Secho's Space

Yep yep yep, Christmas is here... virtually, almost there. And with it comes all the advertising that will drive US crazy. It will make our stomachs revolt by the immense amount of ads being seen, it will make us clamor for stuff we never thought it ever existed.

If you have kids they'll be pestering for days on end. Will you fall for it? Or better yet, how DEEP will you?

If you, like me, are into video games, you'll probably be aware of the vast catalog that's being "pumped" into our veins. In reality, and lets be frank here, there are way TOO MANY games.

Some titles will do well, but the majority will not. Just taking into consideration the fact that games lately take a while to finish there's virtually no time, lest we say money to be able to afford such great variety of choices.

As the title implies, I've myself started seeing the effects of that advertising, some of them just plain wrong.

Like, for example, some stuff you can find at Target (see below). I mean, have you ever seen a Xbox360 in such color? With a flipped Hard Drive? And a library of only Xbox 1 games??  How awesome (and wrong) is that?

And that's not all, oh no. Check the picture bellow. What ever happened to the drop in price of the 360? And the fact that the Core has been faced out and instead replaced by the "Arcade" bundle for $270.00 ??  Apparently Target didn't get that memo.

It makes me wonder...  aren't these companies keeping in touch with the console makers? And how does Microsoft's PR respond to things like these?  It really breaks my heart.

I captured all this pictures from Target's site on November 11th 2007.

Happy holidays.

With the holiday season approaching, and ample variety of games to cater all ages, sizes and colors, and most importantly, a whole bunch of people, be it just friends or relatives or visitors who decry my interest in video games, I'm actually thinking of trying to bring these people "in" this season. Try to open them up to the Video Game side of entertainment.

I have tried in past instances to "ready up" at my kids' birthday parties by introducing games like Feeding Frenzy, or the minigames in Alien Hominid HD. The kids loved it, the adults... kind off.

At other events I've shown games like Zuma, Luxor 2, Lumines, Jewel Quest, etc... Again, kids were all over them, their parents... not so much. They seem to like the ideas behind those games but get easily frustrated once the difficulty ramps up. I've noticed though that the younger the parent the easier it is for them to get excited and interested about games. Kindda hard to appeal to those over 35 it seems.

So this season, as stated previously, I feel temted to try to bridge that generational gap. That of course is easier said that done.

What games would/will qualify to such task? Will kids and their parents feel compelled to play together? Hmmm... I think there's one game that might actually do that. And if it doesn't I'll have to say I'll probably wasted my precious $60 bucks.

What game will I use? Something that it's coming Nov 7th as far as I know. That game is called: Scene it! Yep, that's the one I'll use. Hopefully those "big button" controllers will make people feel less intimidated. (Actually I've heard somewhere there might be an update coming to be able to use those same controllers to play Uno??)

Whichever the case might be, this is an experiment I'm willing to make. Let's see if Mcsft's plans work out well in my favor.