Star Wars: A New Hope, Ruined

Monsters Inc., Ruined

Lord of the Rings, Ruined (uses Shadow of the Colossus music)

Dawn of the Dead, Ruined

For the last 18 months, the United States has been purchasing Wiis at an extraordinary rate, already bypassing in sales the XBox 360, which had a year headstart on the Wii. 10.9 Million Wiis have been sold in the United States, and just as last year, the outlook for this coming holiday season seems grim, as Satoru Iwata, the CEO of Nintendo says:

"We are really intending to increase the shipments to the U.S., especially compared to last year. However, I can't give you a 100% commitment [that you'll be able to find a Wii this holiday season]. What I can commit myself to is that Nintendo is going to do its best to supply as many Wii hardware units as possible in order to meet demand there." "

"We're working very hard to make sure that consumers are satisfied this holiday, but I can't guarantee that we're going to meet demand. As a matter of fact, I can tell you on the record we won't."

Next week is the San Diego Comic Con, which is entirely sold out. With nearly a quarter million people in attendance, there's bound to be some games at the show, and with so many properties crossing over from comics to big and little screens, the likelyhood of having a comics-based game is high.

A month from now is the GenCon in Milwaukee. GenCon is the premiere geeky game convention in North America; focusing on all types of gaming, and in recent years has seen an increasing number of companies showing off their latest fantasy video games.

In August is PAX in Seattle, which one can consider to be the large-scale evolution of a LAN party turned convention, complete with famous speakers, rock concerts and a huge expo floor.

In October is Blizzard's own BlizzCon, which is their own convention to promote Blizzard titles (while charging $100 for admission and a wicked goodie bag).

Companies that have pulled out from E3 include Activision Blizzard, NCSoft, Her Interactive, id Software, Atlus and Foundation 9. Glancing through the Comic Con Exhibitor's list, I see Activision Blizzard there, as well as NCSoft, all of which leads me to suspect that their target is the mass market, not the games industry. In a way, this evolution away from the industry-only events make sense; competing against other media heavyweights only expends energy that could be focused elsewhere, and with most gamers looking online for reviews before they buy, there's little need to hype through the magazines anymore.

Q. I love that your fiercest ass-kickers are always girls. Buffy, Willow, Anya, River Tam, and I'm kind of assuming that Eliza Dushku's character in Dollhouse is going to be the main force to be reckoned with. Yet we're in the middle of a summer of action blockbusters and only one of them, Wanted, even involves a powerful woman. Is there some reason that we can have a woman or a girl be the main action hero on TV but not in movies?

A. Movies are from the Devil. Also, it's only recently women got to be action heroes on TV. Progress is slow, and often non-existent. There's plenty of cool comics with female characters... But all it takes is one Catwoman to set the cause back a decade.

Akihabara News has coverage of the opening of the Softbank, as well as pictures of the crowds.

At $299, my box included a 4GB iPhone, headphones, power adapter, and an iPhone Dock. The 3G iPhone does not include a dock, which can be purchased for an additional $30.

The cost of upgrading to a 3G iPhone appears to have a lot of hidden costs associated with it:

+$30 for iPhone 3G Dock

+$5 a month for 200 Text Messages (+$120 over the length of the 2 year contract)

+$10 a month for 3G Service (+$240 over the 2 year contract)

+ $18 upgrade fee (if you are upgrade eligible)

+ ($100 if you are not upgrade eligible)

Keep in mind that previously, the monthly fee for AT&T in the US was $59.95 with 200 Text Messages and Unlimited EDGE data. This amounted to an additional $20 fee over AT&T's lowest cost service, but for the same amount of messages and data on a 3G plan, the cost is actually $74.99, making the iPhone premium $35 for those who were not already iPhone owners.

Last year when the iPhone arrived, the calculations for the cost of ownership over the length of the 2 year contract totaled $1440 for monthly service fees, along with the cost of the iPhone ($599, $499, $399, or $299 depending on when it was purchased and with what capacity), bracketing the total cost of ownership from $1739 ($299 iPhone 4GB with standard plan) to $2039 (8GB iPhone with standard plan purchased early at $599) or $1939 if the $100 coupon for the Apple store for early adopters is taken into account). An iPhone 3G this year will cost $1680 for monthly service (without 200 messages) and $1800 (with 200 messages). Adding in the dock ($30), and the iPhone ($199 or $299), yields a total cost of of $2029 (8GB iPhone 3G + Dock + 200 messages) to $2129 (16GB iPhone 3G + Dock + 200 messages).

Those who balked at the $499 and $599 initial prices of the original iPhone should still be balking at paying $199 or $299 for the iPhone 3G as the true cost of the iPhone 3G is almost exactly the same as the original iPhone (there's a $10 difference between the 8GB iPhone 3G and the original $599 8GB iPhone -- however, if the $100 Apple coupon for early adopters is taken into account, the original 8GB iPhone winds up being $90 dollars cheaper than the 8GB iPhone 3G. Interestingly enough, many people do not realize the price difference is only $10, and as a result, the demand for the iPhone 3G is even greater than the original iPhone. Those who purchased an iPhone at the $200 discounted price are even better off, as they essentially wind up with iPhones costing $190 less than the equivalent-sized iPhone 3G.

