eBay is changing some policies in October, and they really, really, suck. Ripped right from their notification, it says (bolding is mine),
“Paper payments end this October
Beginning late October 2008, all items listed on eBay.com must be paid for using one of the following approved payment options:
Direct credit or debit card payment via a merchant credit card account
PayPal
ProPay
Payment on pick-up Paper payment methods such as checks and money orders will no longer be accepted on eBay.com.
By January 2009, all approved electronic payment methods will be integrated into eBay checkout. For example, buyers will be able to enter their credit card number directly into eBay checkout, and the payment will be routed to the seller’s Internet merchant account or to their PayPal account.”
Basically eBay is forcing everybody to pay through a method where they can skim off a transaction fee, which screws the seller just a little bit more. Whe you use PayPal to accept payment, eBay takes something like 4% of the transaction, which is already in addition to the seller fees. When it’s all said and done, eBay usually takes around a 10% commission on your sale. Now, I think eBay is entitled to some sort of money for each item sold, but do they really have to ding you twice if you’re only planning on using one of their services? eBay shouldn’t be interfering with the money transfer if the buyer and seller want to work out their own payment.
I’ve already stopped selling stuff on eBay if I could avoid it, but this is just another reason why gamers who are looking to unload their games online for cash should look to Amazon.com or Chase the Chuckwagon. eBay is getting greedier and greedier; but the tighter they squeeze those sellers for extra pennies, the more the dollars are going to slip by and into the pockets of sites that provide a better service.
Ok, I’ll admit it. I have many EA Sports games sitting on my game shelves. From current and past years I have iterations of NCAA Football, Madden, Tiger Woods, and more. However, I really feel like EA goes out of their way to give me a solid nut punch whenever they can. NCAA 09 and Madden 09 both have their share of inexcusable issues, and FIFA 08 was pretty much broken in comparison to 07, but I was having very high hopes for FIFA 09 based on gameplay videos and early previews of the game. Now EA has announced Adidas Live Season for FIFA 09 that will “dynamically update player form in-game to mirror real world performance.” Sounds great, right? Well, it is, except for that EA is making you pay a premium for the service. In a recent press release, EA Sports said the following (emphasis is my own):
EA UNVEILS NEW ADIDAS LIVE SEASON FOR FIFA 09 THAT WILL DYNAMICALLY UPDATE PLAYER FORM IN-GAME TO MIRROR REAL WORLD PERFORMANCE
EA Secures Exclusive Licensing Agreement with Spanish La Liga BBVA; FIFA 09 Demo Available World Wide on Sept. 11
GUILDFORD, UK. – August 20, 2008 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced a new premium service for EA SPORTS™ FIFA 09 called adidas Live Season that will redefine the football videogame experience by dynamically updating player form in-game on a weekly basis so that player attributes mirror real-world performances.FIFA 09 will now feel and play differently throughout the entire 2008-2009 season matching the weekly rhythm of football. The new service will be available for Barclay’s Premier League, La Liga BBVA, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Serie A and Mexican Primera Division on the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system and PC.
Each year EA puts out another edition of each of their sports games with only the most minor changes (many times taking a step back in the process), and yet they still charge the full $60. Games like Madden are usually receiving a roster update and a new gimmick, with this year it being the ridiculously stupid Madden IQ. Now when they actually come up with something worthwhile, they decide to rake their fans over the coals. Haven’t we given you enough, EA? To those of us that are stupid enough to buy your marginally updated crap from year to year, don’t you think we deserve a returned favor or some acknowledgment of appreciation? Nah, I guess you’d rather squeeze each and every one of us for every penny we’ve got.
You already sold the naming of the feature to Adidas, shouldn’t that pretty much cover any costs incurred to run the service? Do you really need to turn us upside down and shake us? Thanks, EA, you’re awesome!
Now, this is bad. I mean, this is real bad. Either this is some serious moneyhatting or, well, can it really be anything else? Jane Wells, whom we all respect as a leading gaming journalist, has written a story for CNBC entitled, “The Ultimate Proof Sony is Winning”. This article is full of fun, so I’m going to post it and we’ll carve out a few select bits. Here we go:
Forget the analysts. Forget the NPD sales figures. Forget the CEO’s. I live with the ultimate expert on the video game industry—my 16-year-old son.
He not only plays video games, he watches every show about them on G4, he participates in chat rooms about them on the internet, he competes in a variety of games on a variety of platforms. He always tells me the latest trend three months before I read about it in the media.
But he’s never been a PlayStation fan. Sure, he had a PS1, but as soon as the Xbox came out, it was game over. He loved the Xbox graphics, and once he was old enough to play “Halo,” he loved the games. He graduated to the Xbox 360, Xbox Live, “Gears of War,” etc. He even hung in there during the overheating Xbox “red ring of death” phase. Other than a two-year detour/obsession playing “World of Warcraft” on his computer, he has always been an Xbox fanboy. Sony just didn’t have great games.
Last week he recorded all of G4’s E3 coverage so he could watch it after work (he’s got a summer job to save money to buy gas and videogames, in that order). He was very excited after Microsoft had its news conference. “You can stream Netflix movies onto the Xbox 360!” he exclaimed.
