Dallas in a nutshell
After 4 long days, I am back to Omaha finally. I am tired. I work tomorrow and Wednesday, then I am off again till the 16th. I like October.
My trip was fun. It was also exhausting. It was my first trip to Texas and I can now say with great certainty...I will never live there. Bleh. Dirty, Sweaty and Fat. No thanks. Or maybe that was all the gamers that I was noticing...who knows...who cares. GS realized that putting 5000+ people in Dallas was a stupid idea, so next year we go back to where it should always be...Good ole Vegas.
I won't bore anyone about our Holiday plan or any of that other stuff that happened on day 3, but I did come back with some really good impressions about a lot of games that I had seen at E3 and was concerned about. Day 2 and day 1 were spent basically talking to the vendors. Day 1 was talking to our bigger clients like Vivendi, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Squeenix, Namdai, THQ et. al. We got to see a lot of neat videos of upcoming stuff for holiday and get some insight into whats on the horizon in early 07. Day 2 was our little E3 of sorts. Rather than have 10000-20000 people in L.A., we have 4500 in the Dallas Con. Center. and it lasted 6 hours instead of 3 days. :(
We found out lots of neat stuff to increase business such as just about every big game coming out will have some sort of "Exclusive " Collectors edition type thing worked out with us. From SmackDown Vs. Raw to 360 Faceplates, just about every major vendor is having some sort of collectors thing you can get through us...kinda neat. I like 2k's Bully Col. Ed. that comes w./ a dodge ball, SmackdownVRaw as a extra disc with some of the decades best matches and a neat metal case. A real cool Capcom exclusive is The Resident Evil 10th Anniversary Collection. It has: Resident Evil, Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil 4 that comes out Oct 24 for GC. The big coup de gras is that Gamestop will be the only retailer with Wii Kiosks. Yup. Apparently we keep the remote behind the counter and when someone gives us a credit card to hold it, we give them a remote to play with. Oi...that is gonna be a fun one to enforce...
As far as the games and stuff go:
Zune:$249.99 in Mid November. 30gb. Awesome. I was really impressed with al the cool things it could do, the huge screen(comparatively speaking anyway...ahem), the seamless 360/pc integration and the using of MS points should you want to go download legit music. It has a lot of potential...and is less pretentious from what I could tell...I mean C'mon...how can you be pretentious when you come in Brown for a color?!
360:Gears of War:It's an important title to games and to the 360. I'll buy it, I'll suck at it, but man will it sell a lot of copies. It looks and plays phenomenally. I especially like/can appreciate the "carry cam" effect when you are running for cover or whatever. It is neat. The weapons are veeeerrry satisfying. Multi player is about to get ugly on LIve. That Saw gun is gonna piss some folks off.
Wii: It is just as cool as it was a few months ago at E3. The new added Wii Sports games included in the $249 pack make it an even better still. I got a really close up and personal look at the Network side of it and it has some real potential if they use it correctly. Being able to get up to the date news and weather sounds really neat...especially if you are trying to find that secret way to bridge young and old into gaming.
PS3: Meh. Still not impressed. We saw and played ATV, and a few other games...pre rendered backgrounds, jaggy graphics (we were playing on a 50+" Sony flat screen in 1080p). The launch games blow, the entire show they gave us was riddled with back talk and wacky numbers about how the Wii and the 360 technically cost more than the PS3. They also spent a mere 3 minutes of a 20 minute show talking about it. The rest was all weird PSP propaganda. It was like watching an infomercial at 3 in the morning. "Gee Steve...is there a device out there that will let me listen to my music, play some movie and games? I sure hate carrying all these portable devices."
DS...man...there is so much crap coming out on DS it is ridiculous. I have like 10 things on reserve for DS right now. Touch Detective, Elite Beat Agents, Contact, Club House Games, The other Pokemon Game...blahdy blah blah!
oh yeah:Cooking Mama On Wii in the first part of '07. Yummy. It's all new and more localized. Expect Mexican, Italian, American and Japanese Cuisine this time around. I love you Majesco.
Lucas Arts: Wow. They are onto something. We got a closer look at the Indy demo as well as a lengthy demo on how their new physics engine really works. If they can tune it up and fine tune whats under the hood. They wil be selling that engine off to everyone. They showed us a little taste of their Star Wars Next Gen game using the engine and it was sexay.
We also came back with some awesome goodies too. I got my years subscription to XBL, a few "Hot First Party Games" when they release on 360, an old school games Wii controller, a ton of Wii points, a killer exclusive faceplate for my 360 and some other knick knacks...my favorite of which is my WTF button for the WTF game that comes out this month.
