Xbox 360 has made it easier then ever to get demos. It used to be you had to go to your nearest video store and rent the game to try it out, then came the demos discs in the magazines which made it easier, and now you can just log on to the marketplace and download any demo. I've been wanting to get Star Trek Legacy for a while now, and recent the demo was released. I've since then have downloaded the demo and played it. It was disappointing, I was kind of excepting a little more from it. I'll probably buy this game when the price drops to $30 or $40, or I will just wait until I can find one in the bargain bin at some local store. On the flip side I was expecting Crackdown to be another shitty Grand Theft Auto (GTA) clone, why else bundle it with the Halo 3 beta, then to get more sales. I though it was going to be like they said, "I got the Halo 3 Beta and a free game" but to the contrary it's the other way around. Crackdown might seam like a GTA clone at first glance but once you play it, it's a whole lot more. I'm defiantly going to pick up a copy Crackdown (even though you can no long get the copies with the Halo 3 beta).
Lately I've been playing a lot of Xbox 360. A while ago I finish the storyline of Kameo, it only took me little over 17 hours to complete (not done all in one sitting). I also finished up the races in career mode in PGR3. I'm now playing them to see if I can get the rest of the achievements I haven't got. I've also been playing the Crackdown, Dead Rising, and Ninety-Nine Nights demos. They are all good plays and I would recomend if you haven't played any of these games, that you go download the demos.
Lately I've been occupied playing my Xbox 360, and watching Shakugan no Shana. I've finish watching Shakugan no Shana, and all the extras. It was a short but great series in my opinion. Several weeks ago I purchased a Xbox 360 Core System which was bundled with Kameo and Project Gotham Racing 3 (PGR3). The place I went was out of sold out of the Premium Systems, and I wasn't going to leave empty handed so I bought the Core System. I've been really happy with the games the Core System was bundled with. My next purchase is going to be the 20GB Hard Drive add-on.
UPDATE (2/4/2007): I've just purchased a hard drive on Friday. You can see my gamercard on my site.
It is amazing how far we have come since these old games have be made. We now have consoles powerful enough to produce almost realistic graphics, and that can emulate the consoles & computers of yesterday. If we look at the Xbox 360 it is even more powerful then most of the computers in use today. When Doom came out on the Xbox Live Arcade it just seams right for the console so I didn't think to much about it. Then I was reading about the up coming games to the Live Arcade and I seen an old computer game I use to play called "Red Baron" this is what really made me think. I seen this title and though what other games would work. I though about my favorite old computer games the King's Quest series and I though about it for a bit and realized that I would only work well on the Wii with the Wiimote, all but the last one in the series (King's Quest VIII) which would work better on the Xbox 360 but it is too big to be a Live Arcade title (which has a limit of 50MB) it would have to be a full title or be sold exclusively on the Marketplace as a special. The other Quest games in Sierra's line up would work as well on the Wii. The harder I though, more and more titles I could name that would work on both systems exceptionally well. What titles can you think of that would work well, and on what system?
I think this a good idea because because these companies aren't releasing these old games into the public domain where they would be available for all to enjoy and they aren't making any money of these games anymore. I feel that this solution would be beneficial to all.
There is a list companies that have online stores for the United States and have a similar stores for it's international community. Despite that, we (the international community) are getting a striped down version of US stores with less content. Their response to this is that "it is because of licensing restrictions," I find this a stupid and arrogant move by them and by the people who create the content for their stores. There is stuff on these stores that people from other parts of the world would like to buy but they just can't. I can't see why you wouldn't allow them to buy what they want. It's more money in the pockets of the content creators isn't that what they want? If the content is not available the people will just pirate the content they want anyway. I think they should have only one store with all the content available to the world. For the money differences you could take the Microsoft, and Nintendo approach and use a point system, which I like very much, or you could make the interface to display the currency specified by the user. Personally I like the point system better. I do feel that stores now like iTunes have got one thing right, and that is the ability of buying pre-paid cards which you can use on these stores.
I would like to state for the record I have US account for my iTunes Store which I fill with pre-paid cards when I go to the states.