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DS Daily: Bundle Appropriateness Age
There's no denying it (though we're sure there will be plenty of denying it happening in the comments)-- the two-tone DS Lite found in the Brain Age 2 bundle is hot. We're not personally looking to upgrade, but for the sake of others, we seriously hope it ends up in the US and not just Canada. However, is this the best choice of color scheme for Brain Age 2? It doesn't really fit with the white/black/grey color scheme of the game, or with the blue boxart. We also aren't sure if black and red electronics appeal to Brain Age 2's target demographic.What would your ideal Brain Age Special Edition DS Lite look like? It can be designed for the target market, or for attractiveness, or hilarity, your call. The only rule is that you should be able to justify it as a Brain Age-related product. And, really, you don't even have to do that.
Is that a black and red DS Lite?
Sure, we've seen the two new colors Japanese consumers are getting their hands on, however a third and more appealing (to us, anyway) color has emerged from the ashes of E3. A red and black DS, which is red on the top clamshell piece and black throughout the remainder of the handheld, is only to be included in special bundles along with Nintendo's upcoming sequel Brain Age 2. In checking around the internet, we found a bundle of the new color is already being made available to Canadian folks via retailer Future Shop, where they can pick up the new DS Lite, along with Brain Age 2, for a cool $159.99 (or $152.67 USD). The bundle even comes with a carrying case, which we're not sure is to be included in other bundles, as well.
Australia, you get a nice PS3 bundle also, you know!
We could never forget about our friends down under! It has been confirmed that the PlayStation 3 will get the bundle package treatment in Australia as well, starting August 2nd. This isn't really a price drop -- the console will still put you back A$999, but like Europe, will come with a lot of extras that makes it appear to be a bargain.When you buy the bundle package, you get two Sixaxis controllers, a copy of Resistance: Fall of Man and a copy of Motorstorm along with your 60GB PS3. So, if you were unable to take the plunge before due to the high start-up cost of the system, this bundle doesn't make it any less painful for your wallet, except you'd have saved quite a bit on the extra peripheral and two games. Would you guys rather have the US consumers' price drop, or keep this bundle? Again, look for your version of Europe's bundle to hit shelves August 2nd.
60GB PS3 + 3 games + HDMI + Blu-Ray for 399 at Play.com
Play.com is currently offering a very competitive PS3 hardware bundle. For £399 you can get a 60GB PS3, Resistance, Motorstorm, Genji an HDMI cable and a Blu-Ray movie (Click). Add an extra controller for £28 and you're paying for the Starter Pack, but getting an extra game, cable and movie. This is a saving of £214 and we think that it is excellent value. There's no word on when this bundle will end, but it's fairly safe to imagine that stock will sell out fairly swiftly with a deal like that. So if you're tempted, go for it. Play.com will ship internationally (seemingly for free), with the price working out to about €593. Though there may be customs charges to worry about. Check the customs laws for your individual country before ordering.
Rumor: Wii Fit priced at $69.99?
Considering that the game won't be released on American shores until early 2008, it's probably much too early to consider any announced price for Wii Fit to be definite. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime even stated that the company still needs to research the cost of its Balance Board controller before pricing can be accurately determined.Wii Fit's product pages at EB Games and GameStop, however, list a placeholder price which is pretty much in line with what we're expecting -- $69.99. That might seem like highway robbery to those who naively hoped for the usual $50, but when you compare it with the expensive fares people will be paying to play games like Guitar Hero 3 or Rock Band, the bundle's pricing doesn't seem too unreasonable. Our only concern is that $70 might be too much for the casual audience Nintendo is hoping to attract with Wii Fit.%Gallery-4745%[Via Digg]
Europe to get "PS3 Starter Pack"; SCEE announcement still to come
MaxConsole.net is reporting that they have received news of a new bundle for the European region. The "PlayStation Starter Pack" will allegedly contain a 60GB PS3, Resistance: Fall of Man, Motorstorm and two controllers for the "no-changes-there" price of €600. Those hoping for a price drop may be disappointed. Technically. Though if you think about it, you're essentially getting the 60GB and controller for €430, after deducting the price of the games and extra controllers.Sounds like an ok deal to us, though it doesn't help the people who just can't afford that sort of money. It might push a few fencesitters over the edge, though. We'll keep you updated with SCEE's planned announcements as and when they happen. Price information aside, we're hoping for some juicy PSN news. We've heard rumblings.
