Cory

First started reading Joystiq around summer 2006.

So will this be the full retail release of Casino Royale, or a bare-bones one that is missing many features of the retail Blu Ray (ala US's pack-in of Talladega Nights)?

Yeah, that's great and all - except I still haven't forgotten how the PS2, XBox 360, and PC versions of Lego Star Wars II all have the same 2 show-stopper bugs where the entire game freezes. And the tech-support always says "This is the first we've heard of this error, it is most likely your machine" when I personally know of dozens of people for each of the three platforms that have all sent in the same error reports.

That and the fact that the aspect ratio is fucked on the XBox 360 - if you start a game in fullscreen, that game will forever be in fullscreen. If you change your XBox 360 to widescreen after the fact, all Lego Star Wars II does is stretch the full-screen image.

What sloppy sloppy programming. But hey, I'm glad they make 8 year old boys laugh.

Christopher Grant, why would you call this game Penny Arcade's "eponymous episodic adventure"? Eponymous means "giving one's name to." A band's self-titled ablum is eponymous - they gave their name to the album, or conversely, the album's name is derived from the band name. Romulus, the founder of Rome, is another obvious example. This game certainly doesn't seem to fit - sure, it has the Penny Arcade Adventures badge in a transparent and miniscule form towards the bottom of the poster, but the title is clearly "On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness."

I actually really like that title - very dramatic, as is everything Tycho writes. His description of their quest to make carrot cake soup is one of the funniest things I have ever seen online.

When you purchase premium content (XBLA games, maps, skins, etc.), two licenses are created - one for the Gamer Tag that purchased it, and one for the XBox 360 console that it was purchased on (the console, NOT the hard drive or memory card).

The problem here is that when you get a faulty XBox 360 and have to have it replaced, suddenly all your content doesn't work the way it's supposed to. You can't use things you've purchased offline anymore, nor can other accounts on your 360 besides the one you purchased it with. You can redownload things for free, but everything is still safe and sound on my hard drive so that's not a problem. If I was to redownload, nothing would be accomplished - the licenses are still tied to the old, broken 360 which I no longer have. There's no way to switch the association.

I couldn't play any of my games yesterday, and my girlfriend can NEVER play any of the games I purchased. This is a problem - this is not the way things would behave if I hadn't been unlucky enough to have a faulty 360, yet there's no mechanism to get things back to the way they should be (short of the workaround where you have to call MS up and wait 8-10 days for a refund authorization that allows you to redownload things on your new console and create the proper new licenses).

There needs to be an easy way to authorize/deauthorize 360s so you can use your content the normal way if you have to replace your 360 for whatever reason. I'm going through the current process right now, and it's a pain in the butt. And I only have a stupid refurb right now, what if it dies again? Will I have to go through this again? And what if I don't choose to go through Microsoft next time and decide to get a brand new 360 instead of another crappy refurb? Microsoft won't have record of the switch, and they probably won't give me a refund - I'll be forced to actually pay all over again for all the content I bought (we're currently looking at around $75, and I can imagine that growing quite a bit)!

For the guy asking - GameStop trade-in on an XBox 360 premium is $220 in store-credit, even less in cash. AKA a rip-off. Sell it used on eBay or to someone you know who wants one for like $300 at least. $220 is an insult.

Most anticipated - Gears of War!

Comcast HD DVR

My favorite XBox 360 game is definitely Dead Rising.

Must you hate on absolutely everything that isn't XBox 360-related? Jesus Christ the box art looks fine. It stands out, it's pleasing to the eye, etc. If you hate absolutely everything that is asymmetrical, I don't think you're the best person to judge anything visual.