Taking into account the upgrade costs of $607 and $707 for original iPhone owners, it seems like an expensive upgrade for 3G data and GPS (and possibly more data storage space). This amounts to roughly $25 and $30 a month more for 3G capabilities -- those who need the speed will pay for it, but for all other owners of the original iPhone, I think it's likely they won't be surrendering them anytime soon.

One of the things that I see happening is that as users upgrade to the iPhone 3G, their older iPhone is resold back on the market as either an unlocked iPhone or as a iPhone that could be resubscribed to AT&T at the original data plan. With AT&T claiming that they will sell iPhones without a commitment plan at $599 (8GB iPhone 3G) and $699 (16GB iPhone 3G), there is a substantial resale value for secondhand iPhones which may end up as yet another AT&T subscriber. Currently, even used iPhones may be resold for more than their original sales price -- a look at eBay reveals several unlocked 16GB iPhones which have fetched $1000 or more, nearly $400 over the original price.

Yesterday evening, following dinner, we walked by the Apple Store in Palo Alto, and campers had already set up shop, with sleeping bags and Guitar Hero.

I setup the firmware 2.0 update for my iPhone and started looking at the new Apps on the iTunes Apps Store. I'm impressed by the creativity of some of the developers -- not only are there tools for everything you'd expect (Twitter, AIM, Flickr, Facebook, Pandora), but there are also Apps that seem very usable (such as the iLingo foreign language conversation books). What I haven't been impressed with are the developers who put public domain works on the Apps store for a fee (For instance, Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a $0.99 program). For many of the mobile indie games, more information is required than just a screenshot.

One of the more useful apps that's free is the "Remote" program put out by Apple -- which allows you to control your AppleTV or iTunes from the iPhone, effectively turning your iPhone into a WiFi remote control. The Google Mobile App is also very useful, as it attempts to predict which word you are typing in, which speeds up the input dramatically when googling a longer query.

I've been sitting on the fence about upgrading to the 3G iPhone; while EDGE is certainly slower, the price difference for the new 3G plan is more expensive than the original iPhone plan (about $360 more over the length of the 2 year contract), it doesn't feel enough of an upgrade to warrant the expenditure for the moment. That said, 2.0 firmware and the Apps store is a major upgrade to the 1.1.4 firmware.

Fritz Lang presented the original version of Metropolis in Berlin in January 1927. The film is set in the futuristic city of Metropolis, ruled by Joh Fredersen, whose workers live underground. His son falls in love with a young woman from the worker's underworld - the conflict takes its course. At the time it was the most expensive German film ever made. It was intended to be a major offensive against Hollywood. However the film flopped with critics and audiences alike. Representatives of the American firm Paramount considerably shortened and re-edited the film. They oversimplified the plot, even cutting key scenes. The original version could only be seen in Berlin until May 1927 - from then on it was considered to have been lost forever. Those recently viewing a restored version of the film first read the following insert: "More than a quarter of the film is believed to be lost forever."

I can sort of understand why they wouldn't build the self-lacing mechanism; mechanical parts, waterproofing, liability, batteries -- it's just too high tech for Nike to deal with; though I do see a boutique business opportunity for those with the mechanical know how to produce aftermarket mods to the Hyperdunk.

I greatly respected and admired Ben's work as an artist while working at Blizzard, and Ben's work had a major impact on the look and feel of the game. It's easy for me to say that without Ben Boos, the game just wouldn't have been the same. I was a bit sad when I heard that he had left the game industry, but was glad that he was continuing his career as an artist and illustrator.

It's an animation about WoW players playing work...

One of the design choices which again shows Blizzard Irvine's hand in the changes made is the re-appearance of the Barbarian character class -- the original design documents for Diablo III included a set of all new character classes, with no reappearance of old character classes (our reasons for this was simple -- since we were enhancing and improving the skill system, we didn't want to try and adapt old skills into a new system -- we'd rather create all new skills for the new character classes. The return of the Barbarian class feels like a change that was made after development of the title was moved to Irvine 3 years ago.

One of the reasons why the Barbarian return shocks me so much is that I always felt that the Barbarian character class was the most broken of the classes in Diablo II. The Barbarian's ability to Leap, for instance gave him advantage over other classes which had to walk around the barrier -- it is the showcasing of this skill in the video (during which a bridge crumbles away, leaving no way to cross the gap) which makes me wonder if they have an alternate way for other characters to cross the gap or if all the characters have Leap now.

Of course, going 3D means that a lot of the things that were hard to do with sprites (such as actual armor looks being reflected on the character) is much easier using polygons and textures, as well as real 3d lighting. The use of a physics engine (Havoc, according to the game specs) is also a nice touch.

While I have more or less given up on the PC as a gaming platform, I'm glad to see that Blizzard is still committed to releasing titles that aren't first-person shooters; such a shame that we won't be seeing this title on the shelves for another year or two at the earliest.

Recently David Braben, the chairman of Frontier Developments and campaign spokesman for UK's "Game Up?", said: "The problem is compounded by the quality of so called specialist games degree courses; 95% of video gaming degrees are simply not fit for purpose.

"Without some sort of common standard, like Skillset accreditation, these degrees are a waste of time for all concerned."

Accreditation with Skillset, the sector skills council for creative media, is only offered at 4 of the 81 universities in the UK offering video gaming-related degrees,

Guardian: Video games degrees: 95% fail to hit skills target