Nintendo focuses on Europe as Dollar weakens.

Anyone can look at the numbers and realize the most popular console in the “Next gen” console war is the Nintendo Wii. The Wii is still selling out at most retailers on the day the systems hit the floor. The reason for the sell out was due in part to Nintendo limiting production to keep demand high and partly due to the interest in the way the games are played using the remote and nunchuck.

Word has come out recently that Nintendo is beginning to focus on Europe for the majority of it’s sales due to the Strength of the Euro in comparison to the US dollar. Europe is receiving as many as four times the amount of product as the US.

Link to the LA Times story.

This entry is mirrored at Console Giant.

Update on GTA4

Okay folks, they just released a “patch” for GTA4. Great.

Maybe my first review was actually a bit to hasty.

Consoles are becoming PCs. I guess to some extent that’s true and I’ve mentioned it in previous posts, but when I pay $60 for a console game, I really expect it to be the game and not some beta version with obvious bugs like loading screens that lock up requiring restarting the game, or if you’re in too deep for that a series of convoluted work arounds like making new profiles and turning off network connections.

The long load time is starting to wear on me along with the long periods of time with no saves that end up causing half of my game play from the last two days to be redundant trips all the way across town to pick up packie and his crew for the 3 leaf clover mission, which I failed a total of 5 times, 3 times were do to bad A.I. on Packie’s part, you know, just standing around being shot in the head by the cops while you and Derrick are halfway down the subway tunnel kind of thing.

Oh well, it’s still worth the 5 stars for the times where you just saved and just run around beating people to death with a bat or shiving them with the knife.

This, like all my other video game blog content can be found on Console Giant.

Mississippi Gulf Coast Bargain Shoppers and Sellers

Scheduled to open officially on the 15th of this month, Gulf Coast Swap Meet may very well revolutionize your bargain shopping experience. Even if you don’t use the flea markets, swap meets, yard sales or other local solutions to save some cash and instead frequent eBay, craigslist and the like you’ll feel at home using either the classified ads or the auction section on the site.

Gulf Coast Swap Meet is currently only for residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Use of the site is totally free with no catches. The site is ad supported and currently looking for sponsors from the local area. Local area businesses must be based in the area in or around Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs, Long beach, Gautier or Pascagoula.

Grand Theft Auto IV

While it may seem sort of rude to not write a review of this game the day following it’s release it’s actually a compliment. You see I’ve been too busy playing it lately to write a review, but now I am back at my job and have nothing better to do than write about the game.

So far GTA4 is proving just as enjoyable as it’s predecessors. Rock Star uses itself as a platform to parody our American society. Plenty of “hot conversations” with orgasmic cries of “Oh, Yes, tell me more!” and the like. The radio stations have the great song lineups and humorous DJs you have gotten used to while playing the other games and as an added bonus Rockstar has given you a TV at your safe house to watch equally hilarious shows. My favorite is the knife shopping  show.

The graphics are good, but not as good as Assassin’s Creed, but it feels much larger than Assassin’s Creed did and that could account for the less than top notch quality. The Explosions are beautiful though and I recommend blowing up at least one car as soon as you can.

The control is a little lacking now when compared to some of the other games I have played lately and does not feel as smooth, but I quickly got used to it.

You are Niko Bellic a Russian immigrant moving in with your cousin, who happens to be involved with some less than reputable people. You do some jobs and before you know it you’re back in the flow you had in your heyday on San Andreas.

The story so far is fairly enjoyable. You have ran away from some bad debt in Russia and come to America to live with your cousin Roman. He introduces you to Michelle who you then have the option of dating. He also introduces you to the guys you’ll be working with and for for the beginning of the game.

As far as the entertainment factor goes this game is fantastic just like all the ones from years gone by.

Based off the immense amount of detail, story, action and entertainment I give this game 5 stars out of 5.

This review can also be found here.

All my reviews are mirrored on ConsoleGiant.com

Mario Kart Wii

Yesterday was spent playing lots of Mario Kart Wii. My wife brought it home with her from work yesterday along with the wheel. She was really excited about playing it but I’m really hard to impress. I figured it would be just as good as the other Mario Kart games have been in the past and I was right. It’s just as enjoyable as it’s predecessors.  Using the wheel may take some getting used to. The first thing I did when I started racing was try to turn using the D-Pad which doesn’t work obviously, but after that first time I didn’t do it anymore, so I guess I learn from my mistakes.

Honestly I never played the other Mario Kart games much. This one has plenty of characters though. Mario and Luigi, their counterparts, their significant others, their enemies and their friends. There are 8 cups in the 50cc races, 4 are immediately available, the other 4 are unlockable along with 2 more karts and 2 more characters, King Boo and Diddy Kong. Each cup series has 4 races and the winner in points wins the cup. You can also unlock the ability to use your Mii as the driver.

