Danny Bilson , Executive Vice President of THQ has recently gone on record as saying that the biggest problem with the video game industry at the moment is used games sales, the much maligned topic has been cropping up more and more often over the last few years.

Different publishers have been coming up with their own solution to this retail grey area over this time Like EA with their online pass(FIFA) and the $10 of free content(Mass Effect 2) both of which in effect reward players for buying new or if you're a glass half empty kind of person, punish player for buying used.

Rather than blame the end user for this market Bilson had this to say "It's really important not to punish the used gamer in any way. I'll be honest, if I'm buying games with my own dollars, and if one is $60 and $40 for the same thing, I'm buying the $40 one myself."

THQs solution is to develop a base level of the game which includes the basic content needed for any user to potentially enjoy the game for $40 and then include an online shop which allows players to tailor the game how they like it. What this means for THQ is that even if a player buys the game preowned to get the full potential out of the game they will require the DLC allowing those dollars to be feed back into the company towards future development costs.

I dont think it will be quite this drastic

The main difference I see between this model and that of EA is that rather than be side mission content this DLC will effectively be core content from the series, the first game to use it will be MX vs. ATV so I could imagine the missing content to be the higher tier vehicles or the more difficult tracks.

The biggest problem here is that racing series typically see a lot of DLC which is typically faster vehicles or more difficult tracks so in this sense its not much different than standard DLC for a full price game which the developer sees profit on even if you bought the game preowned and with the game releasing at a lower cost under the new scheme the developer is then likely to see less profit returned rather than more.

The other major stumbling block the developer will face is that of cutting content, assassins creed 2 developer Ubisoft faced a rather vocal backlash when their game was missing a few select chapters which subsequently was sold as premium DLC even taking into consideration that MX vs. ATV will sell at a cut price there is still likely to be some sort of outrage if twisted pixels experience with XBLA title The Maw which sells for $10 is anything to go by.

To sum it up if the developer/publisher sees less return at retail and releases DLC which isn't likely to see a larger return than normal will this help to reduce the damage the preowned games market creates? I for one don't think so.

Finally the day came when Kinect would be launched in the UK and as I left the house to visit the store I was filled with a mix of anticipation and excitement. As one of the many people who hadn't preordered I was unsure if I would even get my hands on Kinect or if I would come home empty handed and disappointed.

As per the title the foray was of course a success and I was back at home by 9:30 ready to unbox my controller-less controller and find out if all that money and worry that I expended on this endeavour would leave me with the biggest case of buyers remorse since I bought the Sega CD.

Taking it out of the box I wasn't surprised at the size of the sensor, having seen it in the store a few days before but what really surprised me was the weight of the oversized peripheral , for such a big piece of kit the weight is absolutely minimal, weighing in at roughly the same weight as a PSP or a 360 controller with no battery in it. Also packed in the box was an adapter for people like myself who use a wireless adapter to connect their 360 online, the setup guide and of course the pack in game Kinect adventures.

Setup was my next step and following the instructions in the guide I was able to get it all hooked up in a matter of minutes and after running through the simple calibration tests and the Kinect ID setup I was ready to play.

Right off the bat I was blown away with how responsive the action on screen was, of course I had read how other people had found it but experiencing it for myself was something else and too top it all off I was able to do all this in my living room without moving any of the furniture, all it took was a slight turn of the TV to give me the biggest amount of space and I was easily able to get it at the best setting which is required for 2 player action.

The voice control was the biggest surprise, having had no end of problems with other speech recognition software. Thanks to my accent in games like end war and in PC tools I was surprised that almost 100% of the time the Xbox was picking the correct option and doing it first time.

The only unfortunate thing was the cost £129($200) which left me with no cash to buy any of the additional games that I wanted. The one game that I did get was of course Kinect adventures which was nice enough to include demos of a few other games for me to try.

Denim was a bad idea and it had to go

I played Kinect adventures for most of the day and by 3:30pm my son got home from school and joined me in some multiplayer, the camera had no problems tracking the two of us at one time even when we switched sides or tried to mess up each others games. What's even more surprising about this is that I am so much taller than my son.

The multiple game modes within Kinect adventures are all pretty fun from the serene Space pop which is super laid back as far as motion controls go right down to reflex ridge which is hyper energetic and really gets the muscles going.

the kids loved playing on that invisible trampoline!

By around 6 we had decided to try out the demo for Joyride and as we where both exhausted we took turns trying out the battle race, straight away the control scheme took some getting used to but after a while we both got the hang of drifting and shooting the weapons and though it was just the one track to try it seemed like a pretty fun game.

8pm dinner over and my old bones rested I stepped up for some 2 player joyride and the game switched us to a pro race mode and allowed us to race on a different track which had a ton of shortcuts and jumps and we had some pretty tight knit races but in the end we decided to try out another game.

