mikeszekely

I think a big part of that is that there's so few standout JRPGs these days. They're all so very cookie-cutter similar to Final Fantasy now. And while Sony gets a lot of JRPGs, Microsoft's been getting some great Western RPGs. That said, as sick as I am of most JRPGs, I long for a next-gen MegaTen game.

Sounds about right. I think I paid a little less for the same drive, but I stuck mine in my MacBook.

It's not so much that I was collecting Devastators, as I was collecting Classics. I knew the Wal-Mart repaint was coming under the Classics banner, and I made sure to get that one. After I had that one, I'm not sure I would have bothered with this Target one anyway... I'm just a little surprised it slipped in under my radar. Of course, my area absolutely sucks sometimes for toys. I never saw Alternator Prime, Shockwave, Rumble, or Ravage, nor were there any Titanium Ultra Magnus or WW Megatron (well, there was that two pack with WW Prime and Megs, but as I already had Prime, I wasn't interested).

Jade Empire 2 confirmed for Xbox 360. BioWare sure is making me glad I own a 360.

In a PC, I'd say you need an IDE to SATA adaptor. But I don't think that'll work for a PS3. So basically, your old notebook hard drive won't work for the PS3. Right size, wrong interface.

Yeah, I think I already pointed out that when one of those CGI animated movies, I think it was Surf's Up or Happy Feet came out, it sold more copies the week it came out on DVD than every title on HD-DVD and Blu-ray combined since their respective launches. I'm not going to pretend that deals like Paramount's and Warner's aren't shaping the way this is playing out, but at the same time, I'm not going to pretend that anyone but techies, early adopters, and hardcore audiophiles/videophiles are buying these things. It's trivial to argue that one HD format is outselling another 2:1, 3:1, or even 5:1, when DVD outsells them both combined 1000:1. This format war is something that affects us, so we discuss it a lot, but we're kidding ourselves if we think "the general public is going for this format" or what not, because the general public is still buying DVDs. And frankly, it doesn't matter who decided to do what exclusively on what format yet. Until you get those people still buying standard def DVDs to pick a format (and for that to happen we need better HDTV penetration, a sub $100 player that's not a sale price, and $20 discs with lower sale prices), the war continues.

Am I living in a parallel universe or something? I don't remember any Target exclusive Devastators in 2006. I remember a Wal-Mart one that was a repaint of some Energon toys.

LAF shipped my reissue Masterpiece Megatron today. I guess I'll get it tomorrow or Monday then.

Looks like we're getting compensated for LIVE's downtime after all.

321 days? I hope that's 321 days until Mass Effect 2, not 321 days until downloadable content.

I don't know how much this has changed in the last two years, but as I recall, Microsoft makes big money from other divisions, and can afford to bleed money from the Xbox/Zune division. They have been more concerned with staying competitive and getting the brand recognition for future domination than turning a profit now. If they can turn a profit on the Pro, which most people will buy if all they want is the gaming, then can afford to lose money on this hypothetical future model if it furthers their ends of 1) Pushing HD-DVD, even if just to maintain the stalemate 2) Provide higher capacity and HD output for their digital downloads

Yeah, I'm curious about laser TVs too. I currently have a DLP TV, and although LCDs and plasmas are both improving I still think projection TVs do the best blacks. A projection TV without the need to replace bulbs, if it actually works, would be a godsend.

Aren't they also speculating that it won't be around until fall? Honestly, if Sony can finally afford to sell Blu-ray, HDMI, and wi-fi on a $400 machine, I don't see why Microsoft can't do HD-DVD, HDMI, and wi-fi for about the same. The hard drive is the only thing holding them back. My guess would be, if this turns out to be true, that there will be price cuts on the existing skus, possibly with the the 20GB Pro being entirely phased out, and the 80GB Elite turning white and going by "Pro," with the new HD-DVD wi-fi 360GB units coming out black with the "Elite" label.

Well, there'd me minimum hardware requirements, but it's a software thing at heart. I suppose it's possible for a software update to improve the 360's ability to upscale DVDs, but I thought someone mentioned awhile back that it's partly not up to Microsoft, but the people who set the standards for that sort of stuff now allowing upscaling over component. Or something.

