If you want a great new case mod for your 360, try this one. Suzuki has unveiled all it's 2007 model SUVs at the 2006 San Diego International Auto Show. Along with the lineup, they have also shown off a concept model. The SXBox. It's a part of the LIVE series of vehicles, designed for "life enthusiasts, adventurers and thrill-seekers." Life enthusiasts, hunh?

The vehicle comes with a 360 embedded into the dashboard and removable 360 controllers from the steering wheel and below the dash. It also has a close proximity digital projector to display the output from the 360 onto the retractable hood, activated with a single button, to play games and watch HD DVDs.

Personally, I would never want something like this. I don't need to be distracted while driving, at that, I don't think a vehicle is the best place to play video games or to watch a movie in. But that's just me. That, and that's why this is just a concept.

[VIA Xbox-Scene]

What? I'm not done yet? Well, I still have to give you my final gift - the couple meeting.

Before I do that, I hope you all have had (the Christmas celebrators) a great Christmas. I sure did.

Now, back to my gift.

After an insomniactic night, let's see what the gamer will be getting next. 12 batteries? 12 pillows? 12 PS3 controllers? 12 kisses?

Now that the gamer has a few new couches to lie around in and play on his many Wii's, PS3's, and watch TV, you would think he'd be all set. Well, yeah, except, he can't enjoy it because he's sleeping from exhaustion.

Maybe his girlfriend will solve that problem.

With the lack of response, I would have thought he would broken up with her. Or, he's just stewing in his defeat by his girlfriend. Maybe he's just laughing at his loss.

Let's see what happens today.

After he stayed up all night, he crashed on the couch with a Wii-mote in one hand and a bottle of Bawls in another. At his feet, empty Wii, PS3, and more Bawls bottles. Then, his laptop, sitting on the coffee table, suddenly made a loud "YOU'VE GOT MAIL!"

He gets up and reads his email. Then he logs into his IM... hmm.

When will the madness end? Yesterday, she gave the gamer 7 more chances to get a "Wiinjury," 7 more chances for a broken TV, 7 more chances to have fun with his Wii.

You know, it's actually starting to be fun to see what she has up her sleeves next. Bring it on.

Slow news day today, eh?

To get the new moving, I've decided to post something about what I feel is interesting. Perhaps somebody else out there would find this just as interesting.

The XCM XFPS keyboard and mouse adapter for the 360 is out now. You can pick one up at Video Game Advantage for about eighty bucks. Yeah. Eight... Zero...

If I had a 360, a few FPS's, extra keyboard and mouse, this is something I really would consider to buy.

[Via Gizmodo]

I really think that she could stop now with the six PS3s. There's really not much more she can give him. Seriously. She just needs to stop.

This couple is crazy. Where did she get the money to buy five Wiis? And what's her next gift? Does she have an endless pocket? Is she the daughter of a rich wife?

Wow. As the days go on, I think to myself, this story is getting more depressing and a bit more odd as we go on.

I'm still expecting a big pay-off by reading this, but nothing really exciting, well, except Miyamoto, has happened in the story. I'm starting to get bored of it myself. Maybe today will be a little better. Let's see what this wooing couple is doing.

I'm lovin on the outrageous eBay bids today.

This time, through miss-reading, a Best Buy receipt for a Nintendo Wii was sold for a whopping $451.

The description reads,

You are bidding on original " Nintendo Wii " Best Buy Sales Receipt. Dated 11/19/2006. Receipt is from Best Buy Store#482, located at 60 West 23rd Street in New York,NY 10010. Please note i have crossed out with a blue pen my personal information on Receipt. Thanks and Happy Bidding!

There was one person who at least pulled out. Once again, proof that one must completely read what is described on eBay.

[via TechEBlog]

Don't have a gaming collection? Don't know where to start? Well, markcz5581 is selling his collection at a starting bid of $25,000. Buy it now for $75,000 and you get a Wii with that.

List after jump!

The gift giver has been... well, keeping us guessing what her "big gifts" would have been. She keeps on stalling with things that seem to be totally unrelated.

Maybe today will be better. How much worse can her gifts go?

When we last left our couple, the game got two wireless routers, and while the gift-giver has some reason behind giving these wireless routers, it is still pretty much unknown to us.

The gamer, however, does put them to good use, using them to upgrade his existing wireless structure and speeding up his laptop wireless browsing. But, that's not gaming. So, what's going on here?

When we last left our couple, the gamer was left speechless by the gift of an HDTV. A fairly large one, at that. Boy, imagine what I would give for a girlfriend like that.

Now, I don't want to leave you guys hanging, so here's the next installment of the couple's emails... after the jump!

In order to elicit cheer and such for the Christmas season dawning upon us, I've devised a little series for us. We all know that Christmas is the time of year when electronics are purchased most frequenty. Everybody is getting something for everybody. That's where this starts out.

Picture a couple, let's say, in their twenties. They are seriously in love with each other. One has an addiction for games, the other tends to take things to another level. I believe you can see where this is starting to go.

