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Toys R Us now accepting console trade-ins

Jeff Baker — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:30:32 +0000

Toys R Us has today released a press release letting us know that they will now begin accepting used console trade-ins much like competitor GameStop has been doing for some time now.

This program allows you to trade in everything from the Xbox 360 and Wii to the PS1 and Nintendo 64. Of course, you’re only going to be able to get yourself a gift card for the trade-in instead of cold hard cash but you win some you lose some, right?

Check out the press release after the break.

Toys“R”Us Expands ‘Big Gift’ Layaway to include video game hardware; adds video game hardware trade-in for gift card program

Company Promises Aggressive Video Game Hardware and Software Deals Throughout Holiday Season, Including Buy One, Get One Half Off and $25 iTunes Gift Card with Purchase of Select Hot Games Beginning Sunday, November 22

WAYNE, NJ (November 18, 2009) – Toys“R”Us today announced it has expanded its popular “Big Gift” layaway to include video game hardware and is also introducing a new video game hardware trade-in program. Now gift-givers have even more convenient ways to pay and save with these additional value offerings just in time for the holiday season, whether they are looking to buy new hardware, rid their basement of old items or both!

“Since the introduction of the ‘Big Gift’ layaway last month, the number one request we’ve received from customers is to expand the program to include video game hardware, and we’re responding by providing more convenient payment options for these items,” said Jerry Storch, Chairman and CEO, Toys“R”Us, Inc. “At the same time, we’re adding a video game hardware trade-in program in our stores for customers who may be looking for ways to save on Christmas gifts for loved ones or to upgrade their own gaming systems.”

“Big Gift” Layaway Expands to Include Video Game Hardware

Effective immediately, video game hardware is now included in the company’s “Big Gift” layaway offering. Through the program, customers can reserve some of the hottest items of the season early when supply is at its best, and make a series of small payments over time. Video game hardware such as Nintendo Wii, DS and DSi, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable systems and related accessories can be placed on layaway. Customers nationwide have been taking advantage of the “Big Gift” layaway as an option for gifting large items such as bikes, Power Wheels®, play kitchens, dollhouses, cribs and more since its introduction in October.

Placing a product on layaway at any Toys“R”Us store requires a deposit of 20% of the total purchase, including all applicable taxes, and a $10 service charge. Payments may be made at the store at any time in the form of cash, check, credit card, debit card or gift card. Items must be paid for in full by December 6 to ensure the gift is available for pickup before Christmas. A fee will apply to canceled layaway orders*.

*The program is not available in Maryland at this time. Stores in Ohio and Rhode Island have different policies for canceled orders. See stores for details.

Video Game Hardware Trade-In Program Introduced

Beginning Friday, November 20, customers can trade in used video game hardware at Toys“R”Us stores nationwide in exchange for Toys“R”Us gift cards**. Whether a dad trades in the Nintendo Game Boy Advance from his childhood and uses the gift card he receives to buy toys for his own kids or an avid gamer wants to upgrade to the newest gaming system, customers will appreciate being able to turn outdated video game hardware into savings on their next Toys“R”Us purchase.

Video game hardware systems eligible for the trade-in program include:

Microsoft – Xbox 360 Core/Arcade, Xbox 360 Premium 20 GB, Xbox 360 Premium 60 GB, Xbox 360 Elite, Xbox 360 Halo Edition and Xbox Original

Sony – PlayStation 3 20 GB, PlayStation 3 40 GB, PlayStation 3 60 GB, PlayStation 3 80 GB, PlayStation 3 160 GB, PlayStation 3 Slim 120 GB, PlayStation 2 Original, PlayStation 2 Slim, PlayStation 1, PlayStation Portable Original, Slim and Go

Nintendo – Wii, DSi, DS Lite, DS, Game Boy Advance SP, Game Boy Advance, Game Cube and Nintendo 64

Customers can participate in the video game hardware trade-in program at Toys“R”Us stores in the United States as follows:

* Used video game hardware may be brought to a Toys“R”Us Guest Services desk.
* Hardware will then be scanned and prices will be offered for each item.
* Customers confirm that they want to accept the offer to exchange any, or all, of the hardware they brought to the store.
* Once the transaction is complete, customers receive an activated gift card equal to the total worth of all hardware traded.
* Immediately upon receiving the gift card, customers can purchase any product from iPods and toys to candy and diapers at any Toys“R”Us or Babies“R”Us location or online at Toysrus.com.

This new trade-in option for video game hardware supplements a video game trade-in program offered since September in Toys“R”Us stores nationwide.

** Video game hardware trade-in is unavailable at Toys“R”Us Holiday Express locations and select Toys“R”Us locations. See stores for details.

