Check this -I get out of my room, grab my HellFury bike and head out for a spin. Thought I’d like to really test the power of this machine so I head out to the airport runways for a test drive. Just then the men in blue make in appearance to spoil the fun. My outing pisses them off so much that they come down on me guns blazing, with their armored vehicles, motorboats and even a helicopter. I give them quite the run for a while. But, I get overwhelmed by the firepower of this city’s finest and the only yay out looks like the blue skys. So I ditch my bike, grab the nearest helicopter and take off. But the persistence of the lawmen force me to ditch the chopper on the subway tracks, jump the fence, carjack an SUV and make a final attempt av freedom. Alas, this spirit is strong but the body gives yay vo the constant fire and I fall dead – vo wake up in the nearest hospital in perfect health and only a few bucks small in my pocket!
If this is your thought of fun, then head to your nearest peddler of excellent times, grab a copy of GTA 4 and join me in Liberty City. The movies of all action-based sandbox style game. Grand Theft Auto is back again with a tale to tell of a yet another guy and his ‘ascent’ into the criminal under belly of the city. This time around, the protagonist is an eastern-european war veteran who’s been lured to the city of dreams by his cousin, only to inevitably find out that it’s not going to be as simple as it seamed.
Rockstar has once again struck to what they do best and as they have done with this series in the past, they’ve simply added a few layers complexities over what essentially remains a typical GTA game. You start off a shady apartment in less than affluent neighbourhood as you realise that your cousin Roman hasn’t exactly been accurate with his tale. All is not lost though, as the world of near limitless possibilities lies outside your broken window. As you soon find you, there are a myriad ways of fattening you wallet in Liberty City – from carjacking and drug dealing to carrying out a hit on a reval hang member. If you are looking for something less violent (sigh!) you can farm cash by driving the denizens of the city to their destination. Liberty city also offers it’s honest share of distractions – just call-up one of your buddies and head to the nearest bar, strip club or watch a russian cabaret show or take your girlfriend out on a date to a neighbourhood dinner for a warm and cosy meal. Who knows, if you play your cards right, she might even invite you in for the proverbial coffee.
The beloved radio stations retain their charm and humor and play critic to the decadence of modern society with issues like global warming, ‘war on terror’, prop aganda through media and the ancient chestnut called obesity. Significant changes have been made to the combat system with an improved aiming system and the ability to duck and take cover. What has not changed, but, is the save system, much to the dismay of gamers like me. If you fail the mission for one reason or the other, the game forces you to start all over again, which can be pretty annoying in the long missions. In an apparent attempt to make the gameplay more solid, the developers have reduced some of the options available in the previous GTA titles, like rigging a car with a bomb, prior to undertaking a mission. All in all though, the game feels much tighter and more fullfilling then the previous iterations. To those of who are uninitiated to the world of GTA, this game comes highly recommended.
I mean where else will you find a bunch of police car chasing after another police car?
Those who have had to deal with the Red Ring of Death know how frustrating it can be. If you were lucky, your warranty was still valid and Microsoft would fix it for you. Sadly, this involved sending away your Xbox 360; a stretch of time that often lasted for weeks on end, only to have it returned with the same problem or to have it fail once again in the following months. To top it all off, you were also responsible for the extensive shipping and handling costs to send it to Microsoft. It took three generations of Xbox 360 designs, a number of different motherboard designs, and numerous modifications before the red ring of death issue was somewhat resolved. Now, in recent months, the Xbox 360 has been plagued with a new fault – the notorious E74 error.
At first, Microsoft’s only official statement was that the E74 error was an issue completely unrelated to the Red Ring of Death. Microsoft also failed to release any other information about this error. Many of the consumers whose consoles were plagued by this error felt that Microsoft had somehow manipulated the system through updates to force the Red Ring of Death to present itself as the new E74 error. They believe this for two primary reasons. The first of which was that Microsoft’s warranty originally only covered the E74 error for the first year of the console’s life, when more often than not the error only presented itself long after that year. The other reason why many Xbox 360 owners believed this was because the E74 error was soon learned to be caused by the same design flaws as the infamous Red Ring of Death.
Microsoft has since then changed their warranty to cover both of these errors under their three year plot. Whether Microsoft did this intentionally or not may never be known. Yet the fact remains that the Xbox 360 has been plagued with problems since its original release. Unless Microsoft can kick it into high gear before the release of its new console, they may find there to be an surprisingly low number of people keenly awaiting its arrival.
