Gamestop reserved Chains of Olympus for me without permission

So I received a phone call in the middle of band practice tonight. It was from an odd number, so I ensure to hush up the guys from their fiddling.

"Aeris" from Gamestop, how your name brings back memories. You know what? I wasn't sad when she died. I liked Tifa better anyway. LOL

According to them, I had reserved God of War: Chains of Olympus. Talk about a surprise! The truth is that I don't like the PSP that much and I certainly don't like God of War enough to reserve it. They must have pulled a quick one on me and somehow interpreted a "Yes" out of my shunning of their usual Do-you-want-to-reserve barrage.

Confession: I just bought a slim PSP for the TV out. But this was for two purposes: Crisis Core and AVPR. That's it. The God of War demo was interesting and all, but I'm in no rush to buy the game. I guess I'll have to go apply the money toward AVPR.

*shakes fist at Gamestop*

Making news out of minute sales differences

I'm getting tired of the gaming media making headlines about minor changes in sales statistics. Sometimes they compare a 100,000 or less difference when discussing millions of units sold. Whether it's the PS3, 360, or Wii, it's getting a bit out of hand. 5-10% or more may be numbers to be concerned with, but anything less is just market flux.

When it comes down to the wire, it is very realistic that we could see an even market. The Wii has captured the world, but we still question such over the long term. The DS has consistently had plenty of stellar games where the Wii cannot say as much. This could easily change, but it is too soon to say.

Prices on the more advanced consoles are coming down. One thing the 360 and PS3 can do is perform anything technical that the Wii can do. They are just a motion controller away (the PS3 will probably need a different controller form factor). The Wii can't do what the other consoles do, however. Once the more powerful, more feature-filled consoles are affordable to the masses...it's hard to imagine the Wii holding its top spot. However, don't consider that a proclamation that it will drop to the bottom. More than likely, they'll all stay evenly spaced unless a brunt of million-selling games ends up on one specific console.

Last time, the PS2 got most of the games, and plenty of exclusives. At its continually dropping price, it's no wonder why it came out on top. But in this generation, exclusivity is fading leaving many widely popular titles available on gamers' preferred platforms.

Seeing the market with these aspects in mind, I think the gaming media should ease up on the war. We've already lost a solid movie format because the media didn't concentrate on what made HD-DVD better, but rather Blu-ray's arbitrary maximum storage number. Rather than worrying about who sold a few more or few less units in a month or year, we should be correlating that information to specific game releases. Even better, we should be concentrating on what the console manufacturers will be doing to keep us entertained, not on meaningless short-term numbers.

Free Blu-ray Casino Royal for me? Nope...they're sending it to UK

From Sony,

Thank you for registering for PLAYSTATION®Network.

PLAYSTATION Network opens the door to a new world of exciting entertainment opportunities.

Being one of the first to register you have qualified for a free Blu-ray Disc™ of Casino Royale™. We will aim to deliver your disc within 45 days.

For full terms and conditions of this offer please visit
uk.playstation.com/ps3/registration

Please note that during registration on PLAYSTATION Network, you will have been asked for a valid home address during the process so that the Blu-ray Disc can be delivered to you.

Sweet. But notice how they want me to visit "uk.playstation.com"? Yeah. So they are going to try to deliver this free movie to Ogden, Utah in the United Kingdom. I wonder if I still would have received it if they would have let me change the country to the correct one.

Countries open to the offer: Europe, Middle East and Africa, except employees and agents of SCEE and their families. The 41 countries are: UK, Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Russia, UAE, South Africa, Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Israel, Malta, Iceland, Greece, Cyprus, India

Good luck with that, Sony!