MacHeist giving away Linkinus
Last week I wrote about something brewing over on the MacHeist pages, and this week it looks like the project has come to fruition-- it's called Skunk Works, and in addition to the giveaways they're doing with the MacUpdate promo, they're now giving away software.Yes, signing up on that page is supposed to give you a free copy of Linkinus (up to an including 1.1, not including 1.2, so read the fine print), the IRC client we mentioned earlier this year. The app is also now included in the MacHeist version of the MacUpdate bundle (so if you already bought that, save the free copies for someone else), and MacHeist recommends that even if you get it for free, you go ahead and purchase it anyway (to support the developers). Plus, a purchase will clear you until the next major version, not just 1.1.Like some of you guys, I'm getting a little tired of all the hype around these Mac software bundles, so I've been trying to cut back on this kind of news. Still, free software is hard to pass up. If you've been looking for a substitute for Colloquy, this might be just what you need at a price you can't pass up.
Canadians get 4 games free with 360 purchase
Canadian gamers are in for a treat this week, because Future Shop has an Xbox 360 deal you can't refuse. This week Future Shop is offering the Premium Xbox 360 Forza 2 bundle for $499, but they are also throwing in three free games to boot! The three free games included are Crackdown, World Series of Poker: Tournament Of Champions, and Hitman: Blood Money plus Forza 2 equals four free games with a 360 purchase. Now that's what we call gaming in a box. Though, we recommend holding out until tomorrow night to see if the rumored 360 price drop happens. If not, go get yourself a 360 ... you deserve it.[Thanks, DjDATZ]
MacUpdate rolls out a bundle-- $50 for 7 apps
MacUpdate has another one of these bundle promotions going on-- is it just me, or is Mac software the only place (besides, say, pyramid schemes), where increasing bundles like this are sold? I don't show up at the grocery store to buy some oranges only to find that they're cheaper because 10,000 people bought them earlier that day.Anyway, the bundle's not too bad, even without the extra promotional stuff. Right now, for $50, you get copies of: SRS iWOW, an iTunes audio enhancement plugin GarageSale, the eBay client Cocktail, the utility that our own Scott McNulty calls "indispensible" ProfCast, for lecture recording Amadeus Pro, for multitrack sound editing Fetch, an FTP client Graphic Converter X, a useful little image editor And then if the promo pans out, you can get more software out of the deal-- if a certain number of people (up to 10k) buy the bundle, then Little Snitch, Intaglio, and TechTool Pro get added to the bundle. With a week to go, they've only sold about 700 (for Little Snitch) today, so there's no guarantee you'll see any of the extra stuff, but the bundle might be worth it just for the apps above.And MacHeist, always ready to jump on the hype train, is trying to add a little extra bonus onto all of this.[ Thanks to everyone who sent this in! ]
Minna No Golf 5 PS3 bundle on its way to Japan
The Japanese love their golf. In particular, they love Minna No Golf (you might know it better as Hot Shots Golf). They love it so much, in fact, that to date there have been over 300,000 pre-orders for the latest iteration of the series on the PS3. Seeing this as an opportunity to boost system sales in Japan, Sony have announced plans to release a Minna No Golf 5 bundle pack.Interestingly, the bundle will come in both 20GB and 60GB form, so there's no sign that the 20GB system is being dropped yet as it has elsewhere. The bundle allows a saving of almost 4000 yen when compared to buying the system and the game separately. That works out to about £16 or $32, so nothing special. Still, that coupled with the light and airy box art (as opposed to the "forbidden evil" design that the boxes have now) may allow for a surge in console sales.Japan is an important market for the PlayStation 3 and, as of yet, the decent game offerings have been a bit western for their tastes. With FolksSoul released tomorrow and Minna No Golf 5 next month, we could be seeing the real start of the Japanese PlayStation adoption taking place quite soon.[Via IGN]
It's a Wonderful DS Lite
Square Enix's Wonderful World edition DS Lite marks the first of what we're sure will be many Gloss Silver bundles to grace Japan, but will never -- absolutely never -- see an official release in the states. Set for release along with the game this June 27th, the limited edition handheld shows of the "It's a Wonderful World" logo and Tetsuya Nomura's skull badge design. Pricing for the set hasn't been announced yet, but expect to pay a king's ransom if you plan on importing.
