SEC Predictions (Week 4.1)

Today the SEC gets featured on ESPN’s Thursday Night Football spectacular. The Fighting Chickens host the #4 in the land old Rebel boys from Oxford. This week I am going to use the Glantz-Culver Line (as of Thursday, September 24, 2009 in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer).

4 Mississippi vs. South Carolina
Ole Miss opened as 4.5 point favorites to take down the Gamecocks, but the line has withdrawn a little, now sitting at 3.5 points.

I am not impressed with South Carolina. They squeaked by North Carolina State 7-3. Even if this was a road win, a win over a mid tier ACC team is really not worth that much consideration. The next week the Gamecocks stumbled against Georgia, 41-37. That is a lot of points to give up; defense was supposed to be the team’s strong point. Last week offered up an unspectacular 38-16 over Florida Atlantic.

Mississippi is even far less impressive. Sure, they may be a top 5 ranked team, but what have they done to earn this ranking? They beat the Tigers from Memphis 45-14, which was a nice win I guess, but a game they were expected to win. Then they took a week off to rest before taking on the powerhouse known as the Lions – that would be the Southeastern Louisiana Lions. Whatever. How do you even count this 52-6 win in Mississippi’s rankings?

So now we come to the pivotal moment where I have to make my selection. I am going to go away from the Mississippi hype; they need to prove it before I will jump on the turnip truck. South Carolina with the 3.5 points.

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Atlanta looks for defensive line help

The Falcons are looking for defensive line help. According to Pat Yasinskas (NFC South Blog at ESPN) they may have a decent find in the signing of DT Jeremy Clark.

A day after elevating defensive tackle Vance Walker from the practice squad to take the roster spot of the injured Peria Jerry, the Falcons signed defensive tackle Jeremy Clark to the practice squad. This move might be a little more significant than it looks. Clark has spent some time on the practice squads of the Giants and Eagles, two teams with pretty good defenses. With sudden uncertainty at defensive tackle, Clark could move up to the regular roster if he shows some promise.

The Falcons can use all the defensive help they can get. Atlanta’s rushing defense (19) and passing defense (17) is rather suspect for a team expecting a playoff run. Of course it is a young defense and should improve, but I cannot help but think that the loss of Peria Jerry is a huge impact.

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Sony’s big comeback

It looks like Sony fans are starting to show some spunk, writing about how the PS3 is finally set to dominate the console market. For example, take Games Thirst (via N4G) which writes more or less writes that Microsoft will do everything it can to stay in front of Sony and the recent success of the PS3 Slim.

Microsoft is not happy with the recent hardware sales data that shows the PS3 leaving the Xbox 360 in its dust. The weekly hardware charts from September 12th – 19th showed PS3 sales was double that of its main rival, with Sony selling 306,794 consoles, compared to Microsoft shipping 146,914 units. So what’s Microsoft’s response? Slash the price of the Xbox 360 Elite by offering a $50 mail in rebate till October 5th. You may take this lightly, but what they’re really doing is, testing the waters to see if $249 would be the deal that’d sway back consumers in their console’s direction.

Meanwhile, Gorilla Jumpers (no idea; another N4G find) writes that Sony has all the momentum and will overtake Microsoft in 2010.

If Sony managed to stay on track through 2010 without a price cut they would have closed the gap with Microsoft considerably. With the price cut it’s a whole new ball game. The PS3 price drop pushed PS3 sales up 71% percent in August according to the NPD group. The 360 also had a price cut but it only increased the console sales from 202,000 to 215,000 for the month of August, once again according to the NPD group. These cuts came rather late in the month so the true indicator will be September’s numbers.

I do not think Sony has done anything amazing. I have written many times before about my reasons for purchasing a PS3, and why Sony went into such a deep hole. The one year head start of the 360 was only a slight contributing factor; it was all about the price point. The 3DO Syndrome.

Now that the PS3 Slim offers that magical $299 price point, Sony’s fortunes are starting to change. Couple the price reduction with some super high quality first party games, which is a page taken directly out of the Nintendo success manual, and it all smells like roses for Sony.