Aside from your Mii being used as the driver, they show up here and there through out the races. The audience is made up of all the Miis on your Wii and after winning a division your Mii shows up as a giant statue. You can also submit your “photo” to an online gallery of some sort.

That’s as far as I played, but my wife played it on the Wifi channel and really enjoyed it.

This review can also be found on consolegiant.com

Trade ya’: Links for Content.

I am determined to achieve at least 1000 unique hits a month on consolegiant.com. The problem is content as always. Despite the fact that I have played many games in my time, I haven’t been really impressed with very many. My wife plays crap loads of games, but she generally stays occupied enough drawing or playing the games that she doesn’t feel motivated to write reviews or guides or anything else.I am accepting your content. Even if it’s old blog entries from you. Send the link to me or submit a plain text review and I will check it out and post it up with a link back to your page. Just include the review and a 1-5 star rating.

I get content and you get link popularity, not a bad trade off I don’t think.

You can contact me at cagadotar @ gmail . com

Consolegiant.com update

Since my last entry I’ve pretty much all, but decided to keep consolegiant.com. I’ll still take offers on it, but I hope to make the money I want in the long run using Adsense. My wife has promised to write a few game reviews and she is certainly more qualified to write reviews than I am.

A Domain Up in the Air.

A just registered the domain consolegiant.com in hopes someone will buy the name from me for a decent amount of money.  Don’t flood my inbox with compliments on my superior web design by the way, lol.  Any how anyone who wants to try selling consoles or games or whatever read my sales pitch / key word manifesto and prepare your offers. I may keep it if I can come up with the moola or motivation to do something with it, otherwise it goes officially on sale 60 days from today, but to make things simple I’ll just say June 1st.

I have nothing else to post today,but it is Friday (wooo) and I have a great weekend planned out for me and the misses. If you haven’t already checked them out, make sure you look at all my entries on freeware and video games from the past.  My original freeware post still gets more hits than any other post I have.

Have a good weekend folks!

Time for Another Freeware Update.

It’s been quite some time since my last update and I have found quite a few great freeware programs.

I’m going to start with something that is near and dear to my heart, a plug-in for Firefox called “eBay Buddy“. “eBay Buddy” allows you the user, extra right click options, in fact it offers almost complete control from your right click menu. Let’s say you are looking for an Intel E6750 cpu. Once you have the plug-in you can highlight the item then right click it, pick quick search and it will open a new tab with the search results on eBay for an Intel E6750. “eBay Buddy” is a fantastic program that hardcore eBayers will develop a dependence on.

Wootalyzer is basically a live RSS feed of a bunch of “Deal a Day” websites, like Woot. It gives you the option of leaving it open all the time and alerting you when the deals on the sites change. This is a fantastic program even if you only check it once or twice a day. I even got a graphics tablet using this program for only $19.95 and it’s been pretty comparable to a wacom.

I needed a quick downloading and installing, no nonsense, no frills image burner. I had just finished building my new desktop everything was working fine hardware wise, it posted on the first boot, it posted after overclocking the cpu and setting my memory timings and voltage to the manufacturers specs. ALAS! No OS to boot into. I could have swore I had that copy of vista ultimate x64 somewhere around here…. Well you can see where this is going. Unfortunately my laptop dvd burner is a flaky piece of crap and/or all the discs I own are faulty, I already dismantled my old laptop, my wifes laptop seems to have some issues burning (why I think all my discs are faulty), as does my mother’s laptop and my dog’s. I finally determine that my wife’s desktop sitting in storage is my best bet, well it doesn’t have any burning software installed and I need something NOW. I came across a program called “Imgburn” and it solved all my problems instantly! It is free, it burns images like a champ and only took about 2 seconds to download. It’s also only a little over a mb in size.

Paranoid about your temperatures? Want to keep them in check? HWmonitor from CPUID will justify or negate your paranoia. It can show you all the information you need to make sure your hardware is running tip top. Voltages, temperatures and fan speeds are all displayed in an easily navigable window. HWmonitor is regarded as one of the best as far as accuracy goes and is available in 32 and 64 bit versions.

Rivatuner for when overclocking your cpu and memory are not enough.

Well that’s it for this round.

See you next time.

Passing Time at My Boring Job #4

You can always bet that when I’m at work I am struggling to find a way to keep myself occupied. Here is the fourth installment in my boring job series.

TVU Networks provides Tvuplayer a freeinternet TV client that currently streams 200 channels including Sci-fi , Comedy Central, Spike and a whole lot more. It also allows you to stream your own channels.

Joost is another internet tv client that streamstelevision shows across the internet. At this time they are showing the first 3 seasons of the original Star Trek , but it also has internet based content like College Humor videos, Super Deluxe and more.

The rest of my time lately has been spent on Newegg and eBay, so I can’t really recommend much else at the moment. Just hang in there, 5:00 isn’t too far away now.

Speaking of eBay I have some items up if you want to check them out.