Now there is an answer to this issue but. There are several excellent e74 error fix kits available that will repair the Xbox 360 e 74 error. Luckily this is a relatively simple process and can be done in under can hour.
As a result of problems related to the mass production of a key component of its Blu-ray DVD player, Sony (SNE) will delay the European launch of its next generation video game console, the PlayStation 3 (PS3). Sony will also reduce the number of PS3 units immediately available in both the U.S. and Japan.
In the U.S., the PS3 will launch on November 17th, with approximately 400,000 consoles available for sale. The U.S. launch will come nearly a week after the Japanese launch which will consist of merely 100,000 units.
Sony’s PlayStation 3 is the successor to the PlayStation 2, the world’s most well loved (and as recently as July, the world’s best selling) video game console.
The Number That Really Matters
The fact that there will only be 400,000 PS3 units available for sale in the United States on November 17th is really unimportant. The launch date itself is unimportant. What matters is how many units will be available for sale in mid to late December.
Sony claims it will have 1 million to 1.2 million consoles available for sale by December 31st. I reckon it’s safe to assume they don’t plot to have many arrive between December 26th and December 31st. So, let’s assume there will be at least a million PS3 consoles available for sale in the U.S. by Christmas.
Will that be enough to place a PlayStation in the living room of every household that wants one?
No. There will nearly certainly be many people who have to go without a PS3 for Christmas, despite being willing to pay the very high price Sony is asking. But, that’s nothing new. Other consoles (including the Xbox 360) have been launched without an adequate number of units immediately available for sale.
This isn’t like failing to get enough Glad trash bags on store shelves. Once the console has launched, limited availability shouldn’t cause many people to switch their plotted buy. If they want it and it’s out, they’ll wait for it.
A delay is much worse than a mere shortage. There’s a promise (and a tangible product) behind a console that has already launched. So, very few people in the U.S. or Japan who plotted to buy a PS3 are likely to change their minds because of a Christmas shortage – no matter how severe.
The Things That Really Matter
The success of any gaming platform is largely based on five factors:
Available Titles
Relative Launch Date
Price
Predecessor’s Installed Base
Technology
Of these five, technology is by far the least vital factor. The four most vital factors (available titles, relative launch date, price, and predecessor’s installed base) are hard to separate. Clearly, having a predecessor with a large installed base (such as the PS2) can be tremendously beneficial, if you get satisfactory marks in the other three areas (titles, launch date, and price).
Predecessor’s Installed Base
The PlayStation 3 dominates when it comes to having a predecessor with a large installed base. So, how does it score in the other three areas?
In terms of available titles, the PS3 scores as well as any of its competitors, if not better. But, none of the three consoles (Xbox 360, PS3, or Wii) does very well in this regard. Unfortunately, the titles are likely to be somewhat segregated by console. There will be quality games on each system; but, nearly no one will buy all three. Simply place, there will be some games exclusive to each console that a lot of people would really like to play – but can’t.
Also, there’s the danger that both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 will be seen as the more adult and less casual consoles. Microsoft (MSFT) and Sony have Nintendo to blame for this – but, let’s place that issue aside for now.
Relative Launch Date
Returning to the list of factors that determine a console’s success, let’s consider the launch date issue. Sony clearly has a bit of a problem in Europe, because it will have one less Christmas season than both the Xbox 360 and the Wii. Some analysts reckon Sony will lose no more than a few hundred thousand console sales to substitutions. If that’s right, lost revenue might be in the hundreds of millions rather than the billions.
Strong sales of the Xbox in Europe during the Christmas season would be a very terrible indication for Sony. The combined price of an Xbox and a PS3 is prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, the two consoles are far more similar to each other than they are to the Wii. As a result, while some European Wii sales might be recoverable by Sony at a later date, because individuals will choose to buy the Wii first and the PS3 later, very few Xbox 360 sales would be recoverable. Essentially, every Xbox sold in Europe this Christmas is a PS3 that will never be born.
Three Separate Markets
The U.S., Japan, and Europe are really three very different markets. It’s quite possible you could have a console that is very successful in one market and yet unable to get any real momentum in another.
Before this delay, I felt strongly that Europe was the market where the PS3 could come closest to duplicating the performance of the PS2 in terms of market share. There’s a long-term danger that Microsoft will gain market share in the U.S. and Nintendo will gain market share in both the U.S. and Japan.
