So just this morning I was thinking... I enjoy both the Xbox Live service, as well as the method that it connects gamers. Let me explain.

My Xbox 360's DVD drive died in November, and a combination of being quite busy and not liking dealing with people over the phone, caused me to not doing anything about it until late May. I eventually ordered a replacement drive online to replace it myself. While waiting between placing the order, and it arriving, I was really getting the itch to play some Live with my best friend. I had my Xbox with me, but he only had his 360 with him, so we needed to find a game that worked with both systems which we both owned copies of. Our first choice was Halo 2, but when he couldn't find his copy, we settled on the one game that fit the requirements, Ghost Recon. This game came out on November 11, 2002, and the Live service launched on the 15th of November, so it's pretty fair to say that by the standards of the service, it's old.

So we popped the game in, and not only did it work (duh!) we weren't even the only two people looking to play a Co-op game at that time. You heard me- there were other people playing a 6 year old game at the same time we were. Had we had the PS2 versions, I doubt that the service would still be running. And this isn't a major thing, if some one asked me, "What's your favorite feature of Xbox Live" I wouldn't respond that I love how it supports old games, but sharing that experience really made my day.

The big reason that the service is able to do this is that it doesn't run dedicated servers for games, it runs servers for the features of the service. Matchmaking are run by their servers, but they set up one of the consoles as the "host" of the game and everyone connects to that box. If everyone has a bad connection it isn't fun, but all you need is one person in the game to have a good connection and then it make no performance difference.

I don't have the time I need to write deeply how I feel right now. Videogames are only a small part of my life at the moment, but Gamespot is the one thing that I always do to keep up with things. I've always said that "Jeff IS Gamespot", so his recent having been "let go" has stricken me like the loss of a friend. I felt, numb, betrayed, and depressed. I know that the show will go on, but with Rich and Jeff both gone now (and Tim's gone, when did that happen?) it truly is an end of an era for Gamespot Live.

I felt the need to write this in case the Gamespot editor are prowling around the Blog-o-sphere looking for their reader's reactions. I am saddeded by the loss of Jeff, but I have not lost my respect for the Gamespot family. I believe your story 110% about it being a management problem, and it really warms my heart to hear the editor's stories about Gamespot being a family and sticking together in this hard time.

Even if we, the public, never hear an offical reason for why this happed the way it did, I hope for your sakes, and for the sakes of the Gamespot community, that the staff is able to get some sort of closure.

My love to the Gamespot family and greater community,

--Justin

So it's been almost a year since I've written anything here. Not that I haven't visited Gamespot on an almost daily basis since then, but I guess that I just haven't written much. So begin with the short update:

:cry:Richie-G has left us. Rich has been my favorite personality on Gamespot. Since I've been following the site closely, we've lost Bob, Carrie, and Greg, and this loss for me was the biggest. I guess that I felt a bit of a personal connection with Rich because his job is right in the vein of what I want to do, as well as he graduated from the college in my hometown while I am currently attending the college in his. Rich always seemed to have lots of energy for his work, and greatly respected and appreciated that.

Rich, you are irreplaceable, and surely will be missed. Good Luck with your future!

Last weekend I attended The Simpsons Movie world premiere in Springfield, Vermont which was pretty cool. Matt Groening, David Silverman, James Brooks and many other 20th Century Fox people were there, so it was pretty cool. Not to mention that the Simpson family was there in person (in costume of course!) and the town was filled with adoring fans. I was able to get myself into the background of lots of TV coverage, so I can only imagine that I must have been on some channel somewhere at some time.

This weekend (Friday actually) I went to our semi-local theatre to watch The Simpsons Movie. I wanted to go into the movie with low expectations, but hearing swimmingly positive reviews made that hard to do. Nonetheless I still enjoyed the movie a great deal and I do believe that it is worth the price of admission. According to Steve Mason over at Fantasy Moguls it looks like The Simpsons Movie made about $72.5 million which makes it the third-highest opening weekend gross of an animated movie only behind Shrek 3(#1) and Shrek 2.