The game was dance central and during this time I did get several messages questioning my manliness but I have to admit the dancing is pretty fun allowing even the most disjointed of "dancers" like myself to have fun, the only snag was that my son had trouble getting the game to recognise his moves but it worked for me perfectly.

Finally to wrap up the play day at around 9:30 pm we tried out fitness evolved and unfortunately it just wasn't my sons cup of tea though it is something I'm considering buying for myself so I can get a little more structured exercise.

After the kids went to bed I did stay up a while and I used the Kinect interface to watch some TV before replying to a few messages I got during the day and after almost failing to get up of the sofa I went to bed to recuperate.

So here I am the next morning 24hrs later and I have muscles that ache that I didn't even know I had and I'm asking myself if it was all worth it. The answer of course is yes from a fun standpoint I get to pretend I'm in Minority Report and the games although obviously first-gen releases are fun and can only get better from here.

From a financial stand point I would say yes too, a day out with my kids would typically cost me around £50 and with one day over and with many more to come this thing will be a godsend during the school holidays.

It seems after the summer the games keep flooding in, like every year before this there are too many games for the average gamer to buy and play, what makes it worse for me is that I'm now trying to catch up on months of XBLA games that I missed out on.

Well this past few weeks I've been a very busy bee indeed, I've played numerous titles including Halo: Reach , Dead Rising: Case Zero, Limbo and Puzzle Quest 2. I do have review coming for most of these games but I wanted to take this opportunity just to share a few quick thoughts on these games.

Halo: Reach

As a fan of the series reach has been my bread and butter since its release, I have clocked in over 5 days of gameplay in a very short time, the single player campaign was amazing, exactly what I wanted from a Halo game, great pacing, great vehicle sections, wonderful co-op experience which extends to the firefight mode which now has a matchmaking service.

The reason I loved the other Halo games was the AI and Reach give me good AI in buckets, the grunts swarm and try suicide runs, the elites run and hide when the shields are down and enemies try to flank and put you in disadvantageous situations.

The team at Bungie have thought of everything for there farewell to the Halo universe, the daily challenges, the forge and great multiplayer that keeps you playing long after the story is done.

Limbo

I don't know where to begin with this game, I don't feel like the pricing matched the content you got but I wouldn't have passed this game up for anything. The plat forming and art are impeccably done and there are countless standout moments which you will remember for years to come.

This game is a true hit of the modern age, its got a haunting soundtrack that perfectly matches the action on screen, the game is around 3 hours long but during that time the game throws challenge after challenge at you, each a little different from the last which keeps the action from getting stale and even at its hardest the game never feels cheap or unfair, I could recommend this to anyone.

Puzzle quest 2

Straight up not as good as the first, the new over world adds nothing to the game, essentially just being a point and click interface rather than the dungeon crawler I thought it would be, there are also several problems with this interface with the cursor automatically moving to the next objective this often leads to you misclicking if you where trying to explore. I haven't finished it yet but the combat is much better this time around and a quick scan of my friends leader board shows me sitting alone on there leading me too believe that like myself people prefer the first iteration.

More to come on this in the future.

Dead rising 2: case zero

Justplainlucas recommended this on his blog and subsequent review and reluctantly I gave it a shot and I was not disappointed, the game is only 5 bucks but it packs in so much action, a great taste of what was too come though its probably a defunct purchase now that the full game is out, but if you are interested in the backstory its worth a look.

Dead Rising 2

Last on the list but certainly not least, there is so much fun to be had with this game, to paint a typical scene from my experience,

I was dressed as a swat officer with little bunny slippers, my friend dressed as a ninja, both of us on little pink bikes travelling up and down the mall running over zombies after 5 minutes or so we grow weary and decide to move locations and stumble across a pyschopath battle, its difficult but we get it done, time is running out on the objective now so the rush is on to the location but along the way we get sidetracked by the possibility of mankinis and all sorts of crazy duct tape weapons, case failed, "ah well we'll try again tomorrow lets mash some ZOMBIES".

So much fun though the multiplayer doesn't seem to work well.

A lot of discussions have taken place around Gamespot regarding Pre-orders in the video game industry, from Justin Calverts post in early January about the pre-order madness involved in purchasing star trek online, Analysts discussing abysmal kinnect pre-orders and if you check the forums of any up and coming game, questions regarding the nature of its pre-order bonus.

Rather than throw up some intellectual discussion about the pros and cons of such market manipulation, I simply wanted to ask the people who read this about your nightmares and your greatest moments involving pre-orders.

My greatest Pre-order moment came quite a few years back, a local game store was offering plush toys on the Pokemon red and blue games, I had to wait around because the delivery was late but I went home with the red copy and around 5-6 pokemon plushes which was pretty cool.