Sony may win (at least compared to the 360) in the end, but years from now when we all look back on the history of this console gaming era, it will be written that Microsoft stole Sony’s thunder. Or maybe better put, Sony sat on it laurels.

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Demon’s Souls – The solid reviews continue to pour in.

What am I getting myself into? I preordered the Deluxe Edition of Demon’s Souls, but I have damn near zero chance of advancing very far into the game. According to GamingExcellence (9.5 out of 10), I am about to get totally screwed. Or owned. Or frustrated. Whatever.

Demon’s Souls is a dungeon-crawler, which immediately brings forth thoughts of loot, upgrading abilities, and facing progressively tougher and tougher opponents as you progress through the game. This is true of this title, but there are actually five dungeons to progress through, and you will be forced to do them in parallel, because, and this is key, the enemies become stronger faster than you do. The game does not let up, and it does not care that you have died six or seven times in a row, because eventually you will have to learn how to dodge that large sword, or figure out where to go to avoid the massive attack that dwarfs your entire body.

I like a good RPG as much as the next guy, but I have never been a joystick jockey; I lack the dexterity necessary to really be proficient at action RPGs. With that said, I figured Demon’s Souls sounded too good to pass up.

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Falcons victorious, but at what cost?

Just got back from the Falcons 28-20 victory over the kitty cats from Carolina. Norwood went down early; apparently with a head injury. I assume he will be back in a week or two. What about Peria Jerry? His leg injury did not look so good. Let’s hope he is only out 1-2 weeks; that bye game cannot get here soon enough.

Falcons 2-0. Nice start!

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SEC Roundup (Week 3)

Going into this weekend’s SEC action I was a respectable 11-6; I pushed with four misses (Kentucky, Alabama, Florida, Vanderbilt) and four wins (LSU, South Carolina, Auburn, Georgia). On the early year I am 15-10.

How ‘bout them Dawgs? 52-41 over Arkansas. At times it was not pretty. I do not know WTF happened to the defense, and I cannot remember a more undisciplined team. I really don’t get it, but as always, I am grateful for the victory.

Go Dawgs!

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Painful return to WoW

After 18 months, last night on a complete whim, I decide to return to World of WarCraft. After finding my finding my boxed version game – the older version with 5 painstakingly slow loading CDs – I installed the game. This took a good hour. At least it felt that way, but I was not closely watching the clock.

After installing the software, the game downloaded a bunch of stuff (patches, installers, the typically PC gaming crap). Of course I ran into problems right away, which reminded me of why I despise PC gaming. I could not get the f’ing WoW installer to work. Instead I got a nasty error message:

Unable to install. You need to be an admin user to install world of WarCraft.

WTF? I am using Vista and there is only one user. I started farting around with router settings with no luck. I was not too keen on turning off my virus scanner, but thankfully Google is only one step away. This error message is fairly common for Vista users.

Next up was more installing, patching, and the like. I guess my version of WoW was old enough to warrant 2-3 hours of downloading, including a new installer program. A little after midnight, I gave up for the night with the progress bar at around 61%. I think I started around 9PM, so after three hours of nonsense, I was still not ready to play.

My youngest son kicked me out of bed around 5:30 this morning, and after another hour of installing stuff, it looked like I was finally ready to make a return to WoW!

Ah, but nothing can be simple when it comes to PC gaming. I could not get the damn game to start. After signing into the game, I was presented with a blank screen. No buttons. No instructions. Nothing. The only thing I could select was the cancel “button” in the lower right hand corner.

WoW without buttons
What happened to the buttons?

Next up was a lot of searching. Much like my experiences with The Hunter, it looks like the Dell Inspiron 1525 is just not cut out for gaming. I thought I was at a dead end, but then I came across this UI corruption and GMA 965 chip set thread. While my drive update did not go exactly as outlined, this did fix the problem.

