Yuna’s Village - A Slice Of The Daily life

If you think this whole pixel business is crazy, wait until you see what this dude did. Jon Jacob just spent $100,000 on a virtual space station in a game called “Project Entropia” (Teleporters map shown below). Earlier this year, David Storey spent $26,500 buying Treasure Island , a private piece of virtual land in Project Entropia.

I have never heard of this game, but I know for a fact that a lot of people are spending handsome cash on the virtual armors and weapons to advance in “World of WarCraft” or “Final Fantasy XI”. You can get 2 million Gils (currency in FF series) for 38 bucks and 500 pieces of World or WarCraft gold for $47.

I don’t exactly know how these businesses work by selling virtually nothing in exchange for real currency. But whoever gets the ins and outs of the business such as IGE.com can truly make themselves rich instantaneously without invest much.

Too many of us are working days and nights for a tiny paycheck while there are those creative thinkers breaking new grounds of economy everyday.

There are billions of possibilities on the Internet! I am curious to see what’s gonna happen 10 years from now. Maybe we would all have two different lives, one in a real world and another in a virtual reality world! Good God! Finally the guys can test the water to see how it is like to live as a woman!

Thanks to RJ for the link.

I DON”T BELIEVE IT!!!

Someone paid $15099 for the new XBOX 360!!

This is the first speechless post on Yunasville, ever….

Forget about XBOX 360 for a while. Here is something cool and innovative! – The new Nintendo’s Revolution Controller!

At first glance, I was quite disappointed to see the remote controller style since I am used to the old school style with both hands on. Where the hell is my analog stick??!!

But after reading this article, I can’t wait to try one soon. Here is the highlight:

The controller for Nintendo’s upcoming Revolution home console system is a cordless remote-control-like device designed to be used with only one hand. Two small sensors placed near the TV and a chip inside the controller track its position and orientation, allowing the player to manipulate the action on screen by physically moving the controller itself. For example, you could slash an in-game sword by actually swinging the controller from side to side, turn a race car just by twisting your wrist, or aim your gun in a shooter by pointing the controller where you want to fire.

An expansion port on the bottom of the unit allows for add-on hardware to compliment this “remote controller” like a second controller piece Nintendo demonstrated that comes equipped with an analog stick and two trigger buttons. So you still get the play the old games in old style.

Here is the full length article about this new controller.

The Japanese made a short intro movie to show you how the motion sensor changes the way we play games. It’s a zip file of 16 mb. So be patient. Check it out.

Thanks to Paco for the links!

Here is my previous entry on XBOX 360 launch.

Update on Nov 23
I just came back from a Best Buy store located in Nashville. The store was awefully quiet when I walked in. Well, that tells me something. A store clerk told me that by Monday evening 5pm, they’ve got 50+ campers outside of the store waiting for the 9am Tuesday opening. However, they’ve only had 40 units. So literally, the boxes were sold out even before the store was opened. “Most of the stores only received 30 - 40 units”, said the store clerk.

The rumor says that Microsoft is building up a buying frenzy by deliberately sending retailers minimal numbers of the consoles. But the company said that notion was not correct. “The truth is we’re not holding anything back. We’re going all out with the Xbox 360 launch to ensure that we put every product we’re capable of making on the shelves on the 22nd” said Microsoft spokeman Hufford.

I call that another total bullshit of Microsoft’s marketing strategy. I am saving my precious dollars for the PS3! Sorry Bill! Not everybody appreciates the way you treat your fans by sending just 40 units to a giant Wal-mart or Best Buy store. If you are distributing millions of Halo 2 copies on the launch day, put at least a million XBOX360 out there instead of just 400,000!

If you didn’t notice, today is the launch day of XBOX 360! As expected, many fans started forming lines since last night trying to get a piece of the ass kicking new console at 12:01am this morning. Some people started forming lines at 9:30pm for the stores to open at 8am! Wired has an article on XBOX360 lines in San Fran.

Chicago sold out XBOX 360 todayand the campers were pretty happy since many walk-ins returned with empty hands. You can read about their “camping in the rain” experiences.

