First came the Game and Watch, then came the GameBoy, GameBoy Colour, GameBoy Advanced, GameBoy Advanced SP, DS,GameBoy Micro, DS Lite, DSi and now…
THE DSi XL!!!
Recently made available in Japan, Nintendo’s latest hand-held console (the DSi XL) is selling fast!
Featuring 4.2″ screens the DSi XL is due for release in the UK “early 2010″. Rumoured to have built-in games and an additional larger stylus, Nintendo’s latest offering will no doubt be something to keep an eye out for!
For nearly a year now my Nintendo Wii has been gathering dust and today for no reason what-so-ever I decided to dust it down and power it up! On looking for a game to play I remembered that as I hadn’t used it for a while I sold most of my games so I had nothing to play so off down the town I went…
I went in to HMV, GameStation and Game and was dismayed and confused – where have all the games gone? There wasn’t a single game that took my fancy. I’d already had a quick look on the Internet so was expecting to find the latest Need For Speed game for sale but in those three stores I couldn’t see a single NFS game, let alone the latest one. :(
As an absolute last resort I nipped up to Tesco Extra and was pleasantly surprised to see a much better game selection (namely a full chart plus a section of random titles) than that of the so called ‘proper’ games stores.
Not only did I find Need For Speed: Nitro (which claims to have been written from scratch just for the Wii) but I also saw Wii Sports Resort sitting on the shelf with the new sensor attachment thingy so I popped them both in to my shopping basket.
Is the Nintendo Wii reaching the end of its life-cycle? If stores like HMV and Game aren’t stocking many new games and leaving it down to the supermarkets such as Tesco to fill the gap is the reign of the Nintendo Wii coming to an end? I suppose only time will tell…
Since getting hold of my Wii I have brought around a dozen games. Half of which I have either sold or exchanged for around £20-£22 each. Most of my games have only cost me around the £29.99 but that still means a loss of about £10 a game. That’s £60 that I have lost!!! – That’s about a six month subscription to one of those games renting sites that are out there!
You may not be able to rent games from the likes of Blockbusters as of yet but the following web sites offer Wii rentals:
After looking at the different sites (they all seem to be pretty much the same thing) I have decided to sign up with boomerang rentals who offer a 21 day trial period that wont cost you a thing. The way these sites work is that once you have chosen your subscription plan, you then create a list of games that you would like to rent and put them in order of preference. They tend to recommend that you have at least 5 (preferably 10) games in your list to enable them to give you the best possible service. They then send you the first available game on your list along with a postage- paid envelope to send it back in.
You can keep the game for as long as you want and when you send it back to them they post out the next available game on your list. The price plans range from just having one game at a time to having 2 or more games at a time with unlimited exchanges. Please check the relevant web sites listed above for full price plan details. Now that I have chosen the required amount of games that now form my list, I should recieve my first rental game in the next couple of days.
If you decide that you like the game so much and want to buy it, then you can buy it from them at a discounted price and they then send you another game as part of your rental agreement. So its the best of both worlds – a try before you buy so to speak. I’ve never rented games before but £9.99 a month for 2 games at a time, where you can send them back and get another game posted out to you as often as you like, seems like a pretty good idea to me.
My Twitter Feed
