Discount Online Shopping Blog

You’ll be in rock-and-roll paradise with this bundle. The Guitar Hero World Tour Band kit includes a Wireless Guitar Controller with touch sensitive slide bar, a Wireless Drum Controller and a Microphone. The game has advanced modes, options and tools for your rocking pleasure. Enjoy a vast amount of master recordings from some of the biggest acts of all time, including Van Halen, Linkin Park, the Eagles, Sublime and more. The game will also offer significantly more localized downloadable music than ever before. Guitar Hero World Tour gives you creative license to fully customize everything from characters’ appearances and instruments to the band’s logo and album covers. The innovative Music Studio lets you compose, record, edit and share music. The hard-hitting Battle of the Bands mode lets up to eight players get in on the mayhem.

Single-player Career mode provides a branching venue progression

Guitar Controller features - Wireless (includes batteries) Touch sensitive slide bar Increased accuracy with more responsive dual-color fret buttons Jam effortlessly with an elongated strum bar Improved battery life with built-in auto-sleep mode

Drum Controller features - Wireless (batteries included) Five pressure sensitive drum pads (including a high-hat and cymbal) Non-slip moveable foot pedal One-piece collapsible adjustable stand Expandable setup via MIDI hook-up Authentic wood drum sticks

Microphone features - High performance, high clarity microphone Reliable and durable design Includes 15 foot USB cable

-If you are looking at this in Aug. 08 then note that this is NOT the Jasper console, these consoles are the newer bundles they created to clear inventory of Falcon boards while they work on inventory of Jaspers (The Jaspers were to be produced in August and that is what they are doing right now. Producing, not releasing for retail sale -yet-) When the stores sell out of ALL Falcon units they will start putting Jasper units on the shelves.

-This console will be reduced in price once again in early September. The new price-tag on these Pro bundles will be $299.99 (Edit: Next information may now give issues, as Amazon has done a bait and swap with their policy and removed their 30-day protection as of the 31st of August. Very low, Amazon, very low. If you bought a system before the change and before the 30 day period of the price drop you may still be able to get your price matched, but it will likely be a headache. See new section at bottom for possible ideas) Do not panic if you bought one at the $349.99 price. Why? Amazon has a price guarantee, meaning for 30 days if the price of any product goes down, you are entitled to cash back to price match the new cost. So in early September check back here when the price goes down so that you can get 50 dollars back.

-The September consoles are when ‘technically’ the new Jaspers should start rolling off the assembly line and into stores. HOWEVER there is a technicality with this. They may have them in the stores warehouses, but won’t put them on the shelves til all of that store’s FALCON units have been sold. This includes all the falcon units from that store’s warehouses. All Falcon units must go first before they start selling Jaspers. Keep an eye on the wattage information to confirm your Jasper units. As the new GPU should reduce the PSU wattage requirements. (currently they all use 175w) Also, look at the manufacture dates. Any console that was manufactured from mid to late Aug. 2008 and on should be Japsers. As you know, they said they would manufacture the Jaspers in August, so that is the manufacture starting points you want to look for.

That is technically all the current information available. Did a lot of research on this, since I’m currently in the market. Hope this helps all of you future buyers, as well as those of you who have already made a purchase.

Edit: According to the member who posted a comment if you ordered before Sept. 1 directly from Amazon and are still within 30 days, you will be able to get your price matched to the current price tag. However ONLY if you ordered directly from Amazon and not another retailer that sold via Amazon. If you don’t fit this category continue reading below.

If you didn’t order directly from Amazon: So Amazon basically pulled a fast one one people, on the 31st of August they discontinued the price guarantee. Gee thanks, Amazon! Way to screw over your customers. You may still be able to convince customer support that because of the fact that you bought when the policy was still active that you should be covered still since they made a guarantee to you at the date of purchase. If after trying to get your money from Amazon you still don’t meet with results, what you can do is return the 360 if you are still within the return period and get another 360 now that the price has gone down. Amazon provides free return shipping on some products so you may not have to pay for that. You wait for your refund, get a new 360 at 50 dollars cheaper and the shipping a 2nd time should still be free since all products over x dollar amount qualify for free super-saver shipping. Just don’t TELL them that is why you are returning it. Say the unit scratches up your disks or something since that is a common problem with some of these older units.

A lot of people have written about the pros and cons of the PS3 vs. XBOX 360 vs. Wii. I’m not bothering with that, and assume you can find that information at elsewhere. I’m also assuming you can read all about why the PS3 would or would not fit your needs.

Instead, I’d like this review to explain what exactly this configuration is (there’s a lot of confusion about that,) and why I think it hits the sweet spot. Basically, there are currently 2 versions of the PS3 on the market now. Ignoring the size of the drive for a second (because you can always swap the drive anyway, and it has no real bearing on the rest of the specs) think of them as Version A (currently available - or not as the case may be - in the PlayStation 3 80 GB Metal Gear Solid 4 Pack) and Version B (this one.)

The first thing that you need to understand is that there are three relevant differences between these two versions besides the included bundle and the price (the MGS one is $499 from amazon, more from third parties.)

Difference #1: Version A (MGS pack) is backward compatible with PS2 games while this one is NOT (they are both backward compatible with PS1 games however.)

Difference #2: Version A has 4 USB ports as well as memory card slots, while this version has only 2 USB ports and NO memory card slots.

Difference #3: AND THIS FOR ME IS BIG: Version A has the older and larger 90nm Cell processor, while this one has the smaller (and some say more reliable) 65nm Cell processor. Power consumption on this unit is lower as well, dropping from 200 Watts to 135 watts. The end result is a machine that runs cooler and, according to all reports as well as my personal experience, much quieter. An extremely relevant factor if you watch movies with it.

For those that have been looking for a while, this is basically the 40GB machine that was offered recently, with a larger hard drive and an upgraded controller - they replaced the basic sixaxis controller with the Dualshock 3 controller (which means it has rumble.)

Now Version A is packaged with Metal Gear Solid. It has an 80GB drive like this one, and the same controller. The big differences are listed above. Until this configuration was released, the larger hard drive and Dualshock controller were 2 of the 4 reasons many people felt the MGS pack was worth the additional $100. Those two factors are now eliminated. The remaining differences are the backward compatibility with PS2 games and the MGS game itself, which can of course be bought separately.

So to sum it up, if you NEED PS2 compatibility, you might want to grab the MGS pack if you can get one - that or keep your old PS2. For new buyers though, and for all of the people that are going to just play PS3 games, as well as avid movie watchers, this particular configuration is fantastic. You get the big drive, the good controller, PLUS the cooler running chip, a quieter machine and a system that uses about 33% less power.

And ok - just to satisfy the basic requirements of a review, I’ll list some other nice stuff: It includes a Blu-ray DVD player (one of those runs almost as much as, or more than, this entire box), the online play is FREE, wireless connectivity is built in (you don’t have to buy an additional piece as with some others), reliability has been quite good (much better than some others), there are some great PS3-only titles, and you can stream media to it from your PC. There’s more, but there are plenty of people outlining it.

As always, do your research and see what’s best for you. Maybe the 360-only titles are must haves for you, or maybe your family fits a Wii. We have a Wii and I love it. But I also love my PS3, and in my opinion this configuration is the one to get (this month anyway.)