Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

Not wanting to tempt fate at all but I’m rather pleased to be having no issues at all with my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, touch wood. In fact when I got the game on Tuesday I was unaware of the epic problems now plaguing Playstation 3 owners (as well as a few XBox 360 owners apparently) or of the queues and organisation required to distribute it just nine hours earlier. I arrived at Game early, intent on doing something mindless with my recoup day and queued with just a couple of harangued looking father’s on their way to work, all with orders of exactly what to get on pain of death. Five hundred free Microsoft Points and a bundle of free XBox Live userpics were my reward for pre-ordering so I headed home.

I should warn you now, there will be character related spoilers at points.
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For those not currently in the know, the gaming industry has been upended of late with the arrival of the next-gen consoles (which technically are now current-gen console but there we go) and the ensuing war over sales. The XBox 360 hit the market first which gave it something of an advantage, especially following the success of the 1st generation of XBox. It’s still up there in the race but the Nintendo Wii managed to come out of nowhere to take a large chunk out of Microsoft’s sales figures…nobody was expecting a Nintendo machine to appeal to anyone but Nintendo fans, however the truly unique control system (which turned out to be a hit with all games and not just the built-in games designed specifically to show it off) and the fact that Nintendo are still releasing some really fun and pleasant games made it quite appealing to gamers.

Finally we all know Sony’s tale, they arrived very late in the game with a console that isn’t as backward compatible for UK users as it is for everyone else and with sale prices so high you need to mortgage your house/sell a few kids/knock off your parents for the inheritance to be in with a chance of affording one. Frankly for the price of a Playstation 3 you could easily build a brand new top of the line computer and then have both computer and games machine all in one.
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The Entertainment Expo known to all as E3 began this weekend and today the event really breaks into it’s stride.

Of course alongside the announcement of the Playstation 3 pricing (which I’m still having issues with) the other company that has my attention for this event is Sigil, who have kindly decided to publish an E3 Blog (though it’s more of a blog-lite, mainly for advertising purposes).

Naturally most of the important information won’t be making it’s way onto the blog until much later today due to the time difference between here and the event (The event is in Los Angeles which is 8 hours behind us…meaning it’s now just 1am their time).