Be Excellent To Each Other

Thanks to that trade-in offer they have, I unloaded a load of tat last night and now have £150 store credit to spend. I don't want to hang onto that for long (just in case...) so what do I buy? Not really interested in any particular games right now -- I'm still playing my backlog from Christmas last year. I'm pondering either a Kinect (£100 new / £80 preowned) or 3DS (£150 new / £115 preowned).

Both look tempting in an "ooh shiny" way. Not sure I'd play the 3DS -- I have a lot of games on Apple kit I don't play. But then, I played Mario in a demo booth the other day and I was genuinely impressed by the 3D. I thought I looked great.

Kinect is interesting to me for things like the voice control for Skyrim, which I think is a direction we'll see more of in games. But I only have six feet betwixt TV and sofa, so most of the goofy stuff isn't going to work (right?)

Or should it be something else? There's the Vita, I suppose, but I literally never use my PSP. I could buy 4+ new games. The Witcher 2, maybe. I still don't have Uncharted 3.

Rec-me-do!

Modest too...

Personally I would buy a vita, then flog it immediately, and use the £150 to buy whatever you want from any shop...

Buy hardware and flog it on eBay or similar.

I'd do better to sell the gift card, surely?

I've got a vita and a 3DS, and I'd say the vita is by far the nicer piece of kit. The 3DS is fine, but the 3D gimmick isn't great, and aside from Mario and a couple of n64 ports, there's not much worth playing on it.

Right now, the Vita has an OK version of Uncharted, Rayman Origins (which looks utterly fantastic on the Vita), a pretty great version of Wipeout, and some decent smaller downloadable games, and you can buy older PSP games for it if that interests you at all.

Neither have really found their feet yet. Both will probably get more good games in the future.

The Vita is probably going to get a price drop before the 3DS gets (another) one, if that's a factor.

The Wii-U is out probably in the next 6 months or so if you're interested in that. You could hold on to the credit, but who knows if GAME will be around by then, or if they'll stop honouring credit at some point.

Maybe.

Did they have any Pippins?

Buy a 3DS. It's my favourite console at the moment.

You're right, Mario is great as is Mario Kart. I can't say enough good things about Kid Icarus and you're right, the 3D is impressive.

Plus.. You can be on my friends list meaning I'd double my 3DS friends.

Couple of games and a load of Microsoft points?

Do they still sell iPods and accessories?

Edit: Sorry, that was Gamestation.

Also iTunes cards if they do those.

Rumblings are that they're going to ditch those, so I probably wouldn't.

I'm going to assume that they'll convert the points in each account into the equivalent cash amount rather than just declare them all worthless.

Never assume!

This had occurred to me...


...but that hadn't. Hmmmm.

Yeah. They'd never get away with leaving people high and dry on that -- the backlash would be too severe. I would load the points on right away, though, just to be sure.

It's a fair point, but no. I think I'm somewhat unlikely to end up with more than Xbox mark III under my TV from the next cycle.

Indeed. Having just been rescued, it seems unlikely things would go titsup very soon, but I'm still nervous enough to not want to hang onto it.

Doing a search on Metacritic for Kinect games shows an uninspiring crop of games. I already have Move for that. Plus I daresay aforementioned XBox mark III would have some newfangled son-of-Kinect. Hmmmmmmm.

Game still exists?

Hate It or Love It.

I'm pretty sure Xbox 2 will have some type of Kinect - they are really pushing it.

So far there is basically nothing for Kinect games wise for most of the forum members the voice stuff is a nice gimick right now (and it will continue to be for a while) whereas for actual games :

Kinect Adventures is a tech demo
Dance Central actually works and if you like dancing games and have the space then great !
Child of Eden is better with a controller
The 'exercise' stuff is more advanced that the Wii versions but you do have to question if you'll use it (again you need a lot of space)

The Demo's i've seen of Sesame street once upon a monster and The Gunstringer have some nice ideas but dont really do very much.

The most fun i've had with Kinect has actually been Fruit Ninja - and there are probably other downloadable / indy games which will get these things right before we see a big title get something working the way it should be.

I'm in a similar situation since i have about £70 on a gift card right now and looking at probably clearing out another pile of older games that i wont go back to this weekend - i'm thinking either 3DS or Vita although the last game i played on my DS was the last Professor Layton and my PSP has been gathering dust for years.

It does. It's called Kinect.

:-)

Okay Xbox360 version 2 , or the NeXt Xbox will have some Kinect like thingy.

I just got an email giving me 1000 game points if I buy something this month. That's worth about £10 right?

I'd buy at least one new 360 game pad as mine are a little tired. Other than that, really not sure I'd bother with a new handheld, and, like you I too have a pretty large backlog of games so new ones can wait.

This occurred to me. They had those grey ones with the funny d-pad.

Quite.

What is this offer, Rich? Did you have to trade in a lot to get £150?

You don't know about the offer? Get an extra £3 per trade in. This includes everything, except duplicates.

So instead of 10p for Fifa 07, you'd get £3.10, for example.

Ah right!

I think the boring answer to this is going to be "three £50 iTunes vouchers". There's no hardware I want, no software I want right now (and it's cheaper elsewhere anyway), I don't want to let it languish as Game credit, and iTunes credit is as good as cash to me. That'll translate to free apps for the best part of a year, maybe more.

Smart move.

Very sensible too.

Boring.