Nvidia launches GeForece GT 240

James Hyde — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:24:26 +0000

While we wait for Nvidia’s next gen chip, codenamed “Fermi”, the company has followed its old style of re-branding and re-releasing old chips. Well, not quite this time, as the new GT 240 chip is still the same technology, but is built on 40nm process and includes DirectX 10.1 support — at a time where the big deal is DirectX 11.

The new graphics card is mainstream oriented, and should offer decent performance and low power consumption, at a decent price. The chip is outfitted with 96 stream processors clocked at 1360MHz, while the graphics core runs at 550MHz, with idle power load at just 9W. It’ll retail later this week for $99.

60% of UK Xbox 360s have failed

James Hyde — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:07:15 +0000

It’s no secret that the Xbox 360 hardware hasn’t been the most stable out there, in fact, it’s quite crappy, with an estimated “official” failure rate between 30 and 40 percent. But it seems that the rate is even larger in the UK, where CNet recently did a poll which revealed that a whopping 60% of the consoles have failed at one point or another. While it’s not a scientific study, it’s still surprising, especially considering that GameInformer did a similar study in the US, where over 50% of the users reported console malfunctions.

Xbox 360 wireless N adapter available next week

James Hyde — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:40:08 +0000

Microsoft’s new wireless adapter, which support the new, and much faster N WiFi standard, will be shipping next week for $99 — quite a lot for something that comes as standard with the PS3 and the Wii (although those don’t feature N speeds). The old wireless adapter will still be available and retail for $75.

Nvidia’s DX11 graphics card delayed until 2010?

James Hyde — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:22:23 +0000

Fudzilla claims it has details that point towards Nvidia launching their next generation graphics chip, codenamed Fermi, in January 2010, as opposed to in December, as originally planned. Granted, Nvidia never officially announced a release date, but did mention December as a viable time.

However, DigiTimes — a far more reputable source than Fudzilla — claims that the date is even further into 2010, as Nvidia CEO stated that the card will likely launch in the first fiscal quarter of 2010, which begins in March. If true, this will mean that AMD’s cards, which are already out, will be given a good 6 month head start as the only DX 11 cards available on the market.

Nvidia posts $107m profit in Q3

James Hyde — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:30:24 +0000

Despite falling behind in both sales and technology to arch rival AMD, Nvidia managed to turn a solid $107 million profit in Q3, on revenues of $903.2 million, mostly fueled by the mobile and laptop sector. Compared to last year, that’s an increase of 16%, and from the previous year by 18%. The company said that it expects revenues in Q4 to be up 2% from previous year.

The company is set to release their brand new graphics card and technology later this year, called Fermi.

Sony sued over PS3 firmware update

James Hyde — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:58:25 +0000

Owners of PlayStation 3 systems that have been broken by the latest firmware update have filed suit on behalf of everyone who downloaded system update 3.0 or 3.01. Two gamers from Texas and Iowa allege that the latest update caused PS3s consoles to malfunction, with problems including loss of controller use and the malfunction of the Blu-ray drive.

Their main complaint seems to be that Sony is charging a $150 fee to repair the consoles that were broken by the firmware update. The two are now seeking a class-action lawsuit against Sony.

Back in 2006, an owner sued Microsoft for bricking his console with an update and settled out of court.

Dual-gpu ATI 5970 spotted in the wild

James Hyde — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:20:30 +0000

ATI’s upcoming dual-gpu based card, the Radeon HD 5970, comprising of two 5870 chips — which themselves are the most powerful graphics chips today — has been spotted in the wild over at PC Perspective. The card, measuring at 13.5″ inches, needs both a 6 pin power connector and an 8 pin connector as well, meaning it’s gonna draw a lot of power when fully throttled. The card is expected to be in stores this December.

Nintendo announces DSi XL

James Hyde — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:04:48 +0000

Nintendo has gone ahead and confirmed various rumors of a new DSi with larger screens, by officially revealing the DSi XL, which the console will be called in Europe. The new console will have 4″ screens instead of the regular 3.25″, and the whole system will be substantially larger (as you can see above) and will even include a full sized stylus. So far the console has only been announced for Japan (as the DSi LL) and Europe (as the DSi XL), but we expect a North American announcement to come shortly.

Nyko launches DSi camera accessory

James Hyde — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:33:19 +0000

Nyko, the master accessory maker — well, not really, but they do make a ton of accessories for games of all kinds — have released a lens attachment to the Nintendo DSi camera, which offers 8X zoom to the rather weak 0.3 Megapixel camera. But at least it works, as you can see on the image above. Won’t win you a Pulitzer in photojournalism, but at least it won’t burn your pocket; $25 is all it set your back.

PS2 celebrates 9th birthday

James Hyde — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:15:40 +0000

This day, nine years ago, Sony launched what would become the best selling console of all time, the PlayStation 2. On the 9th anniversary of the launch, Sony revealed the staggering sales numbers: 140 million units sold worldwide, beating out the DS and GameBoy, with 120 million and 108 million units sold, respectively.