So I was able to get started again in Arathor with Tuldar (Dwarf L15 Hunter), Kaldur (Dwarf L14 Priest), and Faltutin (Gome L39 Mage). I entered the game again with Tuldar, but I really do not remember how in the heck to play the game. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing. I am sure things will come back to me straight away, but I am not considering just starting over with a new character.

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Holding off on the PSPgo

For now I have made a decision to hold off on the PSPgo. I have been agonizing over this decision for a while. It came down to two simple points.

Size may matter; so does endurance
My PSP-1001 works fine, and while I would like an upgraded slimed down sexy goddess of portable goodness, there are no overriding advantages of switching to a PSPgo. If the battery life was improved, I think I would make the switch.

Double Jeopardy
Sony has not announced a UMD trade-in or upgrade program. If Sony had a clear strategy for UMD owners to switch to digital content, I would be much more willing to move forward. As it stands now, why would I want to pay full price or darn near close just to play the digital content on the PSPgo?

Waiting Game
I am not in a rush to pick up a PSPgo, but I would like one at some point. For now I will continue to take a wait and see approach. At a minimum I need to take stock of my current UMD library and see which games are keepers, and which ones can be moved. One of the problems with PSP games is that they hold little to no value on eBay, which makes the switch to digital content down the road all the more painful (i.e. expensive). This fact alone makes me feel more comfortable with switching to digital distributions down the road. I am a hoarder (i.e. building a game collection), but I also tend to make liberal use of eBay to move older, unwanted games. For all intents and purposes, the PSPgo brings that practice to a screeching halt, which makes it all the more disappointing that Sony has not announced some sort of pricing incentive for digital over UMD.

Notice that I did not list the $250 price point as an issue. To me that is not the problem; it is the price of going digital that is keeping me from clicking on the shopping chart. A price drop to $200 or a more aggressive bundle is not going to convince me to switch to the PSPgo.

I should have been a girl; I will probably change my mind later today.

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SEC Predictions (Week 3)

Can we skip right past Week 2? Four misses (Florida, Auburn, Alabama, LSU) and only a couple of hits (Tennessee, Georgia) leaves me at 11-6 on the year. Not bad, but not so hot.

This week I am using Sheridan’s odds from USA Today as of Sep 18. On with the picks!

Louisville at Kentucky
The cats get to eat some red birds. 14 is a lot of points to cover, but I am going to roll the dice and go with Kentucky.

North Texas at No. 4 Alabama
I hate to see the Mean Green get stampeded by the elephants, but it is going to happen. Alabama let me down last week, and this week the number to cover is a huge 39.5. The Tide will win, but not cover.

Tennessee at No. 1 Florida
Oh boy! This is the one everyone is talking about. The over/under is a mere 53. Florida by 30? Oh yes my friends. The Volunteers are going to get their asses handed to them, and it will not look so pretty.

Louisiana-Lafayette at No. 9 LSU
What’s the point in this one? LSU covers the 26.5 easily.

Mississippi State at Vanderbilt
This is an interesting matchup. I say Vanderbilt bounces back from the LSU game and covers the 9 they are laying to those other Bulldogs.

Florida Atlantic at South Carolina
Florida Atlantic continues their SEC tour. They prevented Alabama from covering last week, but I think South Carolina easily covers the 20.5 this week.

West Virginia at Auburn
The Tigers are favored by 7.5, which is just going to make the folks on the Plains downright unbearable after they start off 3-0, with SEC Championship talk aflutter. Tigers cover.

Southeastern Louisiana at No. 5 Mississippi
Good for SE Louisiana, but I wish there was a limit to one of these games every 3 years. No line on this one. Ridiculous scheduling.

No. 23 Georgia at Arkansas
Arkansas is giving up 2.5 to the Bulldogs. Two questions. If the Hogs are favored, why are they not the ranked team? On what merits do the Hogs get to give up points? Georgia by 13!

Go Dawgs!

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PSPgo decision time.

I think it is almost time to make a decision on the PSPgo. I know I have said that several times before, and the fact that I still have not preordered one probably gets to the heart of the matter. I was reading IGN’s PSPgo Guide earlier this morning and the opening paragraph jumped out at me straight away.