I suppose that's true, if you consider terry the lone wolf starting a new thread to be posting in the wrong thread instead of using the Transformers thread, since it's the Transformers Mega Thread and not the Transformers movie and toys thread. The fact that the sub title is Teen Titan Edition is already a reference to Animated, and we were already discussing it there before A7 resurrected this thread. Unless you're referring to a few posts ago, when David started talking about what if Hasbro canceled the FABs in favor of a better Barricade or Starscream. To that, all I can say is David's a mod. He can post wherever he wants. Frankly, discussion of TF Animated will inevitably lead to discussion of toys and comparisons to other TF media. That's not a bad thing; without that kind of discussion the conversation will gradually shift to "Did you see what happened in the last episode?" "Yeah, it was awesome!" Which, again, is why this thread needs to be merged with the greater TF thread. I'd think that's a good argument to merge the Gundam 00 thread with the other Gundam thread rather than an argument to keep the TF threads separate. But even still, Gundam 00 is a show that will air weekly for a total of, what, 38 weeks? Animated is a show that will air something like 18 times a year for two or three years. As it stands, the Gundam 00 thread will see steady activity for the next six months or so, and this thread will see some discussion (that's already likely to relate to what's going on in the main TF thread) while there's new episodes, the fade to obscurity until sweeps, assuming that someone else decides to dig for this thread instead of just posting in the TF Mega Thread.

To reduce the need for further reformats, I strongly recommend upgrading to IE7, or switching to a new browser all together. I kinda like Firefox with the "View in IE Tab" plugin for those last few sites that require IE.

When I got broadband, the cable guy came and set everything up... then forgot to actually turn it on. I tried renting an HD cable box (when I bought my TV, they made some with QAM tuners, but they were out of my price range), and I told the cable guy to just bring the box, and I'd set it up. He said, "no sir, we have to set them up. Company policy." Then he showed up, took on look at the bunch of wires behind my set, and happily left the box with me to hook up myself. I sent it back after maybe a month... I don't actually watch much TV.

Also agree. A Leader Starscream is probably the only movie toy they could make in the next six months that they could actually get me to buy. While it's definitely true that the movie toys have sold like hotcakes, without a movie, DVD, and a holiday to move them, I really don't get why Hasbro thinks they're better off stocking the shelves with movie repaints instead of Animated toys. EDIT: The fact that this conversation has segued into discussion of toys and the movie reinforces my earlier notion that this thread should be merged with the other.

Really? At pretty much every store I've been in that sells toys for the last two months, the aisle hasn't been been stock full of ANY Transformers. But yeah, if there's more Decepticons on the shelf than Autobots right now, it might have something to do with the fact that aside from Arcee and the tow truck, pretty much every Deluxe Autobot was one of the five in the movie. From the start, there were already more Decepticons in the movie, and a lot of the additional Deluxe figures were Decepticon drones from the video game. So, in total opposition to the Classics, the Decepticons in the movie line outnumber the Autobots.

That's about the ones I'm looking at for now. Maybe Bumblebee. While I like Ratchet and Bulkhead fine as characters, they don't look like they'll appeal to me as toys.

I'm glad to see different weapons and a different head on them, but yeah, I don't really see the torso flippy thing. But seeing that picture... oh I so want that Sideswipe. I hope he's in the first wave and not the second, although it looks like they consider him to be a redeco of Sunstreaker.

I'm fine with sticking this in the main TF thread. While we do talk a lot about the toys, it's a TF Mega Thread, not a TF Toys Mega Thread.

Frankly, I'm not buying that rationale. Hasbro can tell themselves, their shareholders, whoever until they're blue in the face that Classics were for kids, but I've only ever seen adults buy them. Prior to the movie, I've seen plenty of kids walk past even the Cybertron toys and scream, "Oooh, Power Rangers!" or "Mommy! Spider-man!" If they were really worried that people wouldn't buy that many Seekers in the regular retail chain, they could have made Thundercracker a Wal-Mart exclusive, Thrust a Target exclusive, and Dirge a Toys R' Us exclusive. I mean, slap that word "exclusive" on a toy, and suddenly collectors are driving to every Wal-Mart in a 50-mile radius every day for six weeks until they find it. As for the BotCon team, maybe they're stuff has to be more expensive because they make limited quantities and don't have the same kind of resources as Hasbro, but I still think they were underproducing/overcharging and generally exploiting the people who could pay at the expense of those who couldn't.

They did? But how different could they really be? I mean, yeah, they were both Countaches, but they were totally different robots with totally different transformations. Even still, I'm really pumped for both of them, especially Sideswipe. If they do Jazz and Wheeljack, I'll honestly have all the Autobots I want (although I surely wouldn't mind Prowl and Ratchet). I'm lukewarm on Onslaught, but optimistic about Octane. Other Decepticons I really want would be Cyclonus, Galvatron, Shockwave, and Blitzwing. Oh, and the Seekers they said they wouldn't release because no one wanted to buy that many repaints, then turned around and made anyway in a box set that was WAAAAAY out of my price range.

From what I've heard, Sideswipe will be a repaint of Sunstreaker. Or vice versa. So I don't think we're going to get both in the first wave, which is good because we can get our hopes up for a second wave.