October Fever

I haven't posted a lot lately so I thought I'd break the silence by posting about why I have a love hate relationship with October. This is the month when all of the much awaited games start coming out for the holiday season. While there are a gazillion new big budget games coming out this month I am only in for 3. Yeah, 3 to the tune of about $200+ (damn!) In order they are:

1. Fable 2 (already playing the pub games on XBLA)
2. Fallout 3 (the game that I bought the PS3 for all of those months ago)
3. Little Big Planet (while everyone else is uber excited for this one I am still a little lukewarm, but I need something else for the PS3, right?)

In other news, if you hadn't heard it yet Ninetendo is forcing me to buy a 3rd DS. Yep, they are releasing the Nintendo DSi which is going to be thinner, have a bigger screen, improved WiFi, and a camera! Nintendo has thus far been the only company to get me to buy the same system multiple times (no matter how badly I want PSPs in various colors). Damn them!

In non-what I want for Christmas type news. Micro$oft has teamed up with the NYU system to form a Games for Learning Institute. They've got $3 million to "cover the first three years of G4LI's research, which will focus on evaluating video games as potential learning tools for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects at the middle-school years." Geez, how can I get down with that?? It sounds like a great project. Do you think that we can convince M$ that they need to do a separate study on Mid-West kids and start a consortium with Indiana universities?

And with that I will take my leave...for now :-)