So last week me and my wife Kate headed on over to the new Microsoft store in Scottsdale. After walking around the mall looking for it for about 15 minutes (its a pretty big mall and the MS store is in a weird place) we finally found it. At first glance Kate said "hey look they opened an Apple store here too!" That comment just about sums up the place.



So what’s the store like? Well just like the apple store it follows the "long hallway" design (glass front, wide open brightly lit room with tables everywhere displaying products) Also, you can't walk 5 feet in the store without an employee asking "can i help you with something? just let me know!" (and this is no exaggeration, I would say out of every 3 people in the store 1 of them was a MS store employee.)

Some of the cooler aspects of the store are the walls and the Microsoft surface. The walls of the store are all television screens. Some of them are interactive, like for example the back corner of the store is the 360 section (I must say it's actually much smaller than I thought it would be) and thus those screens are displaying the 360 interactive. The rest of the store is cycling wall papers and advertisements, I'll admit it is pretty cool. The Microsoft surface is pretty bad ass. Its hard to describe, its really just something you have to see and use to really get a sense for it. They have about 4 or 5 of them in the store (all were being used at the time, some on a weird iphone looking space game, some on Google maps, some just showing table top applications. (as in if the ms surface was literally in a restaurant or bar being used as a table top)

Half of the computers of course had zunes hooked up to them. Kate again thought at first they were iphones, and was surprised when I told her that yes they still make zunes. They have computers from hp and dell everywhere showing off windows 7 in all its glory.

We were in there about 10 minutes and then had to leave because Kate said she couldn’t take the stores freezing ac anymore.

All in all its a pretty cool place, fans of the apple store's design feel right at home. (heh) I'm just happy I have a place I can take my 360 next time it give me the rrod. no more waiting 3 to 5 weeks!

so i got devil may cry 4 for ps3 and opened it up and it was signed in sharpie.

is this normal?

here is a pic.............

ok so in the latest "spin magazine" (it has the foo fighters on the cover) there is a section talking about all the new holiday games. here is the description for assassins creed.....

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A lot of "sandbox" games (like grand theft auto) promise the freedom to go anywhere, but they've all had some limits. this is a wanderlust fantasy. When being a time-traveling hit man gets boring, you can always get lost in a crowd in 12th-century Jerusalem.
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So time traveling hit man?

Hey there guys, there was a zombie walk at our local mall here. (dawn of the dead 78 was filmed here so a bunch of people go to it around Halloween and get into a record book for most zombies in one place) anyway, of all the zombies one caught my eye, thought you guys would enjoy!

THE RUMOUR MILL is spinning again after a Seattle Post-Intelligence reader posted an email received from a friend of a higher-up, stating that the creator of the massively popular Xbox series Halo, Bungie, has separated from Microsoft.

The email states Microsoft gets to keep all rights to the ‘Halo’ franchise and says the official announcement won’t be released until October 6th, so as to not impact the quarterly results.

Bungie was acquired by Microsoft in 2000, where it gained exclusive publishing and distribution rights to select Bungie-developed titles, including Halo. Microsoft has denied the split saying, “There’s been no such announcement. We continue to celebrate the tremendous success of the global phenomenon that is ‘Halo 3.’”

According to the email Microsoft was interfering with various aspects of Bungie’s business. It claims Voles were fiddling in everything Bungie did, from marketing to public relations. According to the email, Microsoft was also “stingy” with profits.

Whether the email is genuine or not remains to be seen.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/10/02/bungie-microsoft-part-company