Stuart's Weblog

Finally realised that to trial Xbox LIVE Gold you need to create a new account – I never got a trial because I imported my old Xbox account.

Underwhelmed by the new Gold-only features: Facebook is alright – I like the photo browser, but doesn’t appear to be integrated; Twitter is an #epicfail without a browser for following links (my phone can do this, ferchristsakes!) and likewise doesn’t seem to integrate with anything else; and the Sky player stutters even on lowest quality whilst I can watch BBC iPlayer in HD without problems.

In all, anyone who upgrades to Gold for these features (which can’t even be trailed without) will be disappointed – Microsoft should stick to selling Gold accounts for multiplayer access, rather than convincing people to upgrade for gimmicks.

(Even better, PS3 multiplayer is free!)

If I were Microsoft I’d give people an hour of Gold/multiplayer membership a day, but require a payment to upgrade to permanent 24×7 multiplayer. This would let casual gamers get a feel for multiplayer (and so probably end up selling more Gold subscriptions) without removing the impetus from hard-core players to pay for the service. Simple!

This Christmas, I received a single video-gaming related item: Prince or Persia, on the Xbox 360. Actually, I can’t remember the last game I bought for the Wii… it may have been Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Why this (not so) sudden apathy for the saviour of the games console? Because after a dream start to a console which has stratospherically exceeded even their own expectations (and perhaps herein lie the seeds of the problem), Nintendo have failed to capitalise on their lead at almost every juncture.

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Time was, you bought a new Nintendo game and got a code with it, which you entered into a Nintendo website and got points in return. Never mind that anything worth buying with these points sold out immediately (the used to give away Gameboy Players for the GameCube, and certain NDS games) – people were generally happy. Or, at least, not gnashing their teeth in frustration.

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(or “Why you should never change your hardware platform”)

As reported at play, GTA IV was tested as being 100% compatible with the current model of PS3, but unfortunately not with any of the older (60Gb) versions which retained PS2 compatibility via hardware custom chips.

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There are several things which annoy me about Nintendo right now… amongst them the shameless price-gouging for Virtual Console games, the DRM which prevents you from backing up your saved games from your console to your SD card (what was the thinking behind this one??), the hopelessly slow SD write-speed when you do actually find something that you can copy, the inability to run copied data from the SD card, the lack of any form of online mass-storage support – I could go on.

However, right now, it is Nintendo Europe who are in my cross-hairs – and I’m left wondering exactly what they think they’re playing at.

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This is without a doubt the best video review of a game that I’ve ever seen

Genius.

Sometimes, you discover things that realy make you blood boil – especially if apparently motivated by thoughtlessness rather than by design…

Take, for example, the Nintendo DS: an excellent handheld games console (and web browser ). At first glance, it has an excellent pair of screens, it has lots of innovative an interesting games, and it really has hearts and minds behind it. In addition, the battery life is just incredible. The coup de grâce is that the console is not region-locked, so imported games (which are invariably released months sooner than UK games) can be played without problems… or so it seemed.

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I just thought I’d mention it

The new broswer requires a System Update, then an Application Update of the browser from the Shopping Channel.

The actual browser is (now) a joy to use – the (auto) scaling and scrolling work perfectly, there are no black borders, and the control bar can either auto-hide and be manually toggled. The entire UI is much-streamlined too.

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Although not widely publicised, Sony has quietly let slip that they have dropped hardware backwards-compatibility from the European PlayStation3 as a cost-reducing measure, even though the more affordable 20Gb variant will not be available and the 60Gb console is likely to cost more here than in either Japan or the Americas.

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