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One birthday present I know I am getting today – my PS3, at least according to the UPS tracking website. Of course I am not at home to see it until Friday night but it should be waiting for me when I get there. I am torn between keeping it or selling it on to a friend. It would be cool to have one but, not being home much, it is an expensive toy for something that I wouldn’t get to play with very often. I’ll probably at least set it up to see it in its full high def glory, playing Resistance on a 51″ LCD will definitely beat playing it here in the office on the piece of s*$t TV I have it attached to.

And for those of you who wish to add me to their buddy list, my handle is aPetulantMarmot. See you on the killing fields.

You know things are getting desperate when you have to put nekkid chicks in your ebay auction in order to sell your item. And isn’t the PS3 sexy enough??

• ebay 1
• ebay 2
• ebay 3
• ebay 4
• ebay 5
• ebay 6
• ebay 7

Source: xkcd.com.

Two interesting articles today:

• According to the blog of a Fry’s employee, Fry’s will be forcing customers to purchase 8 games with their PS3 this weekend, making the combo-pack a potentially tasty $1200! Oh, and while they’re at it, they are going to insist you buy 5 games when the Wii goes on sale on Sunday.
• GameStop and EB discovered today that they will only be receiving half of their initial first-day allocation. I wonder how many of the ebay people who have taken $000s for their ‘guaranteed day one shipment’ will be sweating it now…. in an email to store employees, GameStop said it expects weekly shipments from Sony and everyone who pre-ordered will receive a system before Christmas.

According to this report at MSNBC, a total of 88,400 PS3 were sold over the weekend in Japan. What I find odd is that supposedly 100,000 PS3s were shipped so what happened to the remaining 11,600? Everything I’ve read says everywhere was sold out so I suspect this isn’t quite accurate. The interesting thing is that a lot less than 88,000 games were sold which means a great many console buyers did not buy a game to play. At first I thought this was mighty odd but then I realised that these were consoles designed for immediate resale, “used” PS3s are already selling at twice the retail price in Japan. Though this is nothing compared to this ebay auction where a pre-order for a PS3 went for $9100!

In about 4-5 hours the stores open in Japan and the first PS3 will be sold; well hopefully they won’t just sit there! To tide you over until next week’s US launch here is a link to the PS3 manual.

• PS3 Manual online

A lot of big things happening this weekend, many of them without me (can’t be in three places at once):

• The launch of the PS3 in Japan
• The AOPA Expo 2006 in Palm Springs, seems like I miss it every year it in CA
• The Brawley Cattle Call Rodeo. The event has already started but this weekend sees the highlight with the parade Saturday morning, and the various rodeos throughout the weekend. Yee-hah! And all that.

Regardless of whether online gambling should be legal or not, I really don’t understand how outlawing it improves Port Security or makes America safer from terrorists? There’s a lot of crazy crap done in the name of safety but this one is way out there.

The World Cup is almost here so what better way to get in the mood than 2006 FIFA World Cup from EA Sports.

Sadly, I have to report that my general mood was of frustration with the game. Biggest problem is probably one of their big selling points – realistic stadium shading. Playing an afternoon game cast a huge dark shadow over a large part of the pitch and every time the action moved into it I could barely make out the players on my TV. I quickly grew to prefer evening kick-offs. There is also some choppiness in the game, it doesn’t play smoothly like the other FIFA games I have (’05 and ’06).

I expected it to play like FIFA ’06 but it doesn’t. I found making an attack much more difficult that before, the players didn’t seem to run into position like before. Now this could be because of the new control system but it seems that someone familiar with previous versions shouldn’t have to struggle.

The commentary is pretty good though I do miss the good old days of John Motson and Ally McCoist which I think is the pinnacle of in-game commentary, somehow they managed to capture the genuine humour between the two that existed in real life. You don’t get the same feel from Andy Gray (who I believe is the commentator for this series).

Over all, I am a little disappointed, but the fact that I get to play the current World Cup draw helps make up for that. So, I give it 3.5 out of 5.

Emptied the bag of swag at the weekend, I did better than many here but not as well as I had anticipated. Largely this was because it was quite difficult or time consuming to get any good stuff But I did come home with:

• two free t-shirts
• 10 gaming/PC magazines
• 6 game posters
• playstation3 and nintendo Wii lanyards
• a “powered by the UK” pin badge
• a couple of kanagaroo badges
• a squeezy minature basketball

I missed out on the big ticket item – Paris Hilton was at the show Thursday and her entourage were giving out pairs of panties in celebration. A few people here got them, and I think I’ll resist and comment about them.

I can’t believe people are selling their swag on ebay. That advertising packet from Square Enix is apparantly “RARE and EXCLUSIVE”, same with the Playstation 3 lanyard. Some of this stuff is selling for anywhere from 99c to $2.50!! Who knew I could get rich from going to a game show.