What’s even more amazing, is that some 10,000 (yes, ten thousand) games have been released for the PS2, developed by over 450 different developers, and there have been sold over half a billion PS2 games in the US alone. Wow.

Xbox 360 system update gets pushed out

Jeff Baker — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:37:33 +0000

If you’ve signed into Xbox Live today you may have noticed that a mandatory system update has been pushed out. But don’t get too excited, this is not the update thatincludes Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm. That update will hit next month.

Instead, the update adds WPA2 for the 360’s Wireless Network Adapter.

Exciting? Nope. Necessary? You betcha.

via majornelson

QuickDev16 card offers SNES homebrew

James Hyde — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:49:27 +0000

The Quickdev16 card, which plugs into an SNES, offers quick and easy access to SNES homebrew — the cartridge packs an Atmel AVR ATmega644 chip with a boot loader, a USB connection with which to upload a ROM, 16 megabits of SRAM, plus an RS232 converter (whatever that is). Who whole (tiny) package can be had for only $120 — cheap, when considering we’re talking about “game development” here. If you’re up to it, there’s more details about the card here.

GameStop reveals Modern Warfare 2 minimum specs

Jeff Baker — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:36:46 +0000

We’ve known that Modern Warfare 2 would be making its way onto store shelves on November 10th for some time now but Activision has kept quiet about the minimum PC requirements. Today, GameStop has put up a picture of the back of the box that reveals said minimum requirements and I have to say, they don’t look too bad.

Below are said minimum specs:

OS: Windows Vista/XP
Processor: AMD 64 3200+ or Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz or better
Memory: 16 GB free hard drive space / 512 MB RAM (XP) / 1GB RAM (Vista)
Video Card: Shader 3.0 or better 256 MB nVida Geforce 6600GT / ATI Radeon 1600XT or better

Anyone in dire need of an upgrade?

Altec Lansing releases “stage gig” speaker

James Hyde — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:06:54 +0000

Good news to all the Guitar Hero and Rock Band fanatics, speaker-maker Altec Lansing has released the “Stage Gig”, a single speaker that sits at the bottom, facing the playing bad, just as if you’d have if you were a real musician, performing on a stage. But since you’re not on a real stage, and since you’re holding plastic guitars in your hands, you might wanna shed $100 for another plastic attachment that emits sounds of your fake plastic band right on your face.

Black Wii hitting UK on Nov. 6

Jeff Baker — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:11:38 +0000

Gamers in the UK unhappy with the current white chassis of the Nintendo Wii will be happy to hear that a limited edition black version will be hitting store shelves on November 6th. As for the rest of Europe, you’ll be getting it on November 20th.

This limited edition comes with a black Wiimote, Nunchuk and Motion Plus. If you want the fancy black Classic Controller Pro, you’re going to have to buy that separately.

via techfresh

New Xbox 360 updated locks out “unauthorized” memory units

James Hyde — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:45:09 +0000

The upcoming update of the Xbox 360 dashboard and firmware will lock out unauthorized third party memory units. Third party memory units, especially “unauthorized” ones, usually hold far more capacity — several GBs more –e than Microsoft’s own units, and are also far cheaper. Some of the third party units feature connectivity with SD and microSD cards as well. If you’re one of those using them, you’re out of luck, and you should save your stuff on an “authorized” unit. Meaning shedding lots of cash for it.

Peter Moore: disc based gaming a “burning platform”

James Hyde — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:40:22 +0000

Speaking PLAY Digital Media conference, EA’s Peter Moore has described sales model for regular, retail disc-based games as “burning”, noting that EA is focused on digital distribution and Moore advised other publishers to do the same. Moore noted that disc based games might completely go away within the next ten years.

…we’ll recognize it 10 years from now when we tell our grand kids, we’ll tell them we used to drive to the store to get shiny discs that have bits and bites on them and we’d place them in this thing called a ‘disc tray,’ and it’d whirl around…and they’ll go ‘What?’”

Check out more or Moore’s thoughts at Gamasutra here.

Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle listed

James Hyde — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:31:42 +0000

Several large retailers, including GameStop and Amazon, have listed the upcoming Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 bundle. The bundle is set for release on November 10, and will retail for $399.

The bundle includes a black Xbox 360 with a MW2 face plate, a 250 GB hard drive and two black controllers. A great deal, especially considering the extra controller and 250 GB hard drive.

Carbon-fber/red Xbox 360 controller exclusive to GameStop

James Hyde — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:32:32 +0000

GameStop has unveiled its exclusive Xbox 360 controller, which is painted in black carbon-fiber with red inserts. The looks of it isn’t the only odd thing about this one — it’ll retail for $70, including a play and charge kit. Surely GameStop can give us a better deal than that?