Wow, I don’t know if I should call that “anticipation” or “craziness”. According to the Cnet report, not all retailers expect shortage problems. I am curious if I go to the Best Buy or Wal-mart nearby tomorrow (I am currently in Nashville, TN), will I be able to get one without waiting in line for 10 hours? Well, there is no rock to climb nor snowy slopes to play in Nashville. So I AM going to drive around tomorrow just to see if the hype is for real. Stay tuned…

Everybody is talking about XBOX 360 in every corner on this planet.. OK, maybe just in every corner in US. But after reading tons of reviews, I decided NOT to buy a 360 this year.

Here are the top reasons:
1. One of the greatest offerings come with 360 is the online broadband bundle. I am not a XBOX Live player and I don’t have a profile with five-star meter in any game zones. So I don’t really care for this hot feature
2. I’ve got an iPod, a DVD player and all three current game consoles. So I don’t really need another “media-center”
3. Day one games are not that appealing. I looked at the list and the hot ones are mostly in FPS, driving simulation and sports categories. I don’t see Halo3, Splinter Cell 4, and Fable 2, although rumor says these hot titles will come out when PS3 hits the stores. I can wait until they are out.
4. Maybe Microsoft will drop the price when PS3 is released the next year?
5. Is the first generation hardware going to be glitch-free? I probably will feel more comfortable with a release version 3 or 4 after some fix patches are applied.
6. Although I admit that I am a total graphics whore and I will probably buy the machine just because of the enhanced graphics, I am skeptical about the day one graphics performance. PS3 has already warned gamers that the initial release of the games may not have drastic visual differences. So until I see some demos and truly believe that the dots and gray lines are much sharper, I am not going to trust what I read or hear.

On the other hand, I will drop 400 bucks in a split second as soon as Sony releases PS3. Screw the reviews; I just love that system especially if they would release either Final Fantasy XII or Kingdom Hearts 2 with the new hardware. Microsoft has to work a little harder to win the loyal Playstation fans’ wallets.

You bet! That’s why Microsoft is still pushing for Xbox 360 after losing $4 billion since the launch of Xbox 4 years ago. And Bill Gates is preparing to lose even more when Xbox 360 releases in Nov. “We are thinking long term.” Said Stephen McGill, head of UK marketing. Translation? Long term plan is to kill Sony, kill EA, kill Nintendo so everybody plays Microsoft games on Xbox 1200 in the long run.

But this time, it’s not going to be as easy as crushing Netscape or driving Apple out of the door. They first have to worry about Sony’s consoles. Everyone knows that game software is where the money is. To take over the game industry, Microsoft has to do what they did in the browser war with Netscape by leveraging the base, OS at that time, but console base this time. A game console is equivalent to the Operating System. Without taking over the base install, you can forget about game software monopoly. As far as the market concerns, Sony still holds majority of the shares. According to DFC’s forecast, Playstation 3 may be able to grab 53% market share which leaves Nintendo and Microsoft to grab a quarter each.

Sony knows very well where they stand. According to this month’s official Playstation magazine, it roughly takes $500 to manufacture a Playstation3 hardware but the retail price is set to $399. Merrill Lynch Japan has predicated a 1.18 billion loss for Sony after the first year launch. Sony might lose even more if Microsoft decides to cut Xbox 360’s price when Playstation3 hits the store shelves. So the budget gamers might be able to get a deal if a few month waiting doesn’t sound too terrible to bear.

Assuming Microsoft is able to take care of the Playstation problem, they still have to worry about EA and Nintendo, currently the two top game publishers in console game sector. It’s going to be tricky to hijack Mario and Madden NFL, Mr. Gates!

With a deep pocket and the determination to win the billion dollar interactive entertainment market, it’s anyone’s guess whether Microsoft is able to repeat the history and win this video game war.

This is the guy who leaked XBOX’s 360’s specs earlier. Oh, this is not Star Wars’ Han Solo reliving in the 21st century. This guy works for Factor 5, the company develops Star Wars games. So if he has posted something on a public forum to purposely leak the info out, I’d say the odds of specs being accurate are probably pretty high.

So, let’s take a look at a few highlights of the new Revolution specs:

• 1 dual-threaded IBM Custom PowerPC 2.5 GHz core with 256KB of L1 cache, 1MB of L2 cache, rumored to have L3 cache as well.
• GPU core at 600 Mhz that will support up to 2048×1268 resolution, though HD support is still being decided.
• 256 MB’s of 1T-SRAM which is much better than the Gamecube
• Main memory:512MB of 700 MHz 1T-SRAM
• The physical processing chip will have 32 MB of its own RAM, which will link to the CPU and GPU and the Controller.

