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As the countdown for Halo 3 nears an end I thought I’d post some deals I’d come across recently.

Sam’s Club, Costco, and Family Video all have the standard version for $50. Family Video even has a $5 off coupon code (NEWPGMEM) and $.99 shipping. The rest of the versions are between $10-$15 off the normal price.

BTW, if you really have to have a life-sized Master Chief helmet the Legendary version, it looks like you should order your copy ASAP.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

Recently there was some “big”, but expected, news that Nintendo’s Wii took the #1 seat in the “next-gen” console console race away from Microsoft’s Xbox 360. One thing that oddly no one mentioned was that the only country or region the Wii actually has the #1 spot in is Japan.

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The big computer companies seem to have one thing in common right now: bring computer gaming to the masses. Last week HP launched the Blackbird 002 desktop PC, the company’s first HP-branded gaming PC. The starting price is $2,500, roughly half the cost of much of the high-end gaming competition.

Then there’s Gateway (soon to be purchased by Acer), which plans to introduce a gaming PC in November called FX540 with a gaming-oriented notebook line planned for release in January. And let’s not forget that both Toshiba and Dell released new, more affordable gaming computers this summer. Toshiba, with its Satellite x205 series of gaming notebooks which start at around $2,000, and Dell with its XPS 720 gaming desktop, which starts at roughly $1,700.

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The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has an article out quoting the usual mix of analysts, speculators, and “people privy to Sony’s plans.” I must say that the article’s title of “Sony to Challenge Apple In TV, Movie Downloads” makes the news sound more exciting than it really is.

Perhaps I should give Sony a chance rather than point out the obvious that the company has a very long way to go. Meaning, it’s a bit of a late comer in an already crowded space (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Netflix all compete here just to name the big boys). I suppose it’s true that first movers don’t always win, and there isn’t a clear leader yet. But good luck to Sony on this one…

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The Economist (subscription required) has an interesting article out on how epidemiologists (those who study epidemic diseases) would like to use World of Warcraft (for the unofficiated: an extremely popular MMORPG or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) as part of research to see how people will react when faced with wide spread disease. This type of situation, obviously, can’t be introduced in the real world for study (at least not very ethically).

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After the announcement by CinemaNow that users could now watch leased bought/rented videos on their Xbox 360s I figured I would give it a shot. I am a Netflix user, but I have watched a few movies via the Xbox Live Marketplace (XLM) recently as well. I really like both services, and thought that CinemaNow’s larger library might be a good substitute for the XLM. I didn’t intend to do a write-up on this, but after my experience I thought it could be something that others could benefit from. I will be approaching this in two parts: first, the quality of the CinemaNow service regardless of the playback device; and second, the process to bring it to the TV.

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Compared to the same period last year, Nintendo sales more than doubled while net income jumped to ¥80.3 billion ($668.82 million) from ¥15.6 billion. Nintendo’s strategy of bringing gaming to the masses is paying off. Approximately 9.3 million Wii consoles have been sold world-wide as of the end of June. Wii sports seems to be fueling the sales at least in part with women and even seniors participating. While sales are strongest in Japan, the Wii has been incredibly popular in the U.S. outselling the PlayStation 3 by nearly 4 to 1 and the Xbox 360 by close to 2 to 1.

But will the success last in the long run? Is there more fun to be had by the casual gamer past Wii Sports? Whatever the answer, Nintendo has proven in the here and now that gaming can be for everyone.

So after my Wii post from yesterday, I wanted to clear something up. This post really has nothing to do with the Wii, but the response to a statement I made about the Wii got me started on this train of thought.

In the post, I said that Nintendo is doing very well with what I call their strategy of selling “checkers instead of chess”. Although it was not intended to be insulting, apparently it came off that way. For me, I don’t care if you enjoy checkers or chess, there’s no qualitative difference, they are both just games. Some people like to read books for leisure, while I don’t usually find anything about reading books to be leisurely. People have different tastes. It is great that Nintendo wants to push to create games for people who don’t want to literally invest time in a game.

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