Rest in Peace Zune

           

      Zune has become Xbox Music. Yes Zune is dead and it will be missed by the few that actually gave it a chance. Zune failed for one reason and one reason only. In a world where music services are cross platform Zune simply stayed on Windows and Windows Phone 7. Zune didn't even leave the country until very recently and that was only because of Windows Phone. So what has changed...? Well in short nothing. Xbox Music has the same exact problems Zune had and actually they took away features. Basically Zune was a Facebook for music. In theory you were supposed to share songs with friends and comment on what they were listening to. The Zune team even went to as far to implement something like Achievements which gave you a badge for listening to artists or songs a certain amount of times. It was a great concept failed execution. Basically Spotify is what Zune should of been, a complete social music experience. Xbox Music is going to suffer the same fate as Zune unless these problems are addressed and supposedly they are working on fixing it. Sometime soon a iOS and Android app are supposed to be released and when that day come Spotify will be dropped for good. Zunes  Xbox Music's song selection is far superior to Spotify's. Plus I'm still holding on to my $14.99 music subscription with 10 free songs a month. Xbox Music has promise, much like the Zune did but with the Xbox app a mess and no other phone support besides Windows Phone they don't have time to lose. It will be very interesting watch for sure. Stay tuned....

Bought a Vita

Ok I didn't just buy a Vita. I got it on launch day and I've had some time to mess with it and here are my impressions.

The Vita is a beautiful system. Huge crisp display, its just a portable powerhouse! The analog sticks are great as are the buttons. Its really how the OG PSP should of been. With Uncharted, Resistance and, Gravity Rush finally out the Vita has some heavy hitter games. But there are problems. The home screen is quite possibly the worst thing ever conceived. The bubbles are ugly and the whole thing looks terribly organized. The XMB was a much better interface thats a lot simpler and actually makes sense. Now when you think of any other system ever made and you put a game into the system the game pops up and you click it and you can play it. Not on the Vita. You put the game in and it installs. Ok well what does it install? Quite frankly I'm not sure it puts a bubble on your home screen and before you can play it has a live screen. A live screen is like a Facebook page for a game. It shows friends and people around that have played it and it shows informations on downloadable content and patches. Well thats one of the nicer things its cool to see everything about that game. Now so you play the game and you quit then pop the game out but wait! the bubble doesn't disappear. Thats right the stupid bubble stays there regardless of if the game is in or not. It looks just like a full downloaded game. It makes for great conversation when I show friends the Vita and they go to click on Uncharted but oh that game card isn't inserted please insert game card to play this game. Ok but how about when you have two games and there both installed but one of them is in the system. How do you know which is in there with out popping the game? Well the bubble glows right? No. It Spins? No. It literally does nothing! You have no clue which game is actually in there unless you remember or pop the game out. Now you may be thinking whats the big deal on just popping the game out? Well its a pain in the ass, the little flap is held on by some kind of rubber bands and you have to have some kind of nails to get the flap open. You take the game out look and see and pop it back in but wait the game has to apparently install something. So its quite a mess, the web browser is pretty much garbage and the keyboard is the UGLIEST THING IVE EVER SEEN! ITS LIKE PURPLE! What in the hell were they thinking!? The Netflix app is nice and the HD shows look really nice and run smooth. Haven't really messed with Skype but its a nice looking app. But where the Vita really shines is the games. Uncharted is really good. It looks like Uncharted 1 on the PS3 and plays much like it. You can tell the Vita isn't as powerful as the PS3 because of the animations in most of the games. They seem very PS2ish where there smooth but not lifelike. Most games I have do not have multiplayer which puzzles me as the PSP had quite a few when it launched. I think Sony has some work to do but the Vita looks promising the horse power is there to have great games, they just need to get out there. I think this is going to be a very important E3 for the Vita and with the rumors of PS Plus coming it should be very exciting!

