out big ticket items to the net savvy over three weeks early with some deals.  Let’s take a look:

Walmart.com

Walmart’s online store will be offering deals with its Amazing Walmart Electronics Event starting on November 6th this year, with LCD TVs being at the front of some amazing bargains.  One of note is a 55″ Vizio LCD sporting 1080p at 60Hz for $898.  As well as the Sony PS3 Move Bundle for $399 which includes a $50 Walmart Gift Card.

These deals are listed as while supplies last, so get up early on Saturday to score the best deals you can find.

Newegg.com

Newegg is holding a Black November event this year, with deals changing daily including sales on GPS units, computer parts and accessories, George Foreman grills, cell phones, electric shavers and more.

Amazon.com

Amazon is holding a Get Three Games For The Price Of Two sale on over 800 video games on their site.  Many popular and new games are available to be purchased under this sale including Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2, and Rock Band 3.

Slickdeals.net is also reporting a deal on Target‘s website to purchase 3 Kinect games for $85 shipped.  Although a recent check has the games out of stock, I’ll be watching this one closely for my own holiday shopping.

With some key retailers ramping up the deals early, you can bet that many others will follow suit.  You may want to tune into slickdeals.net and bfads.net for the latest and greatest in holiday deals.

5 Squenix Games I’d Like To See On XBLA

To be totally honest, each console, the Xbox 360 and the PS3, both have their merits as a console.  When it came down to decision time for me to jump in, there were many reasons why I chose the 360 over the PS3, and I’m still to this day very happy that I did.

However, Squenix seems to still be very tight knit with Sony.  They’ve released quite a few games in the last few years that were either PSOne or earlier console releases that don’t seem to find their way to Xbox Live Arcade.  And this is really disappointing to me.

But if Squenix ever did decide to change their mind, these are what I’d love to see:

1) Final Fantasy VII (PS1) – Who can’t love this game?  Millions bought it.  I know I did.  And I still enjoy playing it to this day occasionally on my PS2.

2) Parasite Eve (PS1) – This was just announced to be coming to the PSN yesterday.  A cult classic in my eyes.  Awesome gameplay and a compelling story.

3) Chrono Trigger (SNES) – How can you forget the loveable characters and enjoyable storyline of this classic?  Squenix at its best!

4) Einhander (PS1) – A throwback to the good old sidescrolling shooter.  Awesome!

5) Kingdom Hearts (PS2) – Why this didn’t make it to the original Xbox is beyond me.  But an awesome game nevertheless.

Could The Gran Turismo 5 Delay Hurt Sony Sales This Christmas?

Recently, Sony came out and stated that Gran Turismo 5 would be yet again delayed from it’s November 5 release to “Holiday 2010”.  With just three weeks to go, there is speculation aplenty as to what is causing this many times delayed game to be pushed back at the last minute.

According to VGChartz, Kazunori Yamauchi posted on his Twitter, “Apologies for the delay, It’s because time and labor were spent ironing the kinks out of [the game’s] complex system. I’m really sorry. Everyone, it’s inexcusable… Wait a little longer.”

It kind of sounds like they found a pretty critical issue with the game at the last minute.  But only time will tell.  But what does this do to their Christmas lineup?

VGChartz has listed over 200,000 pre-orders for GT5, so while it’s not a blockbuster game for the PS3 like Call of Duty: Black Ops, it’s still a flagship title with a lot of anticipation and buzz about it.  And with any flagship title, any console maker can be guaranteed that many of those pre-release orders will also come with game sales.

Sony’s 2010 sales lead has been precipitously slipping ever since Microsoft released the Xbox 360S this last June.  And while the Move has already garnered 460,000 sales in it’s first month, the highly anticipated Kinect sensor is expected to do far better, even more so with the recent news that major retailers globally have been selling out of their allocated pre-orders.  Sony needs to bolster their holiday lineup if they’re going to maintain the ever so slight sales lead that was at one point over a million unit gap.

Looking at the presales charts so far, Sony could very well lose out to Microsoft at the end of the year if it’s only exclusive in the top ten pre-sales is pushed back too far.  Those software sales may be reduced with people opting to purchase different games instead, or even worse, forgoing the purchase of a PS3 altogether for one of its competitors.

Hopefully we’ll hear some new news soon.  But if Sony doesn’t get GT5 out of the door by Black Friday, I think it could very well have an impact on their year end sales.

Halo: Reach – Forgeworld: Forge For Dummies

Bungie’s swan song in the Halo Universe is here.  And while I’m not going to bore you with how epically awesome the gameplay is.  How fantastic the new additions such as the armor abilities, new weapons and vehicles make this final chapter, or how cool it is that your character updates in the game with every new piece of bling you slap on your your guy (or gal) in the Armory is, I will cover one awesome feature that I’ve been having quite a bit of fun with.

Forge.

Not for the uber Halo pros anymore.  Gone are the days of stacking items on top of each other and deleting the bottom pieces to get that bridge piece to hang in the air on it’s own.  And gone are the days of spending hours upon hours building a map to find that the last piece joining it all together is about a foot off and having to scrap the entire thing and start over.

Nope.  Built me a map in two days.  And it’s pretty damned fun.

Bungie took the ideas that the community had and ran with them like the wind.  Objects now can be placed in a Fixed, Phased or Normal.  Objectives can be added and game types such as racing, stockpile, and king of the hill are available to set up from the go.

Fixed maintains the object in the physical world.  If you bump another object, things will get knocked around.  But once placed, either in the air or on the ground, it will maintain that position at all times.

Normal behaves like the original Forge in Halo 3.  If you pick up the object and place it in the air, it will fall to the ground.  But the stacking glitch works just as it did before.

However, the really cool addition is the Phased option.  This gives you not only the ability to place objects wherever you would like, but you can embed them in other objects.  You want a terrace on the side of the cliff?  Done.  You want to splice multiple pieces together that wouldn’t normally fit the way you want them to?  Done.  I used the Phased option quite a bit for my map.

You also have the ability to fine tune your positioning.  Click the left analog stick and a normal bump becomes a miniscule nudge for those super precise alignments.  Click the right stick and you can zoom in for even more precision.

Bungie has also released a list of what you need to be able to create maps for the newer gametypes such as King of the Hill, Stockpile, and even Territories and Invasion on their newly established Forgeworld Fan Page.  My only complaint is that Firefight was not included in the list of gametypes you can build maps for.

As I mentioned, I am not an experienced map maker in Forge.  But for me, it took two days of layout, placement, and testing before I came up with my first good map, Longshot.  Which of course, you can download here if you so wish.

And then there’s Forgeworld itself.  The level is super huge.  Travelling from one side to the other takes a few minutes by Falcon, and to show off how resilient it is, Bungie even provided some out of the box maps they designed themselves for you to play with.

In all honesty, I could probably go on forever about Forgeworld.  But what I can tell you is this, once you start building your own maps, it becomes just as addictive as the rest of the game.  Give it a whirl.