It’s worth noting that the PSPgo is not intended to outright replace the current PSP-3000, but will instead be marketed as the “premium” version of the PSP.

I think that is one of the problems I have with an “upgrade.” Sure, I could spend $250, but I doubt I would get much on eBay for my original PSP. I would also have to dump my 10 or so games on eBay, which would come nowhere near enough to match the cost of “upgrading” to digital replacements. Not to mention the fact that some of the games I would want to purchase may not even be available in digital format.

The nail in the coffin may be that there is no “cost of recovery” path available for digital downloads. In other words, no eBay selling for unwanted games. Of course that music to Sony’s (and their third party publishers) ears.

I am still talking myself out of it …

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Why do 360 numbers matter in Japan?

I decided to head back to Sankaku Complex [Content warning – some readers may be offended by the anime links contained throughout the site.] for the second time in a week. They recently posted an article asking if the 360 was finished in Japan. The brief article shows the top selling 360 games in Japan, and which ones are going (or have already gone) multiplatform.

The only thing I can offer is that the numbers suck. I am not sure why Microsoft even bothers with the platform in Japan, unless as one of the readers hints, it is a way to subsidies subpar ports to the PS3. In this farfetched scenario, Microsoft would not care for more games going to the PS3, but if the 360 version of the games looks better, it is still a feather in Microsoft’s cap.

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Has Sony abandoned backwards compatibility?

I have always been an advocate of Sony supporting backwards compatibility for their gaming platforms. As an owner of a large PSX library, I was happy that my PS2 supported my original PSX games. Not only did this save my space in my entertainment center (only one console needed), it also saved me money because I could maintain my library going forward. Same for the PS3 – it was nice to keep playing the oldies from my collection.

Has the age of backwards compatibility come to a close? According to PS3Informer, it indeed has ended.

After looking at the features list for the new PS3 Slim and PSP Go, just about everybody would agree that backwards compatibility is low on Sony’s list of priorities. With no software emulation equivalent, and no UMD trade-in program yet announced, why has Sony decided to abandon those of us with older games?

I for one love Back Catalogue games – I mean I have a horde of PS1 and PS2 games in mint condition with booklets etc and I love playing them. The main culprit of a title which is in there is Metal Gear Solid as I love them. Now I have been keeping a very tight grip on my LAUNCH PS3 as I love not having to rearrange my entertainment centre to switch from PS3 to PS2 when I would like a trip down memory lane. There must be loads of you out there lucky enough to own Subsistence and Substance, Devil May Cry 1 and 3, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Gran Turismo – I mean we could go on for ages.

It has become apparent that Sony is now looking to cash in on their massive back catalog of games for the PSX (and PS2). How can you fault Sony? They are in business of making money, and putting the older titles up on the PSN Store in digital format for the PS3 and PSP (and PSPGo) systems gives Sony access to a new revenue stream for a very small capital investment.

With no UMD trade-in policy in sight, Sony is expecting PSPGo adaptors to abandon their PSP UMDs in favor of “upgrades” to digital format. Sony is also probably starting to suspect that at some point longtime PlayStation fans are willing to sell their older collections for digital formats. Over the years I have sold some games, but most are not really worth the money.

The PS3 Slim is the main banner carrier of the PlayStation banner, and it does not include PS2 and PSX hardware backwards compatibility. When these features were originally removed from the post launch PS3 systems, I assumed that it was for cost savings reasons, and at the time that probably was the case. Now that Sony has seen the digital light, there is also another incentive: cold hard cash.

Sony’s new strategy allows for a digital revenue stream and a more tangible “game on the shelf PS2 remake with updated graphics” revenue stream. Long term this is probably good news for Sony, and in some respects PlayStation owners. Not only do their games get to live on in digital format (no more discs scratches), but graphics whores get to experience updated versions of fan favorites.

No, I do not begrudge Sony. At least not right now, but what happens when the inevitable PS4 is released and your digital game collection is not forward compatible on the newest Sony system?

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