On to Mac

So I finally got a mac. It is wonderful, the Macbook Pro isn't just good engineering its perfection. Everything just works. Its the beautiful marriage between software and hardware. This laptop is literally everything you will ever want or need in a laptop. Great looks, battery life (10hrs),power, and great volume for not actually seeing any speakers. I can play every game in my steam library that works on Mac. Now onto OSX. OSX is so simple that its actually hard to get used to. Your used to windows where after you buy something you have to go through menu after menu pop up after pop up to just make your computer work the way you want. When you want to install a program you download it then drag it to applications folder. If you want it gone what do you do? Why go to the add/remove programs of course! not! Actually you just right click on application, click move to trash, then empty trash, and ta-da no more program. Its really so simple and well worth the money. Around April or so I might buy an iMac and put windows on that so im not relying on my ever so great Gateway netbook which now catches your legs on fire for some reason must be the eight core processor knocking around in there (sarcasm) I'm now on the Mac and loving it. Just wish it didnt take me so long to switch.

State of the PSP Address

Many would say the PSP is dieing. Its not competing with the DS very well at all in North America and the amount of big games coming is dwindling. Though with my recent purchase of a PSP GO I must say the PSP has plenty of life in it if Sony would just let it live! The PS3's motto is "It only does everything" the PSP's should be "why not" You have to remember how old the PSP is. It came before the iPhone/iPod Touch. It came before the Xbox 360. So when you think of the things the PSP could do out of the box its pretty amazing. It could play video! View photos, music, and shortly after launch browse the web. You might think wow my cell phone does all this but also think, the PSP came out before iPods could play video! This is way back when that thing called iTunes used to only sell music! There was no apps, there was no tv or movie downloads. The PSP was the only place to get ground breaking 3D games, music, photos, videos, and internet. So why is it that the PSP is going down the tubes? The answer lies within Sony. The PSP's problems could be fixed so easily. They need games. Find some way to get EA, Ubi Soft, and Activision involved with the PSP again. Start getting a good flow of games out there. Once that happens drop the price. Make the Go $179 or even $200 give people an incentive to buy the GO. If people have to download games they cant pirate them. This makes developers happy, thus more games. Another thing is to add features. Make more movie formats available, such as; Divx and Xvid. When people can get there movies on something easily, the happier they are. Overhaul the web browser. Adopt Opera where everything is done on a server elsewhere. Bring on the YouTube and various other applications such as Twitter and Facebook. You don't have to go crazy just satisfy peoples needs. Which brings me back to the "why not" slogan. People might ask why would I want to connect my PSP to my TV? Why would I want to use Skype on my PSP? The answer is "why not" If its there and is something that could come in handy one day or if its something you use everyday the PSP has it. So why would you want a PSP? Well how about "Why Not"? The PSP is an awesome device. It has a giant crisp screen. The Go is very portable and comfortable to hold. Its really a revolutionary device stuck in the past because of Sony. The PSP has sold 60million units up to December, 2009. The PSP is no flop its far from one. Sony pumped life into the PSP with a large amount of high profile games last year no lets just see more. There are 60Million of us Sony make us happy.



`Also expect a few more posts about the PSP soon. I'm going to talk about games, I'm going to have a review for my Go coming soon, and maybe I'll do a few PSP feature videos.

Out with the Old in with the New

Today I finally got the one thing I've saved up for, A band new 32GB Zune HD. I must say this was one of my most wanted gadgets ever. I was super excited to get one today. The Zune is super sleek thinner than my Zune 8GB and ever so sexy. Packing a Nvidia Tegra chip the Zune HD has really fast and rich animations. It even does a cool little slide show when you have it docked. The new UI is hard to get used to, it recognizes flat finger input. Which is good in the long run but I guess i'm just used to using the tip of my finger. Your music is real easy to find since you can sort it by album, artist, song, genre, and by pressing on a letter which is the quickest way. Videos look really good and crisp on the OLED display. The radio even comes in better. Im not sure how to get to HD1 or HD2 like what i saw but ill figure it out. The web browser is nice and quick and from what i've seen its comparable to Safari on the iPhone. Finally the apps. Now there are like 8 apps out right now most of which are some shouddy games like chess, etc.. but there is also a weather and calculator app. Now on to the bad. It seems like my Zune's screen flickers... I dont know if it is or its just me. Also I bought the $100 dock package that includes all sorts pf stuff and it doesn't work real well with my Zune HD, the remote doesnt work. I can press play and songs will play but i'm supposed to be able to select different menus. Now the Indian lady at Zune support said charge it... I don't know what the hell thats going to do but ill try it. It also weirds out when you just set it on the dock. Like it will switch back and fourth and it wont stop. Ill have to restart it. Other than the dock it works flawlessly and was well worth the wait. Ill probably be taking it back tomorrow to exchange it but we'll see. So that's it for now I'll keep you updated!

