Price is right

Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles

I know. Everyone is still playing Skyrim (except me **grumble, grumble**).

But if you happen to be taking a break from playing with virtual dragons and steeds and want to save some cash, now is the time to stock up on some solid mobile games as many game developers are having pretty awesome holiday sales on their apps.

Electronic Arts (The Sims, Madden NFL), Gameloft (Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six) and Big Fish Games (behind a variety of bestselling puzzle mystery casual games) have reduced the price of a number of their apps down to $.99. That's a saving of almost $4 to $5 for some of the more popular (and expensive) listings from the last couple of years.

I, myself, bought Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles and Tom Clancy's Rainbox Six: Shadow Vanguard for iPhone and Shadow Guardian for Android (Kindle Fire edition) — all at $.99 — pretty immediately.

List of Gameloft games on sale on iTunes
• Silent Ops
• BackStab
• Fast Five the Movie: Official Game
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard
• N.O.V.A. 2 - Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance
• Spider-Man: Total Mayhem
• Iron Man 2
• James Cameron's Avatar
• The Settlers
• Assassin's Creed - Altaïr's Chronicles
• Gangstar Rio: City of Saints
• 9mm
• Gameloft Action Pack (iPhone only)
• Gameloft Sports Pack (iPhone only)
• Rayman 2: The Great Escape (iPhone only)
• Driver (iPhone only)
• Warplanes (iPad only)

EA has listed their sales and deals here: eamobile.com/dailydeals

Get the games while the sales last. Happy holidays!

Save the princess, save some dough

God of War 2 for PS2: A fairly
solid game... if a bit too short
and simple

My absolutely adorable handsome younger brother (who, sadly, at 12, is already taller than me) spends a large chunk of his free time not already claimed by homework, reading and various sports practices playing video games on nearly every console system imaginable. To him (and my cousins and his friends), one of my awe-worthy accomplishments is that I've beaten him (and my cousins and my other brother) in nearly every one of those games. Yup, I might be bragging just a little.


Anyway, yes I'm a big gamer, but — like many shoppers, I assume — I'm slow to purchase consoles. I find it hard to justify giving in to those increasingly higher and higher prices for the system and the games. Wow, I haven't gotten a new console since I was given a Playstation 2 by my older brother so many moons ago. So, while little bro can jump easily between Nintendo Wii and Microsoft XBox controllers, I stick to the Nintendo DS Lite and PSP handhelds and replays of PS2's God of War 2 as I wait patiently for prices to drop.

Nintendo Wii

But good news in tech blog land! It's been rumored that Nintendo will be dropping the price of the Wii $50 to a sweeter-sounding $200. Maybe not a lot, but remember: that's the price of a game or two!

The price drop might not change your mind about purchasing a Wii if you were unsure before, but if you've been hovering near a Toys R Us ever since the gaming console's 2006 release (and bemoaned its subsequent forever sold-out status due to its blow-your-mind popularity), this is just the news you've been waiting for. Read the story

Sony Playstation 3, which
also is now available in a
"slim" model, launched Sept. 1

In other gaming news, in addition to Sony dropping the price of it's 80-gig PS3 (to $299), it also is planning to launch a new motion controller this spring (Read the story).

Question is, despite all the pretty graphics, solid game library and Blu-ray bells and whistles, can the struggling game system catch up to the Wii with a controller? Time will tell if it's as fun and functional as what Nintendo has going.

Anyway, rumor has it the Nintendo Wii price drop will take effect beginning this Sunday. Just in time for some early holiday shopping, perhaps? Sounds good to me :)

'The worth of a book...'

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." ~ Henry David Thoreau

Ahhh. Summer days are stretching their last legs, and that summer reading pile of yours likely is a bit smaller is stature.

Sigh. I'm in 'like' with Kindle.

I have an Amazon Kindle. I love it.

Of course, I love tangible new (and old) books — holding them, smelling their fresh pages and ink, gliding through the aisles as I search for what to pick up next — more, but the Kindle is a lovely addition to my literary collection. Anyway, I'll leave any reviews on Kindle to a future discussion.

Sony is expected to announce a new e-reader that will be $100 cheaper than the Kindle. Considering Amazon.com dropped its price on the smaller product, Kindle 2, from $359 to $299, putting the new Sony item at $199, well, that's quite a bit of bank!

One of the current Sony Readers

Yes, perhaps, still too much to pay for a reading platform, but it could give Amazon some healthy competition (finally!), especially after that whole book-deletion-lawsuit situation.

I know not everyone is comfortable — or even interested — in this digital-reading phenomenon, and I don't blame them, but a little Sony-Amazon battle would be pretty interesting on the tech front, whether  you care for e-readers or not. Kind of like if Google and Apple threw down and what the declared victor's win would mean for the industry. We would all buy tickets to THAT fight.

But how will it measure up? Will it be worth it? Is there a future in e-readers? The digital plot thickens. Let's see what Sony's next entrant offers. :)