Here's the emails that were exchanged between the couple. Wait! I want to keep this going, so only the emails they exchanged today (Dec. 13) will be posted.

Emails after the jump.

This is a head scratcher. Someone stole 180 Japanese PS3s from a warehouse -- in broad daylight! How anybody can manage that is beyond me.

According to the report, the PS3s were noticed to be missing at about 1:30 p.m. local time, having been "confirmed" at 9 a.m. (we figure that means that someone noted on some official paperwork that they were at the location).

Some time between 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., the thieves managed to move the PS3s out of the warehouse to lord knows where. The value of the take? Officials put it at about 9.5 million Yen (about $85,000 USD). Of course, that's retail. Double or triple that for actual street value.

The police suggest that the amount of movement around the warehouse provided a way for the thieves to go unnoticed. It's still amazing that that amount of consoles that were stolen from a working warehouse.

[via 1UP]

In South Carolina, a 12-year-old boy was arrested for opening his Christmas gift a wee bit early.

After the box was found to be empty, the boy's mother questioned him about where the GameBoy he was to get on Christmas went. At first, he denied taking the GameBoy and pleaded that he didn't know where it was. Then his mother threatened him with calling the police. He relented and gave back the GameBoy, but she had already called the cops. He was charged with petty larceny but wasn't jailed.

Now, this might sound a bit harsh for opening a Christmas present, but no, it's somewhat justified. You see, the boy has had a history of misbehaving. Being a single mother, she didn't know what to do with him. He has shoplifted, stolen money from her, punched a police officer, and is close to being expelled from school. Her justification for having her son arrested was to give him a wake-up call so she wouldn't have to get a call from the police saying he was killed.

See her side now?

[via NBC30 WVIT]

CNet editor James Kim and his family disappeared after November 25. On December 4, the family was found alive with the vehicle near the Rogue River in the area of Bear Camp Viewpoint off Bear Camp Road, according to a statement from Oregon State Police.

Unfortunately, James Kim is still missing. He supposedly left the family in order to search for help.

If you have any information or have spotted James Kim, please notify the SFPD at 415-558-5508 during normal business hours and at 415-553-1071 after hours.

Tracking a game from idea to final product is a wonderful thing to do. It's just a shame when these ideas don't quite meet expectation. One of the least hyped games I've known about, City Life, is an interesting alternative to Sim City.

First Impressions

Expecting a Sim City clone, I was surprised. Its play style and rules were far different than Sim City. It's not about city-building any more. It's now about social balance. Traffic, power, water, garbage, etc., don't matter as much as racial harmony.

The graphics were also quite different. No longer am I stuck at 90-degree camera angles -- I now have full freedom, even very close zoom. The buildings were genuinely 3-D and so were the people. That's about where the graphics surprised me. After that, it wasn't all that impressive.

More after the jump ...

Blender + Coke + Wiimote = Coke smoothie with Wiimote chunks.

A radio host got one of those super blenders from BlendTech that can blend rake handles, marbles, and pens. While the blender choked the first time he tried to blend the Wiimote (like the Creed CDs he stuck in there), a little fumbling and some Coke-a-Cola managed to get the Wiimote nice and broken. The main body of the controller survived ... somewhat. That's durability folks.

[Via Kotaku]

Synthetic fur... eww. Give me real mink.

[Via Xbox-Scene]

2k Games is giving away the classic "Railroad Tycoon" for free on their Railroads! website. You can own this little piece of history via a quick 14mb download. Head on over to the Railroads! website and click on downloads. You'll find it there.

I love some of the classics, and I even had this game... once. Don't know exactly where my disks went. That and I highly doubt my computer could play the old version. Hopefully this has been updated to use today's standards...

Railroads! Website

[Via Kotaku]

Oh the humanity. We knew this was coming. All the jokes about the PS3 looking like a George Forman grill has finally resulted in some actual PS3 harm.

This gutted out and retrofitted PS3 now, instead of cooking up a few games, cooks up a few meat pieces -- and not with its processor either. The guys over at The Real PS3 Grill gutted out a fresh PS3 and installed an electric griddle... and cooked a few dogs and pieces of chicken to prove it worked.

[Via Engadget]

Joytech, a Take Two subsidiary, is creating accessories for the Wii... mainly for the controller.

The List:

• Wii Sports Pack - Pieces of plastic that wrap around the controller in the shape of a golf club, tennis racket, and a steering wheel.
• Wii Power Station - Features two rechargeable batteries for the Wii, while also providing a docking station that allows the owners to store the controllers, the nun-chuck accessory, and charges the batteries.
• Wii Racing Grip - The racing wheel from the Wii Sports Pack
• Wii Controller Grip - Allows the controller to be held comfortably in the horizontal position with grips and such.
• Wii Silicon Gloves & Wii Silicon Glove Pack - Available in blue, pink, grey, or black, the glove pack provides protection and allows for easy identification of controllers.