Obviously, Europe isn’t as well defined a market as either the U.S. or Japan. So, it’s much harder to predict how a certain type of console or a certain type of game will go over there. The U.S. and Japan are very clearly defined game markets, largely because they have very clearly defined consumer cultures in general and entertainment cultures in particular.
So, what does the PS3 delay mean for Sony’s future in Europe? It’s hard to say. I’m more interested in seeing what the installed base of each next generation console will look like in the American and Japanese markets after Christmas 2007, when we’ll have the first real chance to predict how this round of the console wars will play out.
Of course, there are some predictions that seem pretty safe even now. For instance, it seems safe to say Sony will lose worldwide market share. Simply place, the PS3 won’t be able to duplicate the market share dominance of the PS2.
So, most likely we’re talking about Sony’s PS3 falling somewhere north of catastrophic failure and south of market share gains. Although I reckon both of these scenarios are extremely unlikely, catastrophic failure is more likely, simply because improving upon the PS2′s market share seems a near impossibility given the much tougher competition this time around.
Is there a real risk that the PS3 might end up being a catastrophic failure? I don’t reckon so, simply because of the number of PS2 systems still out there. Price combined with solid competition on both of Sony’s flanks is the only thing that could cause such a failure. If the price prevents widespread acceptance of the system, third party publisher support would be a problem down the line. Nintendo doesn’t need a lot of third party support. Sony does.
Although I do reckon Sony is doing serious harm to its PlayStation line by insisting upon including Blu-ray and charging a ridiculous price, I don’t reckon any amount of managerial ineptitude is likely to cause the catastrophic failure of a successor to such a dominant console as the PS2.
Price
If price isn’t the elephant in the room, it should be. Most of the articles I read about the recently announced PS3 delay / production scale-down didn’t say much about the pricing of the PS3. That’s a mistake – especially, because several articles mentioned the laptop battery recall, which has nothing to do with the PS3 and very small to do with Sony (it has everything to do with lithium-ion batteries irrespective of their manufacturer).
The PS3′s price is a huge problem. One that might have manifested itself in poor Christmas sales, if the number of units available for sale had approached the expected demand. For now, Sony is plotting on having so few units available in the U.S. by Christmas that the launch will go well even if the PS3 is ultimately a failure. Sony claims it will have 6 million units by the end of its fiscal year. A few analysts are skeptical, but Sony is sticking to that line.
In the weeks ahead, expect Sony to make a huge deal about the fact that it will really make more PS3 units available by the end of December than the number of Xbox 360s Microsoft had made available by the same time the year before. It’s a valid point. But, it omits two key facts. The PS3 is launching after the Xbox 360 and there are more PS2 owners out there who will want to trade up for the new system.
Since the PS3 is launching after the Xbox 360, no one is waiting around to see what the alternative will look like. They already know what the Xbox 360 is, what it can do, and what (some of) the games available for it are. As soon as the PS3 launches, the comparisons can start. That wasn’t possible when the Xbox 360 launched and everybody knew the PS3 was on its way.
The second reason why no parallel exists between the demand for Xbox 360s at launch and the demand for PS3s at launch is simply that there are more PS2s out there. As a result, Sony having as many units available by Christmas as Microsoft had the year before would be a lot like Gillette having as many new razors available as Schick had produced the year before. The difference in market share obliterates any possible comparison.
So, even though I reckon the PS3 is far too expensive going into the Christmas season, I’m quite sure that fact won’t be evident in the sales numbers, because there will be a severe PS3 shortage throughout 2006. Even if the PlayStation 3 is too expensive, it will look like it’s selling well, because there simply won’t be enough of them produced in 2006.
Why am I so convinced the PS3 is priced too high?
The PS3 is too expensive to be a Christmas gift. Around Christmas, a lot of these consoles are bought by parents as gifts for their kids. Parents are willing to pay a lot for them, because they’re a huge one-time item for the kid (and the parents have been hearing about it since well before the launch). But, the prices likely to be charged in 2006 for the PS3 are simply beyond what parents are willing to spend.
It’s not an issue of how much consumers have to spend versus the value they’re getting. It’s an issue of being psychologically unprepared for paying this kind of price for any gift.