Plain text wiki bundle for TextMate
Matt Webb likes VoodooPad, the desktop wiki application from Gus Mueller, but he does not like his data to be bound up in a proprietary format. So he's cooked up a bundle for the powerful TextMate text editor that allows him to create a plain text wiki. Basically the bundle allows you to create a main page in a project directory and then hyperlink to plain text files within that directory as the wiki pages. Furthermore, as Merlin Mann points out, this works perfectly with Quicksilver's plain text append and prepend actions. So if you're a plain text fan looking for a way to wiki, Matt's bundle is worth a look.[via MacDevCenter]
Sonos announces new bundle, Pandora integration
While Sonos hasn't yet found it fit to upgrade their line of home audio streaming devices, they do have a new bundle at that $1,000 pricepoint: now, instead of two ZP80s and a controller, you take home a controller, one ZP80, and its bigger brother, the ZP100. But more interesting still, as of today Sonos is adding Pandora integration for $4 per month, meaning you can get music nerds' favorite recommendation-based customized internet radio streamed directly to your audio system -- album art and all -- for $36 a year (after upgrading to v2.2, available tonight). Not bad if you're a Pandora fan with a Sonos; check out the integration in our mini-gallery.%Gallery-3372%
Pirates rule the Philippine seas
After a tour of the country last year, Indian President Abdul Kalam described the Philippines as a "smiling republic." Wherever he went, Kalam was met with smiling faces. Well, you'd be grinning too if you saw how cheap their games are. Thanks to the black market, popular Nintendo Wii titles are priced as low as $5 in some shops. Piracy has become so widespread in the Southeast Asian country, even Sony admits that most of its Playstation software sold in the Philippines are bootlegged copies.Filipino site GameOPS found that many stores also offer modchip installations. For about $51, you can have your system hacked to play these counterfeit games at the local mall or market. Furthermore, some shops advertise console bundles, selling imported and modded US Wiis with five copied games of your choice for around $450. Similar deals for chipped Xbox 360 systems with 10 pirated titles are actually cheaper at $388.With such a high level of piracy already in place, Nintendo will have a lot to work against when -- or if -- it decides to finally launch the Wii in the Philippines.
BlogMate - blogging with TextMate on steroids
TextMate has a basic, built-in blogging bundle that provides some decent features. You can use a variety of syntaxes (HTML, Markdown, etc.) to pen your next digg-worthy post, and the bundle also has rudimentary support for retrieving posts from your blog to edit. It's not bad, but it isn't stellar either.Todd Ditchendorf's BlogMate plugin, however, is stellar.As a blogging interface for TextMate, the first thing you'll notice is that BlogMate isn't simply a bundle - it's a full-blown plugin, offering a palette with all sorts of control over your MetaWeblog-compatible blog (for now BlogMate has only been tested with WordPress, but in theory it should work with any of these blogging systems). As you can see, BlogMate can keep track of a configurable number of past posts, hook into your categories and even display previews with pictures of your posts. BlogMate can also handle multiple blogs for those who can't stop at just one (I'm looking at you, Scott McNulty).Setting up BlogMate is a breeze, though I should probably mention at this point that it is a beta product, so I echo Todd's sentiment of backing up your blog's database just in case. Creating a new post is as easy as opening a new TextMate document and typing away, but there's a major difference from the Blogging bundle here: you don't need to insert a post title; you do that when you actually finish the post and click BlogMate's 'Send Post' button. Managing posts is one area where BlogMate really shines, as editing a post is as easy as writing one - simply double-click any post in your list (and you can configure BlogMate to pull down more than the default 10 posts) to open it with all formatting preserved. Deleting a post involves nothing more than selecting a victim and pressing delete. While you don't get some of the finer features of other blogging clients, BlogMate is already a pretty powerful plugin for the rocking swiss army knife text editor that is TextMate. Todd has done a great job here, and I hope enough interest builds to help make BlogMate worth everyone's while. If you're done reading and you're itching to get blogging, you can grab a copy and peruse more instructions and details from Todd's site here.