The only accessories I personally would buy would be the power station and maybe the horizontal grip. The rest don't really appeal to me. I don't need cheap plastic to make me think my golf swing is better. But, if that floats some people's boats, that's fine by me.

[VIa Go Nintendo]

eBay is a wonderful place. You can find nearly anything on eBay... including a $1.75 million game.

Seller "kingmeanguns" is selling his original contest game cartridge of Atlantis II with documentation - one of only 10 contest cartridges ever made, as claimed. In his auction, he talks about how he won the game and why he's crazy enough to sell it for that high of a price.

Personally, his decision to put something like that up for such and outrageous price is crazy. Also, his snappiness with the bidder's questions and the unwillingness to post close up pictures or video gives an air of suspicion. Also, I don't know much about the Atari's history - can anybody tell us if what he says can be confirmed? I feel sorry for the idiot that actually bids on that.

[Via Joystiq]

This is extremely funny. Kotaku has posted up a rumor about how Best Buy is repositioning its store around to make the customer have a very easy time picking up his/her PS3/Wii along with accessories. The launches will be days apart, but the routine will be the same. Basically, this is how it'll go.

1. Customer enters store
2. Customer reaches front of line queue
3-5. Customer seeks end to end solution
Software table - All PS3/Wii software titles
Accessories table - All PS3/Wii accessories
Services table - Geek Squad, PRP, GamePro, GameFly
6. Customer trades ticket for hardware unit
7. Customer pays for everything
8. Customer exits

Funny. Personally, I don't like launches of any kind because it requires too much effort to get something that, in a few weeks, won't mean so much to me. That, and the prices are not low enough for me to justify buying anything. I like to wait.

As Major Nelson pointed out, last week, a 360 dashboard update added a controller and wireless headset (you know, the one that's now on sale in North America) icon to the battery indicator that can be seen quickly by pressing the guide button.

This is extremely useful for us battery whores that constantly wonder the status of our batteries. I find myself constantly checking the battery level on my iPod, phone, and laptop, and if I had a 360, I'll find myself, during a break in a game, pressing the guide button to check the status of my controller/headset - and now I'd be able to distinguish between the controller and headset.

Check out the full sized image at Nelson's flicker page.

[ Via Major Nelson ]

EDIT: Fixed the link to the flicker page - also, It has been pointed out that the indicator has been available since launch. Let me clarify that the update added the icons, or at least what Nelson said himself.

"BTW: We added in the controller and headset icons in the dash update that went out last week, so that's why you may have not noticed them."

And I thought Bully went into court for violence. Either this is a bug or a glitch, but whatever the case, it's just plain weird. It's one thing to have a gay room-mate. It's another to see two guys actually make out. (No flame sessions, please.) Especially two seemingly straight ones.

My room-mate alerted me to the GayGamer article that took the game to a different level. I later saw it on Joystiq and decided that this should be shared to the GA.com community.

Video after the jump.

Extra! Extra! Hear all about it! The GamerAndy.com forums are back up! Features will still be added over the course of the week, but for now, it's up, updated, cleaned up, and working. If there are any bugs, at all, please notify me - [email].

Having a nickname and online identity that is so synonymous with a notorious lawyer (no names) is interesting when you delve into the world of gaming. Especially when it comes to politics. Of course, with a name like this, you can poke a little fun with yourself and others. But a name is just a name, isn't it? It doesn't tell you anything about a person. Ok, maybe just a little, but that's all perceived. Before I go off-topic, let's turn around and see what makes this Jack click.

Just a word of warning - the forums will be down later tonight tomorrow for some updates and security crap. Maybe even clean up some of the spam-bots. So, if you are in the middle of a post and the forum goes down, don't scream and run around in circles. Calm down, recount your loss, and give it a minute or two. Thanks for the patience.

I missed the forum downtime frame of reference - the server was acting too wonky yesterday to get any work done. The forum will be down today (OCT 17) for sure. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Nielsen Entertainment has just finished its third Active Gamer Benchmark Study. The findings in this study is certainly something to behold.

• 117 million Americans are gamers. That’s a good bit of the population. 56% of gamers play games online, while 64% of these online gamers are women. Though two thirds of the online game market is dominated by women, men still out-number women by two-to-one when it comes to overall gaming.


• As one expects, the teen-aged gamer is the largest percentage of active gamers (40%), but there is a growing population of gamers 45 and up (13%).


• The study also shows that while games are usually thought as a solitary activity, gaming is really a social activity. Active gamers spend up to 5 hours a week playing games socially, while teens play up to 7 hours a week socially.


• Casual games are mostly played by older women, but teens and young adults are second in this ever-expanding market.


• Of all games pre-ordered or bought on the first day of launch, role-playing games are king. Also, the presumption that these role-playing games are more popular among the older crowd is gravely incorrect - teens are the biggest audience for this.


• The drive for next-gen consoles are fueled by the desire for better graphics and richer game-play.