Anyway...I get married in 5 days...wow. That isn't a year anymore. Funny how that sneaks up on you...
My trip was fun. It was also exhausting. It was my first trip to Texas and I can now say with great certainty...I will never live there. Bleh. Dirty, Sweaty and Fat. No thanks. Or maybe that was all the gamers that I was noticing...who knows...who cares. GS realized that putting 5000+ people in Dallas was a stupid idea, so next year we go back to where it should always be...Good ole Vegas.
I won't bore anyone about our Holiday plan or any of that other stuff that happened on day 3, but I did come back with some really good impressions about a lot of games that I had seen at E3 and was concerned about. Day 2 and day 1 were spent basically talking to the vendors. Day 1 was talking to our bigger clients like Vivendi, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Squeenix, Namdai, THQ et. al. We got to see a lot of neat videos of upcoming stuff for holiday and get some insight into whats on the horizon in early 07. Day 2 was our little E3 of sorts. Rather than have 10000-20000 people in L.A., we have 4500 in the Dallas Con. Center. and it lasted 6 hours instead of 3 days. :(
We found out lots of neat stuff to increase business such as just about every big game coming out will have some sort of "Exclusive " Collectors edition type thing worked out with us. From SmackDown Vs. Raw to 360 Faceplates, just about every major vendor is having some sort of collectors thing you can get through us...kinda neat. I like 2k's Bully Col. Ed. that comes w./ a dodge ball, SmackdownVRaw as a extra disc with some of the decades best matches and a neat metal case. A real cool Capcom exclusive is The Resident Evil 10th Anniversary Collection. It has: Resident Evil, Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil 4 that comes out Oct 24 for GC. The big coup de gras is that Gamestop will be the only retailer with Wii Kiosks. Yup. Apparently we keep the remote behind the counter and when someone gives us a credit card to hold it, we give them a remote to play with. Oi...that is gonna be a fun one to enforce...
As far as the games and stuff go:
Zune:$249.99 in Mid November. 30gb. Awesome. I was really impressed with al the cool things it could do, the huge screen(comparatively speaking anyway...ahem), the seamless 360/pc integration and the using of MS points should you want to go download legit music. It has a lot of potential...and is less pretentious from what I could tell...I mean C'mon...how can you be pretentious when you come in Brown for a color?!
360:Gears of War:It's an important title to games and to the 360. I'll buy it, I'll suck at it, but man will it sell a lot of copies. It looks and plays phenomenally. I especially like/can appreciate the "carry cam" effect when you are running for cover or whatever. It is neat. The weapons are veeeerrry satisfying. Multi player is about to get ugly on LIve. That Saw gun is gonna piss some folks off.
Wii: It is just as cool as it was a few months ago at E3. The new added Wii Sports games included in the $249 pack make it an even better still. I got a really close up and personal look at the Network side of it and it has some real potential if they use it correctly. Being able to get up to the date news and weather sounds really neat...especially if you are trying to find that secret way to bridge young and old into gaming.
PS3: Meh. Still not impressed. We saw and played ATV, and a few other games...pre rendered backgrounds, jaggy graphics (we were playing on a 50+" Sony flat screen in 1080p). The launch games blow, the entire show they gave us was riddled with back talk and wacky numbers about how the Wii and the 360 technically cost more than the PS3. They also spent a mere 3 minutes of a 20 minute show talking about it. The rest was all weird PSP propaganda. It was like watching an infomercial at 3 in the morning. "Gee Steve...is there a device out there that will let me listen to my music, play some movie and games? I sure hate carrying all these portable devices."
DS...man...there is so much crap coming out on DS it is ridiculous. I have like 10 things on reserve for DS right now. Touch Detective, Elite Beat Agents, Contact, Club House Games, The other Pokemon Game...blahdy blah blah!
oh yeah:Cooking Mama On Wii in the first part of '07. Yummy. It's all new and more localized. Expect Mexican, Italian, American and Japanese Cuisine this time around. I love you Majesco.
Lucas Arts: Wow. They are onto something. We got a closer look at the Indy demo as well as a lengthy demo on how their new physics engine really works. If they can tune it up and fine tune whats under the hood. They wil be selling that engine off to everyone. They showed us a little taste of their Star Wars Next Gen game using the engine and it was sexay.
We also came back with some awesome goodies too. I got my years subscription to XBL, a few "Hot First Party Games" when they release on 360, an old school games Wii controller, a ton of Wii points, a killer exclusive faceplate for my 360 and some other knick knacks...my favorite of which is my WTF button for the WTF game that comes out this month.
Anyway...I get married in 5 days...wow. That isn't a year anymore. Funny how that sneaks up on you...