Allstar

Looks like a big piece of crap and waste of $50. I'm a Wii owner, but would sorta like some actual NEXT-GEN games and games other than minigames (excluding Zelda).

That woman's fat gut turns me on. Is that wrong?

Where are these magical mystery stores you can just "walk right in" and pick up a Wii located? I was up at 6:00 AM and in line by 7:00 AM for the 8:00 AM opening of the Best Buy/Circuit City/Target/Toys R Us stores (all right next to each other) and couldn't get one.

60 sold out at Target. 62 at Best Buy. 60 at Circuit City. 40 at Toys R Us. Those stores were all within 1 mile of each other. If 202 can sell out in a 1 mile area, I can only imagine that these stores people are just "walking right into" to pick up a Wii are located in an entirely different realm, or in the future when more are in stock.

Both Best Buy and Circuit City checked their computers for other stores in the area and all Best Buy and Circuit City stores within 30 miles of Minneapolis Minnesota were sold out.

Desperate, I called my mom who lives in a rural area 2 hours North of me. She checked Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart and Fleet Farm and all sold out as soon as the stores open (Wal-Mart sold out at midnight). That was in a town of 5,000 people and the Target and Wal-Mart there got 24 each.

So no, despite what analysts and Nintendo and some posters on this very blog have said, this isn't a console you can walk right in and pick up. Although there are clearly a lot out, clearly a lot more people want them. And by 9 in the morning at least 50 stores that I checked had sold out.

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"Also, could someone answer me this. If your Xbox 360 hard drive gets formatted or corrupted, what happens to the Live Arcade games you've purchased?"

Other than having to redownload them again for FREE, nothing. Purchases from XBL Marketplace are tied to your gamertag, not console.

Nintendo screwed this up big time.
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Wrong! I have been fighting with MS for 4 months now to get the Arcade games I paid for on the 360 back, after my 360 broke and I had to get a new one.

Yes, when you're ONLINE the games work, as long as you're using your gamertag. But if you're OFFLINE, only the demos work. That's it.

And unless you have the ORIGINAL receipt and the RETURN receipt and the receipt for the NEW 360 MS will NOT let you re-download those games. They need ALL those receipts faxed to them. If you lost one, tough luck -- you're out the money and you're out the games.

So Nintendo didn't "screw up big time" anymore than Microsoft did. I think both of them screwed up in a huge way. Gaming is becoming a chore.

Get these consoles back offline and let us have the games we paid for, not little portions of the games we paid for. Suddenly video games are like 100 piece jigsaw puzzles -- where you pay $50 - $60 for the first 60 pieces and end up paying the same amount over time to buy the next 40. Microtransactions are a scam and will destroy gaming.

I've found a good steak for less than $10. Stupid Yahoo! Games and its exorbitant lifestyle.

You Nintendo fanboys are idiots. The Wii is WAY overpriced. Look at when the price was announced at Joystiq. The thread is like 300 posts long and almost everyone thinks it was priced too high.

This is DATED hardware. The graphics look significantly worse than the GameCube or Xbox in games such as Far Cry Wii and Call of Duty 3 Wii. You're basically paying $400.00 (minimum of $300.00 with a game and NO extra controller on this "party" console) for hardware that's already dated by half a decade.

The buttons on the nunchuck look painful to use after a short while. Having your index and middle finger wrapped tightly around that oddly shaped thing while moving your thumb on the analog stick? And despite what the fanboy in the Batman shirt claims -- that wire is NOT long enough and will definitely rip loose. I was the biggest fan of the Wii until the day they announced their price and then more and more crap keeps coming out about it.

Wii --

$250 console
$60 extra controller w/ nunchuck
$50 component cable
$15 ethernet adapter
$15 classic gaming controller shell
$30 2 gig SD card when you run out of the 512 mb you get inside the machine

Total = $420 before a game.

This is supposed to be the "value" console for Mr. EveryMan Gamer? Not a chance. Nintendo lost me and this will be the first Nintendo console since the original Nintendo that I didn't buy on launch day.

"the reason executions appear to cost more than life in prison is because of our terrible appeals process. The actual execution cost is negligible."

That "terrible" appeals process you speak of has saved many innocent people from death. Would you just prefer everyone wrongfully convicted die to save you a few "tax-dollars?" As long as there's a death penalty (and hopefully that won't be for much longer), there needs to be a VERY complex and thorough appeals process. As it is, innocent people are still getting executed. This is why it would be best (and far more cost-effective) to get rid of the death penalty all together like sane, moral and intelligent countries in the world and states in the United States already have.

hoff,

See comment # 22.

"I believe I'm not an addict because I could stop at any time."

That's the argument ALL addicts make. Seriously. Haven't you heard it before? "I'm not addicted! I could quit at any time! I just went one week without drinking! I just went two weeks without smoking! I do it because it's what I want to do, not because I have to!"