New Toy!

While I was at work on Friday a new toy arrived at my house. It was my new laptop, the Gateway LT 3103u. This is one of those better netbooks that are basically a laptop. The screen is 11.6" which is bigger than what a netbook's can be and is at a higher resolution at 1336x768. Its a 16x9 screen so thats the reason for the odd resolution. Underneath the hood we have a 1.2 GHz AMD Athalon 64 processor couped with an ATI X1270. Yea its not going to be pumping Crysis out at 60FPS but its speed really does suprises me. It has 2GB of RAM and a 250GB Harddrive, oh and its running Windows Vista Home Basic and I'm debating if I should put the new Windows 7 beta on it. Overall it is very snappy, it takes about 30-40 seconds to boot which seems pretty fast to me. I have multiple programs open at once. I even did a stress test to see how much I could do and I was suprised. I had two games of Braid running, some music from the Zune software, a video playing in WMP, and was surfing the web and it was still running pretty smooth. Now I mentioned Braid so you may ask what other games have I tried? Well nothing real crazy. I bought Braid, Peggle, Plants vs Zombies, and all of those run great

. Though I did play a little Half Life 2 and here's a screen of the details ithas me running at. Now I'm not sure about the framerate but it runs pretty smooth.

It looks really good actually. I might even say Xbox 360 quality graphics though framerate is a little different story. But thats pretty much it. The computer is dead silent and doesn't heat my room so thats good. But overall I really like it. When I first got it and was using it, it seemed pretty slow then I took Norton off and bam instant speed burst. It doesn't play HD YouTube very well since thats pretty processor dependent. I really like it and for $400 you really cant go wrong. I would of liked to get that HP DV2 but that was like $800. Ill just end up getting a beefier desktop later on anyway. The only problem I have with this laptop is the battery life. It seems very short though I do have it in full bore. If I put it on power saver it says 6 hours but its really slow, will probably use if I'm just writing a paper or something. My satisfaction could not be higher, Im very suprised by the build quality of this Gateway laptop and I'm glad Gatewayy is getting back on there feet.

E3 2009 Sony/Microsoft

Well the big E3 is back. And it seems to be back with a bunch of stuff we can't have yet.. Alot of announced stuff coming in 2010. Though Sony and Microsoft really stole the show and Nintendo um.. not so much, they did better than last year but hell anything is better than last year. So here is a run down of what was announced.

Microsoft

Some big games most come out next year but it shows there is some life still kicking in the ol' Xbox 360.

~Alan Wake was finally shown off. looks very good they definitely scaled it down a bit and looks more constricted but it looks very promising. Coming in 2010.

~Like 58 more Halo games were shown.. well maybe 2. Halo ODST was shown looks pretty neat basically just more Halo. Also a teaser was shown for the new Halo game called Halo: Breach. Not much is known about the title. ODST comes in September and Breach comes in 2010.

~ Forza 3 was shown. Probably one of the worst kept secrets. Forza will have around 500 cars, the custom tuning from Forza 2 and some better damage effects. Comes out this year on 2 discs.

~Left 4 Dead 2 was also shown. Its based in the south has 4 new people. There is new Zombies, weapons, and day time levels. Comes out this year.

~Crack Down 2 was shown and not much else is known they just showed a quick teaser trailer.