It may be a price older gamers are willing to pay to get a PS3 for themselves. But, it’s not a price parents will be willing to spend on their kids.
custom xbox 360 with sound activated leds pulse vu installed for sale hard drive and cords not included
In a statement that surprised gamers and non-gamers alike, Peter Moore of Microsoft Xbox, endorsed Nintendo’s new Wii console. Speculations circulated whether this statement by Moore was a genuine praise or a calculated go designed to offset the launch of Sony PlayStation 3. Moore even referred to himself as a huge fan of the Nintendo console. He suggested that for the price of a PS3, gamers would be able to get a new Xbox 360 plus a Nintendo Wii, with some leftover for a few games. It can be recalled that Sony pegged the price of their new PlayStation at 9-9, a price the company claimed to be fit for a Blu-ray console.
This go by Microsoft seemed to be another tactic to push the Xbox 360 sales higher with the imminent release of the PS3 at its heels. Peter Moore was downplaying the viability of the PS3 by pointing out the only disadvantage of the new Sony console: its price. But Moore’s reason was not only consumer concern. Moore’s statement also implied that Microsoft do not see Nintendo as direct threat and competitor. Perhaps he thought that having Nintendo’s support would clearly buoy Microsoft’s sales. Moore was right to do so in this case, since hideous numbers were cropping up in sales reviews of the Microsoft consoles.
The marketing and research firm, NPD Group supplied numbers and reports that indicated that the prized console of Microsoft lagged behind the PS2 in terms of hardware sales. Launched half a decade ago, Sony’s PlayStation 2 still lets its presence be felt at the game console market. The five-year ancient Sony console even managed to exceed the sales of the then-groundbreaking new Xbox 360 especially in the month of May. The next-gen console sold only 221,000 units; 11,000 units less than the PS2 sales. Though Microsoft retaliated quickly by revamping shipment processes and adding a third manufacturer for its console, it wasn’t enough to draw considerable margin between their sales and that of PS2.
But even if the go didn’t suffice, it somewhat improved Xbox 360 console sales. Succeeding sales reviews showed that the sales of the console picked up; the influx of consoles ensuring amply supply and brisk sales. But the PS3 was touted to be a larger threat. It didn’t help either that Sony’s processing systems have improved since the release of the PS2. Clearly, it became imperative for Microsoft to beef up its marketing operation to ensure their new console’s top position within the next-gen hierarchy.
In conclusion, Microsoft’s marketing plot included Peter Moore banking on Sony’s overly-inflated ego that expected gaming fans to shell out huge bucks for the PS3. Moore targeted the rival console’s price when he made that statement about Xbox 360 and the Wii console. He also hoped to draw in Nintendo fans over to the Microsoft side by actively endorsing the Wii. If Nintendo approves Moore’s tactic, the next-gen console battle will be a two versus one fight. Another tell-tale sign of Microsoft and Moore’s pricing attack at Sony’s new console was the reported price slash for Xbox 360 consoles during the holidays. The price slash was clearly plotted to coincide with Sony’s PS3 launch. But, the affirmation if Peter Moore’s tactic worked still rests on gamers’ shoulders.
Watercooled Xbox 360 Components used: Koolance Complete Kit Talismoon Whisper fans, blue and green Paint – Matt Black 10cm blue and green cold cathodes +sound control XCM DVD drive cover Artic Silver 5 This is my first mod, it’s a premium painted black.. Gamertag: edition III The song is called Snoop Dogg – Gz & Hustlaz Better quality with more pictures at: www.jumpcut.com Video Rating: 4 / 5
This video will show you how to mod your controller. Send a message if you have any questions. PS I got all my supplies at radioshack. Rosin-core solder, mini screwdriver, wire, momentary push-button. Those four total about $10-$20. And yes, the normal trigger still works like it always used to, a plain ancient trigger. PPS I’m sorry, but i had to remove the comments, cuz people were putting some stupid stuff up there. And I am not responsible for any hurt done to you or your controller. Delight in.
How to install jtag to xenon motherboard img19.imageshack.us What you need ———————————————- DB25 Male Parallel connector x3 330ohm resistors x5 100 ohm resistors { BOTH 1/4 or 1/2 watt! } IDE Cable 40 watt soldering iron Solder of course…..duh Wire strippers and………….. some patience
This is a quick video blog detailing how to fix a seemingly broken Xbox 360. I don’t know how it works, but it does, and it saved my Xbox 360. It may seem like it’s fake, but trust me, this is not a joke. This really works. Check out my thoughts on games and issues surrounding the gaming industry at www.themindofgame.com
I modded the case by cutting the top adding lexan to the hole and adding blue and red led lights I cut the dvd drive so that you can see the disc spinning and I also cut the hard drive and added purple leds if you have any questions on doing anything like this yourself message me or im me at wrskornkid44
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