Finally, since I obviously haven't written since E3 2007 I can't NOT comment on it.

My initial impressions of the press conferences is that Sony seems to have the biggest and best gameplan for the future, while Microsoft will definately be the strongest this holiday. Ninty is still just doing their thing and as long as they contine to make money at what they're doing (a skill the Microsoft and Sony seem to forget to use most of the time) I think we ought to leave them to do their thing even if we don't agree with the direction that they're heading.

Gamespot's coverage was immaculate, and I would know because I saw more of it then I would care to admit to most of the general public. The games that I'm most excited for this holiday season are Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, and Mass Effect. I'm not going to have much free time this fall while at school, but certainly it will be filled with me either making money to buy these games, or me playing the games.

For now I bid you all farewell.

Best. Movie. Evar.

I had high hopes for the movie and it did not disapoint. If you've been looking foreward to this movie for over a year like I have, you definately need to check it out if you somehow haven't yet.

Sad to see Carrie go...

good luck to you Carrie!

Okay, so I made a liar out of myself and I took the dive off of the platform into the Chromehounds pool with my $60.  I picked the game up on Friday, and I haven't put much time into it yet. I finished the Soldier campaign, most of the Sniper, and barely started the Defender.  Before I go online, I would like to have finished all of the missions with "S" ratings so I will have had at least some experience with every type of Hound.

What I spent my Sunday doing was really quite fun.  After waking up early and driving almost two hours, I came to an airfield that had been rented out for the day.  The runways were going to serve only one purpose that day, to allow racing drivers to instruct the average joe (Me, and others...) on how to handle a car at it's limits.  The culmination of the day was at 65MPH avoiding an obstacle that is 50 feet in front of you.  Although I lost my tail end several times, I kept in control of the car and didn't hit a single cone!  So hopefully I'll never need to use the skills that I built up, but I'm sure as hell glad that they are there.

     I've been scouring ebay for used copies of GRAW for under $30 including shipping.  I know that is a lot to ask, but I really shouldn't be spending any money on video games right now and that is stretching it as it is. I'm also interested in Chromehounds as I have been since I first saw it here on the site.  I definitely don't have $60 to drop on a game right now, so I guess that I'll have to wait.

     My other issue with those two games is that the most interesting piece of them is the multiplayer and I know that most of the people on Live are complete jackasses. I have enjoyed playing with a few strangers here and there, but mostly I don't need to be called a n00b and a *insert racial slur here* just because someone doesn't like their life and they feel like a bigger man by saying stuff like that. I don't mean to be sexist when I say that, but I haven't met any ladies online who curse every two words or call people lots of bad names.

     With little exception, my Live experience has been with Halo 2 (which I know has about the worst community around it ever) and a very little PRG3.  At first, it seems that the early adopters of the Xbox 360 were the Halo crowd, but the few recent games of PGR3 online have been with some cooler folks. Namely Europeans, which is great because motor-sports are a great way to mix different cultures with a common love. I guess soccer (or Football) is another instance of that, but I totally don't get that sport.

     I think that I'll end this long uninteresting rant with a question for any of the GRAW and Chromehounds communities. Are they any better then Halo 2 or do you just end up having to play the game with everyone muted?

The Matt Rorrie film was good, but I'm dissapointed that there has been no The Hotspot uploaded and linked.

I have been considering doing a video blog for the last few days, so we'll see.  I doubt that anyone will ever see it, but it should give me another icon in my Gamespot profile.  And those are almost as addictive as points (so not much).

I'm totally not up into Points like Jeff and Carrie, but I'm starting to feel that my score is totally inadaqute considering I've had the system a long as possible. I only own 3 games, so I guess that somewhat limits my points possibilities. I don't know of anywhere around where I live that rents Xbox 360 games, so maybe I can borrow games from friends.

Anyway, I just decided to start adding games I own into the collection here on Gamespot, and it is telling me one thing. I know why I'm having to take out student loans to help pay for college.

Something else random, I'm going back and listening to old The Hotspot episodes. It's interesting to hear how often these guys were right about release windows and such.

I love this site!!!!!