Call of Duty 3 screenshot comparison Wii vs. Xbox 360

Yes, this is an unfair fight, but this kind of comparison is rather eye-opening. Here are screenshots from similar places in the Call of Duty 3 on both the Xbox 360 and the Wii (thanks, Gamespot). I didn’t include the PS3 since it should be about identical to the Xbox 360. The difference is startling. These aren’t the exact same places in the game, but I’ve chosen shots that seem similar to one another in terms of their content.

I’m not doing this to bash the Wii (I like a lot about it and I think the games made specifically for the system should be good) but cross-platform games like Call of Duty 3 really do seem to suffer on the Wii. (Pictures after the jump.)

Turn your Slurpee into Wii

7-11 is apparently doing a tie-in with the Wii where you can get a chance to win a Nintendo Wii when you buy a Slurpee (and they even have a flavor called Strawberrwii Banana). But the real news is their slogan. I’m a little surprised Nintendo went along with this (assuming they had any input). I do like the Slurpee shaped Wiimote, though. It’s also the first time I realized that “Slurpee” has the word “pee” in the name…

I can’t decide whether it’s cool of Nintendo to be tongue-in-cheek with their product name or just stupid.

Click the image above for the full-sized view. The original ad was in the December issue of EGM magazine.

The darker side of the PS3 launch

Kotaku has an excellent article written by a reader about the recent PS3 launch in Japan. Most of the coverage I have seen has focused on the long lines of people waiting in front of the stores but what I didn’t realize is that a large portion of the people waiting there are actually Chinese nationals who are being paid to stand in line and purchase the machines. The people who pay them are presumably going to sell the PS3s for a profit.

Similar things are going on in the US, with more people buying the systems to sell them at auction than to play them. It’s easy to blame the people doing this, but I guess in the end they are just responding to the situation that Sony has created. 400,000 units for North America? Only 80,000 units for Japan? Madness.

Foreigners And Fights, PS3 JPN Launch’s Dark Side [Kotaku.com]

Want a PS3 a few days early? Don’t have a preorder at all? No problem…

Play-Asia has just offered up the Japanese version of the Playstation 3 for preorder. The price for the 60GB model is $999 and the 20GB is $899. This is a hefty markup over the retail prices of $599 and $499, respectively, but given how hard it is to get a preorder for these things, and the fact that they will probably go for closer to $2000 on eBay just after launch, it’s actually not such a bad deal. (Yes-Asia.com is trying to sell the same thing for $1899!) You may even get it a little early, since Japan is having their PS3 release on November 11th instead of the 17th (admittedly, shipping time will probably most of that up).

The only thing you need to consider is that while the system language can be set to English and PS3 games and Blueray movies will play without problems (PS3 games are region free and Japan and the US are the same region under the Blueray specs), this console won’t be able to play normal DVDs, PS1 and PS2 games from the US.

Next-gen preorder blues (PS3 & Wii)

What is it about the launch of video game consoles the inspires such bumbling incompetence in retailers? Last year, lots of places got into trouble by preselling more Xbox 360s than they could get, but everyone assumed that the same thing wouldn’t be happening this year with the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii. But with less than 3 week remaining until both consoles ship, there have already been a number of problems with preorders. (More after the jump.)

Goozex adds PC games

Goozex.com (the game trading site which I wrote about a while ago) has now added PC games to its site, allowing you to trade PC games for console games and vice versa. Just in the last day or two, more than 600 PC games have been made available by users. Check it out.