Although XBOX 360’s specs shows three 3.2 GHz cores and two hardware threads per core (yeah.. no comparison I know), but I doubt the gamers are expecting Nintendo to win the power processing war here. I know I don’t and I never will.

But I sure hope they will consider HD as part of the package. Ahh… Mario brothers in High Definition…. Now that’s something sweet for everyone to have…

Wait… Are there any gamers on the site who care for the GHz and Mhz? Or just me talking geeky by myself here?

If you’ve played any games, I mean ANY, the chances of finding some small chest female characters is probably next to zero. Most of the time, you have to deal with those girls showing up with little cloth wrapped around their triple F digital assets, like this Ivy girl on the left. It got so bad that it started hurting my eyes… When I was playing Soul Calibur II, I started with Takki, a real fast Ninja girl who can jump sky high. But check out her size… Daaaamn! I knew it didn’t matter since the programs are set and done behind the scene. But psychologically, I was really afraid those bouncing “watermelons” would drag her ass down. And you know how important speed is when it comes to fighting game. So I gave up on her and switched to Cassandra. At least this Roman warrior is somewhat normal.

I am a gal gamer, so I can’t really speak for the male gamers out there. But if I had a spot to express my wishes to the game makers, fixing boob size is definitely one of them. So finally the gals and boys can concentrate on the game plays….

For the console gamers out there, check out this AWESOME “Gamer’s Manifesto” . The guy really nailed a few “wants” and “bullshits” in the current game industry.

Just a few more wishes on my list:

• Need motion capture sensors so we can finally play the real snowboarding games at home! Don’t tell me it’s not possible, I have seen it in SigGraph two years ago! Why hiding the technology?!
• Give me Virtual Reality!!! if VR can be here, imagine how fun that is to play the first person shooter games!!!
• Random fiends in RPG games MUST DIE
• Oh, and don’t forget to shrink a couple of watermelons for me, will ya?

Thanks to Heavywinter for the manifesto link.

Microsoft finally announced it’s newest console platform pricing today at the German Games Conference in Leipzig, Germany.

What’s confusing is that you have two models to pick and choose from. The $299 version that only has a regular controller and the $399 system that comes with 20GB hard drive and a wireless controller.

I personally will go with the $400 model. If you compare XBOX 360’s specs with the PCs on the market, the processing power is actually greater than most of the PCs close to that price range. Hardware to hardware, $400 isn’t a bad price at all. Microsoft also plans to ship more $400 models this Nov. So get your wallet ready or start making a Christmas wish list NOW!

I went though all the console games I have played in the past 4 years and here is my top 10 game list.

I didn’t care for those PC modified games. So Sims is actually my least favorite game on Console. Want to play simulation games? Ditch the controller and get a mouse.

The top 10 list doesn’t include any of the PC games I have played. I simply didn’t play enough PC games to form my own opinion. I probably played/scanned through about 100 console games; however, I only sat by PC when War Craft II and III came out. This kind of strategy games won’t work on console platforms in my opinion. I am glad Bizarre didn’t try to make a PS2 version of it and ask you to use the controllers to “click” your brains out.

Or, I should say it is Christine’s most wanted RPG! Finally, after an online based XI, mission structured X-2, a traditional Final Fantasy is back!!! I really hope this one can live up to the standards of FFX.

There were talks earlier that Square Enix may rework or drop the project because of the long painful 12 months silence. I really got worried for a while and wondering when in the world would I cast another Phoenix Down?! Looks like the wait is finally over in a few months.. but still.. a painful few months..

Other Final Fantasy News:

• Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. This is a full length CG-animated movie follow-up to FFVII. DVD will hit the store on Sept 13,2005. Don’t miss it!
• Since people can’t get enough of FFVII, a sequel is due out in late 2005. Dirge of Cerberus it is! I am not usually optimistic about any FF sequels after the experiences of watching Yuna dancing with guns like a 12 year old in X-2. But, a third person action doesn’t sound too bad here..