Then he watched the Sony press conference, and the world as we know it changed. After hearing about “Metal Gear Solid 4”, as well as other PlayStation exclusives in the pipeline and the awesomeness of Blu-ray, he promptly packed up his Xbox 360 and all his games and went down to Game Stop to trade them in. He bought a PS3 and “Metal Gear Solid 4.” I had to be there to approve the purchase of the M-rated game since he’s not yet 17, and I was surprised at how rapturous the Game Stop employees were about Sony. They then sold him a USED copy of “Metal Gear Solid 4.” “How can the game already be used?” my son asked. “Because some people get frustrated if they don’t have ‘cheats’,” he was told. But the cashier assured him that the game “was just as good as new.” My son asked, “How can that be?” “Because PlayStation players are ninjas!” was the response.
I’m happy to say my son didn’t accept this answer. Perhaps that’s because he’s now spending his own hard-earned money to purchase these games. He said, “Seriously, how does that work?” And the Game Stop fanboys explained that Sony now has a special coating on Blu-ray game discs which makes them virtually scratch-proof. We shall see.
One thing we do know. We may not be able to stream Netflix movies onto the console (yet) but now we can start ordering them on Blu-ray.
As we left the store, I said to him, “I never thought I’d see you with a PlayStation.” “Neither did I,” he replied.
Ok, so in the first line she claims that she lives with the “ultimate expert on the video game industry”, who happens to be her 16-yr. old son. That’s nice, but how does this so called expert not even know about Metal Gear Solid 4 before E3? After all, she says that he spends his time on message boards, watches “every show about them on G4″, and informs his mom of the latest trends months before the media picks up on them. So she states this, but we’re supposed to believe that E3 2008 was the first time he’d heard of the game? Strike 1!
She claims that he’s always been an Xbox fanboy and that “Sony just didn’t have great games” is the reason why her son picked the 360 over the PS3. Ok…so what did each company show at E3? Sequels! If Sony never had great games (and they most definitely have), why is he all of a sudden excited about their sequels, but not about the sequels on the 360? Fishy. Strike 2!
The conversation in Game Stop…I don’t I really need to point out the improbabilities there. Strike 3!
Seriously, what a load of garbage. I don’t care if this article had been about Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, the PC, or the Phantom; there’s absolutely no way this is anything but fiction. We might be geeks and nerds, but we’re not naive idiots.
In a recent article put out by Forbes, silliness is put to paper by pen. In an attempt to hitch a ride to the GTA IV hype train, Forbes is trying to say that the lack of GTA could spell doom for the Wii’s success in the long term. They claim that GTA IV is going to sell consoles and since the Wii isn’t seeing a GTA release that they’ll lose out on many buyers. Seriously.
So why didn’t it hurt the Wii when they didn’t get Halo 3? What about Gears of War? BioShock? Hmmm, maybe because the average Wii buyer doesn’t care about those games. If the Wii is targeting a new market, than hit franchises from the past aren’t really going to matter much to the Wii’s success in either the short or long term. Forbes should probably go back to tracking some financial reports from some stupid Malaysian tech company we’ve never heard of or something. That might be for the best.
I love arcades and console gaming. I think both are great, but I don’t really see the point in cramming both into a massive monstrosity. A couple of weeks ago I posted about somebody who ruined a Tempest to shove a Wii into the cabinet, but this guy takes it one step further. This custom MAME cabinet incorporates a full MAME setup, a Nintendo Wii, a 42″ HDTV, a 6.1 sound system, and one of the biggest cabinets you’ll ever see. It’s ugly, it’s huge, and it’s probably just an overall bad idea. The four player coin door is a genius stroke when it only has a two player setup as well. Just great thinking all around went into this one. To get an idea at the size of this thing, here are some comparison dimensions and a picture:
Dimensions for a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet Height: 67″
Depth: 33.5″
Width: 23.5″
approx. 220 lbs
Dimensions for the Custom MAME/Wii machine Height: 78″
Depth: 60″
Width: 48″
approx. 500 lbs
Oh, and did I mention that the seller wants $7,000 for this thing (before shipping)? Hahahahahamburger.
A 19 yr. old “man” was arrested for threatening his mom with a knife when she refused to let him use her credit card to buy a new Xbox and a sports jersey. The moron, who was just released out of jail, was upset that his Xbox didn’t work when he got back and he wanted to buy a new one. When the repair center said it would take 30 days, he went stupid and tried to buy a new one with his mom’s credit card. When she refused, he decided to calmly and rationally pull a knife on her to try to persuade her. The original news report said:
White’s mother told police her son got out of jail Sunday and became upset when he tried to use the gaming system for the first time since his incarceration and it didn’t work.
“His mother called the company and they said that they can ship another unit, but it would take 30 days to process the claim,†the report states.
Not wanting to wait, White took his mother’s credit card and tried to order another unit and a new sports jersey over the Internet. White’s mom said he couldn’t order anything, and he reportedly hid the credit card in his bedroom.
White’s anger worsened and he got a knife and “said he was going to hurt her.â€
White’s sister said she saw her brother holding a knife.
White denied having a knife, saying he was “upset that he just got out of jail and his Xbox does not work and his jersey is missing.â€
Come on, who does she think she is? He’s had a rough go in jail and now his Xbox is broken? She should be showering him with gifts, favors, and floor seat tickets to the upcoming Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana concert.
Entries (RSS)