My biggest nightmare was GTA 3 which I pre-ordered, went to the store on launch day, stood in the queue before opening, at lunch time I was told they were sold out and I was devastated.

Took me a few weeks to finally get a copy

Care to share your own? Leave it in the comments.

Hey guys just a quick update on what I've been doing this week, first things first I lost 2700 gamerscore, I've been offline for a while and yesterday I brought my memory card to my sons house to upload my current score, unfortunately the server said the account info was incorrect and I had to recover my profile meaning, Mafia 2, Dark void and alpha protocol achievements are completely missing, it sucks but it's not a big deal.

I've also had a chance to try out the demo for vanquish and Ruse, the vanquish demo was great, I can't wait to get my hands on the full game though I was less impressed with the ruse demo, nothing particularly bad about the gameplay, the missions in the demo just aren't that interesting.

If you haven't already watched it, head on over to the now playing section of the site and check out the gamespot staff playing Halo: Reach.

I watched the show last night as soon as it was up and was extremely impressed by what I saw, the graphics looked amazing and Shaun even took the time to show us the grunt grenade rush, which happened a few times to my amusement.

As someone who is excited about the games forthcoming release the preview I watched last night gave me all the info I could possibly want albeit with a few spoilers from the early game.

Straight up I noticed just how much the game has changed graphically since halo 3/ODST the sprawling world is a beautiful mix of organic and technology, with trees and buildings both beautifully rendered. The games AI doesn't let down either, anyone who played the previous games will know that the Ai is one of the highlights of the series and the return of the elites just sealed the deal for me.

I can't wait to pick this up on Tuesday.

For the past week I have been busting my brain trying to figure out which game I was going to buy this coming fortnight , I have been wrecking my brain deciding which of the following games I should buy Halo: Reach or Call of Duty: Black ops.

As many of you will know the actual release date for Call of Duty is November 9th, the reason I thought otherwise is that I saw the following advertisement

As a British citizen my crazy back to front brain reads this as September 11th making that release date clash with the highly anticipated Sci-Fi shooter.

Only today did I realise that the advertisement was in what I like to call "Americanish" and now my brain can rest easy in the knowledge that I won't have to decide which of these two games to buy.

I just finished the game, it wasn't great, in fact it's wholly underwhelming.

It's not that I expected too much from it, I knew it was linear and that there is nothing to do outside of missions but that doesn't bother me, there are tons of great games out there that don't have anything to do outside the story, heck I would go so far as to say that that's pretty much what all games where up until hardware could handle these huge sandbox environments.

So why didn't I like Mafia 2?

Find out here in my review

Leave comments on what you guys thought of the game

Some of you may know that I used to play World of Warcraft religiously, raiding six nights a week as a Mage and Resto Druid and filling my days with questing and grinding all my alts going so far as to wait days before leaving my room or even seeing the sunlight.

This week I finally returned to the hallowed Battlegrounds and cities of Azeroth though fear not I haven't returned to my old ways, rather with my new PC I finally got round to buying Warcraft 3 and immediately upon booting it up I was hit by a wave of nostalgia. The game itself is absolutely fantastic and after playing through the first two campaigns and the prologue I'm hankering for more so I think the Frozen Throne expansion is next on my list of games to buy.

My second return to Azeroth came from a different Blizzard game Starcraft 2, I decided to buy it and although my computer hardly runs it and I had a heck of a time getting it installed with no internet connection at home , I still love this game, what really made my day was the dancing night elf hologram in the cantina, it genuinely made me laugh out loud.

I would also like to say DAMN you Blizzard for taking all my money!!

If you guys get a chance please check out my review of Dark Void.

My Pc is busted, thats the only reason i havent been posting, will be back in the fututre bigger and better than ever!!

or possibly just as bad as always

If there is one thing I notice when I read through interviews with games developers its the fact that journalists never seem to ask the pressing questions, I realise that games journalists walk a fine line between keeping the developers on board and asking the right questions but in every other industry the pressing questions get asked, what I mean is when apple unveiled the iPad journalists openly asked questions that weren't always flattering and for me as a consumer of video games I want the people that are essentially the go between company and consumer to ask the questions that I want asked.

One example of this which inspired this article was a recent interview I watched with peter Molyneux, in the past Molyneux has promised much and delivered just the bare essentials. In this interview the journalist sat while Molyneux described the multiplayer portion of his new game fable 3 and to my ears it sounded just like what he said about the multiplayer in Fable 2.

Instantly my head was awash with follow up questions and as I neither have the brains or inclination to be a journalist I was shocked when the interviewer just moved on to another topic, how can such a glowing opportunity pass without the right questions being asked? Is the balance so far in the developers favour that we simply have to agree with everything they say?

This is by no means directed at anyone in particular, I just wonder when I come to a video game site to read an interview may I be as well just going to the developers home page and reading their latest press release?