~Metal Gear: Rising was shown off and is the first Metal Gear to come to the Xbox 360. Game isn't exclusive but the trailer was only shown in Microsofts Press conference.

~ One of the bigger suprises is Splinter Cell: Conviction. UBI Soft throws out emo Sam Fisher for the bad ass that we all know and love. The games looks very good comes out this year on Xbox 360 and PC.

~ Microsoft Showed of their own motion sensing tech called Project Natal. It uses a new camera and your whole body is the controler. They showed off some neat tech demos, ones that you need about a 20ft radius around you so you dont kill anyone. This looked very neat and the fact that you can control the NXE with it makes it even better. Comes out eventually.

~Also unannounced at their press conference is the ability to buy and download full Xbox 360 games to your harddrive. Launches at end of the year with select titles.

Sony

Sony showed a very promising line up of games most of which just like Microsoft come out early next year.

~ First big thing Sony really announced is the PSP GO! The system is bringing all of the sexy, along with a bunch of AAA games.

~ Gran Turismo PSP was shown. Looks excellent. From the videos floating around you would swear its GT4. The game has 800 cars, a bunch of tracks, and the game is locked at 60FPS. Comes out October 1st along side the PSP GO!

~A new Metal Gear Solid game is coming exclusivly (for now) to the PSP. Called MGS; Peace Walker. Its directed by Kojima and it looks very good. It takes place 10 years after MGS3 and somehow fits into the MGS time line. Check it out in 2010.

~ Also shown were a bunch of other PSP games like Jak and Daxter and many others like Echo Crhomo which is a 2D Echo Chrome with some color and a new time mechanic.

~ What was also shown but not announced was Fat Princess for the PSP. If you look at the PSP video montage they show it on there playing on a PSP.

~ On a bigger note Sony showed off MAG which looks amazing. It looked very smooth, though ill hold judgement untill its in my hands. There are vehicles and air strikes which Socom really never had. MAG should be out Fall of this year.

~ Of Course Uncharted 2 was there and it looked really really good. They showed some more single player and Drake's humor is still in tact. The story looks alot more engadging and exciting. They also released the Multiplayer Beta the same day so I checked that out and its alot of fun. The multiplayer looks really good though not as good as the single player. One of the problems is that it takes the same 30 bullets to kill someone, the same as the single player in the first Uncharted so I'm used to it.

~ Sony had another suprise known as the Agent. An Exlcusive game from the GTA Team, Rock Star North. Absolutly nothing was shown but the logo. Jack did say it was set in the 70s and they expect the same fanfair GTA provides. Expect it in end of 2010 ealry 2011.

~ Gran Turismo 5 was there in trailer form and looked very good and little improved from Prologue. The game has Nascar and Rally cars involved this time around and oh yes damage is there. Take that you cheatn Nissan bastards in GT 5: Prologue online. Expect in early 2010.

~ Sony tries to 1up Nintendo with there own motion tech which uses the PS eye to detect controllers with glowing balls on the end. Looks very promising and unlike Microsoft's and Nintendo's it seems to be aimed toward more hardcore gamers. Unlike Microsofts this will come ealry next year. My guess is maybe with Heavy Rain since they seem made for each other.

~Then Sony ended its conference with a bang showing a 10minute demo of God of War 3. Which looked very good seemed to have some hit detection problems but all of that should be worked out by 2010 when its released. The demo really showed the scope of God of War 3 where there was a huge guy throwing fireballs at kratos during his battle until the end where kratos had to fight him, and thats where the demo ended. Game looks very good and I'm pretty excited for it. Especially for the rumored God of War 1 and 2 in the collectors edition.

Well that was really it with these two. Of course other big games are coming to both consoles like Assassins Creed 2 and Modern Warfare 2. E3 was pretty big this year but it was alot of games that were announced for spring 2010 which is kind of a bummer. I could of included Nintendo but well just a new Metroid in 3rd person and Mario Galaxy 1 1/2 isn't exactly alot to write on.