Blogs - JamesGrayson

The Good:
- Great sound quality, easily beats anything I've used before (Zune 8,Coby, iPod nano)
- Bright 2'0 inch screen
- Easy interface
- Drag and Drop!
- Light Content Transfer software converts videos
- 30 hour battery life (music), likely to drop down to 20 in real life use (ex. higher brightness, videos)
- 8GB Storage
- $70

The Bad:
- Previous generation battery life was 45 hours
- Despite it saying it will play 320x240 MP4s, it doesn't and the converter only recognizes WMV so it takes two converters and a big drop in quality to get on the player
- Was originally $100, costs $20 less in the US
- Short mini USB cable

The Ugly:
- Included headphones are garbage, I'd take freakin iPod headphones over these
- Lack of accessories (ex. no case)

EDIT: Tried another anime, subtitles seem to be working. Not sure why the Walkman didn't like the other one.

Microsoft's press conference was decent this year with some intresting new software and hardware announcements but suffered from a lack of first party exclusives. Obviously, the Halo 3:ODST and Modern Warefare 2 footage was amazing andt here was also many games I will rent like L4D2,Crackdown 2, and Splinter Cell Conviction and there was even an EPIC XBLA game called Shadow Complex.

There was even some quirky stuff like announced like Natal (3D motion sensor + Voice Command= No controller),Facebook/Twitter, and Last.fm which look okay though I doubt I would personally buy/use any of it.

2010 stuff looked pretty good, weird though that the Xbox is now full of Jap games (FF13[spring 2010] and MGS:Rising[late 2010?]). Heck, maybe MGS:Raiden will change me into a MGS fan like Crisis Core did for FF (don't count on it).

Overall Score:
Presentation: 8- Two Beatles and Speilberg! Plus no sales graph mumbo jumbo though there were technical difficulties
Hardware: 7- Natal looks cool though I don't trust voice technology.
Software(non-games): 8.5-Last.fm sounds great and I know some people will love the social networking.
Games:Fanboy Score:9.5 Attempt at more impartial evaluation: 8-OMG Halo 3:ODST looks freaking amazing, ditto with Modern Warfare Two though compared to previous years the first party/exculsives seems thin, especially if you don't include console exculsives.

Overall Score: 8-Great though lacking compared to last few years, I really believe Sony will top them. Nintendo wil not even come close though I'm sure Xos and Nathan will find something to like and obsess over (New Zelda?).