Gamestop/EB sells Wii for low price of $549.92
Gamestop's Chief Operating Officer Dan DeMatteo is so mad about the Wii shortage that he's gonna show Nintendo ... he's gonna show them by charging customers who want a Wii $549.92 for a bundle. Gamestop and EB games will send you a Wii for that price starting April 23. For all the contents in the bundle, it's not really a bad deal -- you know, if you ignore the whole legal issue. Oh, there will also be an additional $9.99 shipping charge due to the "unusual size and weight" of the bundle.If you aren't part of the masses who have become disenchanted with the Wii since launch and are tired of waiting for the Sunday flyer to tell you when the console is available, then here's the chance to finally get your hands on the elusive Wii. Seriously, we don't know what's worse, the fact that a system with (relatively speaking) antiquated technology is so difficult to manufacture and is in short supply, or that you have to purchase an extra $100 in games you'll only play a couple times? The decision on which two games those are we leave up to you.[Via EvilAvatar]
Wiis available 4/23 at Gamestop and EB online, but ...
Remember what we were saying about Gamestop, and their intentions toward your face? EB and Gamestop are now advertising that they will be shipping Wii systems out on April 23, and all they ask for in exchange is all your money.Five months after the release of the system, Gamestop is still apparently getting away with huge bundles. Here's what you're stuck with if you want to buy a system: Nintendo Wii system (system, remote controller, nunchuck, stand, sensor and Wii Sports) Wii 1 Gigabyte Memory Card 1 additional Wii Remote Controller 1 additional Wii Nunchuck Controller Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Sonic and the Secret Rings Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz Cooking Mama: Cook Off All for the low, low price of $549.92. Plus shipping. Plus $10 more shipping because it's so heavy. Anyone going in for this deal?[Via NeoGAF]
Adobe unveils new Creative Suite 3 packages - watch the live webcast this afternoon
Today is the big day, ladies and gents - Adobe has officially unveiled a plethora of new Creative Suite 3 packages and products, all of which are available for preorder now. With this new suite, the acquisition of Macromedia in April of 2005 has come to fruition, with all products now under the Adobe umbrella and incorporated into various new CS3 product bundles.To aid in the selection of a new CS3 package, Adobe has created a thorough product matrix that makes even the many versions of Vista cry. To further help navigate all the new products and features, Adobe has of course revamped their Creative Suite product pages and has also posted some introductory videos to help bide the time until this afternoon's live webcast event that we mentioned earlier. The webcast begins at 3:30EST today, but don't fret if you're all booked up for the day - it will be recorded and available for streaming for the ultimate in 'pajamas-at-3-am' viewing experiences.Preorder pricing for Creative Suite 3 packages begins at $999 for a new suite (Web Standard), and $240 for upgrades (Design Standard). The Design suites are scheduled to begin shipping in April 2007, while Production Premium is slated for Q3 2007.
New Aussie GoW Xbox 360 pro bundle
Australian Xbox fans will be getting another 360 bundle this week featuring the coolest chainsawing game around, Gears of War. Hitting retailers on March 15th, the Gears of War Xbox 360 bundle will include the standard Xbox 360 pro goods plus a copy of Gears for the must-have price of $699.95 AU. So, if you or a friend are from the land down under and are looking to invest in a Xbox 360, we couldn't think of a better game to jump start your fanboy ways. And mad props to the Australian marketing team for whoring out half of Xbox 360 box to Gears of War artwork ... we all love Marcus' manly man face.
Rumor: Another stash of Wiis coming to Toys R Us
... and another Matthew Lesko picture to summarize our feelings. Tipster HexiJosh was spot on about the last TRU Wii hoard, so we have no reason to disbelieve him now when he tells us that Sunday, March 18 is the day to queue up. Still, we're marking this as a rumor just to be safe.He says that Toys R Us stores are getting even larger shipments this time than last time-- his store is getting a minimum of 12 systems-- and that TRU is planning to sell them bundled with Sonic and the Secret Rings. We hope these bundles don't cost full price-- bundling is only fun when there's a discount involved, and even then it's kind of annoying.But complaining about bundles misses the point, which is HEY THERE ARE PROBABLY GOING TO BE SOME WIIS FOR SALE. Plan your next weekend accordingly![Thanks, HexiJosh!]
