1. Halo launch at Redmond Town Center
2. Halo launch at the Microsoft Company Store
3. Halo diorama at the Microsoft Company Store

Howard Stringer was interview by the Financial Times and spoke about the PS3. According to Howard, people have bought fewer PlayStation 3s than it looks, and they’re happy with what little they’re getting out of the system! :) At least he's no longer calling it a Mercedes.

“I think PlayStation 3 is following a particular trend of 1 and 2, and if you looked at the history of it, it’s a very similar history. It takes a long time for producers, and more time because of the cost factor, to embrace the full bandwidth of PlayStation 3. It’s only using 20% of it right now. And producers will always wait to see how it’s going, and once they use the full bandwidth the games experience is stunning. And while people have not bought as many PlayStation 3s as it looks, it is no different from PS2 and PS1 in terms of percentage of sales, and it is an experience that is dazzling. People who play it, using only 20% of the bandwidth, are perfectly happy playing it and their games will get better. Most of the games are not third-party games yet; they’re mostly our own games and we’ve got Home coming out; we’ve got some exciting games coming out in the summer, 20 or 30 of them. So I don’t worry about that at all. I think that the public would like the cost to be lower, there’s no question about that, but meanwhile…”

For the full interview, visit the Financial Times.

Back in March, Howard Stringer (Sony CEO) said, "If we fail, it is because we positioned PS3 sales as the Mercedes of the videogame field… PS3 is a different audience and it can be whatever it wants – a home server, game device, even a computer."

Now Dave Karraker in Sony Corporate Communications is saying in the Playstation blog, “SPUs are not ‘normal’ processors like the PPU. There is a trade-off between performance and versatility. A Ferrari is not the best car for a visit to Home Depot…”

What's with Sony? They couldn’t get Gran Turismo out the door for the new console. (Other than a free demo.) With all this obsession with high end automobiles, you’d think they would have led with an amazing car game. Forza pawns.

P.S. Dave also said that porting a game from the 360 to the PS3 is more difficult than beginning development on the PS3. So, why are developers that he's hearing from starting on the 360 in the first place? Hmm... And about issues with games that rely on heavy online use? Ahhh.. yeah, you guys forgot online, even though your flagship launch title was an online game. Phil tried to make up for it by coining the 3rd age at GDC and introducing Home. But you're definately playing catchup, and there's definately a difference.

I have an opinion and it's not too kind. I think Paris Hilton skirted justice and the time coming to her for a legitimate crime.. and so did George Bush. I guess they have one more thing in common now.

Have you ever wondered if "they" were real? You know, some fantastic creature in your imagination. Many of us have seen photographs of beautiful and scary sea creatures and have said, WOW. Artists have drawn on the mysterious creatures of the deep for inspiration when creating fantastic aliens. The characters of Bikini Bottom in Spongebob Squarepants come from the sea. But what about Pokemon? The creature on the right is an actual ocean creature affectionately named the Dumbo Octopus. The creature on the right is also affectionately named, Pkachu from Pokemon. "Welcome to the deep Pikachu."

My sister pointed out this book to me, and I'm ordering a copy. What a great coffee table book for the kids inspiration and nightmares. "The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss" by Claire Nouvian. Go check it out. They're not all cute and adorable like the guy above.

Live maps added Minneapolis to the birds eye view collection. Now we can see our former home in Northeast Minneapolis from the air. Cool.

Update: I neglected to provide a link to the Live Maps tool in my post. My apologies. It's http://maps.live.com/  Once on a map, click on the "switch to bird's eye view" button" as shown below. You have to be zoomed in far enough for that button to be active.

Today marks the first day of the Halo 3 beta. To celebrate, I'm posting a Mac vs. PC parody comic that I made. It's based on frames of artwork that someone else originally made. (Source is offline.) I got some blurbs from a couple contributors that I used for the Mac guy and added my own little story twist. Voila. A Mac vs. Halo parody comic. Enjoy. (Or not!)

She's a beauty. :)  See Cesar's unboxing video in his blog.

We visited Vancouver over the weekend. Aunt Sally had taken a train down to Seattle for a quick visit during the week. We drove her back to Vancouver on Saturday so we could visit Adam at school as well. The kids had a great time on this road-trip.

I have some of the photos up already, and more are on their way tonight.

So, to limit the amount of PS3 bashing in the media, it looks like headlines have been targeted based on controversy. Never happens. Engaging readers by controversial titles never sells papers.

The intro says: “Rockstar creative vice president Dan Houser has admitted that bringing the next iteration of GTA to the Xbox 360 is more challenging because there's no guarantee of a hard drive in every unit and disc space is limited to DVD instead of Blu-ray.” The funny thing is that his response to a targeted question on the 360 was “Yep. To be honest with you we haven't solved all those riddles yet.” GameDaily goes on to point out that they’ve been having design riddles with both the 360 and PS3 in their own unique ways. Imagine this..

Question: “Dan, did you ever struggle with fears of the dark when you were a kid?”

Answer: “Yup.”

“Dan Houser admits to having a fear of the dark. This could impact his ability to perform his job as Vice President in the darkened offices at Rockstar. Important decisions are being made around how next gen the GTA series will look on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Will Dan cripple the next generation of gaming's most controversial title based on potentially untreated mental issues?”

It's Zack's third birthday today, and he is happy! We had some presents for him right away in the morning, and more for tonight. We're doing a low-key family dinner (with cake, of course!) this evening.
 

• Here are some photos so far.

We're actually combining the parties for Emily and Zack into one at the end of the month. They really like going to 3-2-1 Bounce, and so it makes the most sense ($$$) to combine. Emily has more friends since she's in school. Zack likes playing with her friends too.

Zack just finished his Dex medication which gives him mood swings. He's been a handful the past few days. That will wear off soon and he'll be back to balanced Zack.