Microsofts Repayment for Live Downtime

Microsoft, which had promised a free Xbox Live Arcade game from the beginning of the Live issues, has finally announced what that free game is. Undertow will be available starting next Wednesday for free for all Live users. I don't know much about this game, it looks kind of decent. It's basically an underwater shooter thing, I think. I only saw a trailer for it. While this may be a good repayment for many people, I would much rather have a free month of Xbox Live, which would cost about the same price, because mine just ran out. Yes, I've had a silver account for a few days now and I can finally appreciate what I'm missing. Anyone want to donate a gold card?

Macbook Air

Ok, you knew I couldn't ignore this little baby in a tech blog. This thing is one of the most beautiful computers on the planet. Apple has done it again, with this being another design miracle and it will probably sell thousands of units.
That being said, I don't really want it right now. Yes, I need a computer but I think I'll wait for the second iteration of the Air before I jump on board. Why, you ask? Its because of the obvious downfalls of the device.
First of all, there's only one USB port. That will definetly not fit my multiple devices. Yeah, yeah, you could put a splitter on there, but that kind of defeats the whole slim look. Secondly, no removable battery. The battery is going to die sometime. Its just a fact and I dont want to have to pay $130 to fix it. And lastly, the lack of hard drive space. I really need a lot more than 80 gigs of space to fill with music and stuff. Oh yeah, don't get me started on the pricing of the SSD drive.
These are only personal preferences, so by all means if you like this type of thing go ahead and get it because this is, like I said, a very sexy device.

Bioshock 2 coming to the PS3?

It looks like 2K Boston, makers of Bioshock, are looking for employees that have experience working with the PS3. Hmm, it sounds like its very obvious that the sequel (or prequel) to Bioshock, which will obviously be released, will be coming to both Xbox 360 and PS3 (and PC, probably). This is only good news as the PS3 owners can only be happy they finally get the chance to play this game.

PS3 Production Costs Finally Down

It looks like Sony has made a major step in being successful this generation of consoles. They have reduced the price of the PS3 to make from $800 about a year ago, to $400 now. This should make them more eager to drop the price even more and give the PS3 a fighting chance to stay alive this generation. This makes me wonder if the PS3 should have released this year because it would have been much cheaper. I also believe that the Xbox 360 should have released last year rather than two years ago, as it would have given them valuable development time for the console so it wouldn't have a virtual 100% failure rate. I guess Microsoft just wanted to jump out ahead, and them doing that gained them much marketshare, but lost them much money on repair costs. It hurt Sony the most though because the PS3's price was too high when they were basically forced to release it. It actually didn't hurt Nintendo at all because I believe they would have released it last year, under pressure from Microsoft or not.

Portal

This game is amazing to me. Valve has done such a great job finding this game when it was just a concept and working it to perfection. Yes, I said perfection. I believe this game is the perfect puzzle/action game. It is not the perfect puzzle game, because it is so short and it is not the perfect action game because there is basically no combat, but the whole is an amazing title which would have easily been worth $60 (if it had a few more levels), except Valve threw in a few more excellent games for us. Ok, I'm done confessing my love of Portal.

Xbox to have best gaming year ever?

According to Microsoft Games Cheif Don Mattrick, the Xbox 360 looks like it had the best year (profitwise) of any game console ever. Hardware and software sales for the 360 surpassed $3.5 billion which is $1 billion more than the Wii and $2 billion more than the PS3. The 360 now has over 17 million consoles sold and 10 million Live users.
This is honestly not a huge surprise to me. This is to all of the people who thought Nintendo did the best in 2007. No doubt they did phenomenally selling hardware but there is another aspect of gaming: the actual software. In this aspect, I think, Nintendo did only average or less than average even. Wii or DS games rarely broke the top games sold for the month (except damn Wii Play). The 360 usually dominated the game sales charts because of its appeal to hardcore gamers who buy games regularly. On the other hand, the Wii is bought by many casual gamers who only buy a couple games if any a year. Nintendo has little or no chance of dominating the sales charts like the 360 did unless the appeal to the hardcore and get better third-party support. No, I didn't say more, we have enough crappy Wii titles, I said better.

BioWare's and Pandemic's Transformation into an EA company

BioWare, once makers of favorite games such as KOTOR and Mass Effect, and Pandemic, makers of a few decent games like Mercenaries, look as though their time developing well thought, quality games is over. EA has just announced the pair of companies shall be developing a total of ten new franchises. Yes, thats right ten. And they are not only games, these babies are franchises and, looking at EA's track record of franchises, these will probably get multiple sequels. Come on EA, we all thought you were going the straight and narrow and bringing your company around. But it seems like EA hasn't changed at all. It'll take a miracle for BioWare to make all of those games up to par with their other ones. You gotta feel for those guys.

Personal Games of the Year

Here are my personal picks for Games of the Year that I've played. Remember, I'm only including the games that I've played so far so sadly some are left out (for example, Mass Effect and Uncharted)

1)Bioshock
This game just blew my mind away. The atmosphere, the game play, the story, everything was absolutely perfect. There was a bit of a frame rate issue for me but other than that it was perfect.

2)Orange Box
This game packs 3 potential game of the year candidates (and two older titles) all into one package. This was an amazing offer for me especially as I've never played the Half Life series, as I'm not a PC gamer. Portal, Episode 2, and Team Fortress 2 are all great games.

3)Call of Duty 4
This game did what other games found impossible. It took away gamers attention from Halo 3 a mere month after its launch. The story and the multiplayer are both good enough to match Halo's.

4)Rock Band
It's not often that I play video games with my family. Now this game (and the Wii if I had one) are solving the whole video games are bad problem. The whole family is having fun with this even if my mom sometimes gets headaches from the noise.
5)Halo 3
Sure, the story wasn't great but this game's multiplayer is still top-notch. Look for it to get much of my playing time this year and onwards.

Well there you have it, those are my top five games of the year that I've played