Awesome Video Of The Day

Homemade Halo Suit

I know what you’re thinking. You’re watching this video¹ of this kid in his homemade Halo suit, and you’re thinking to yourself, “Wow - what a total badass.” I would agree with you, but having made more than my share of homemade Halo suit videos in my day, my trained eye sees all the telltale signs of an amateur here. I can relate, though: in my first homemade Halo suit video, I was wearing a tinfoil shirt and a pair Levi’s. I knew it kind of sucked, but I thought maybe the fog machine and strobe light would still make it look cool. No dice.

Anyway, the cardinal rule of making a Halo suit video: always make sure your mom is out of the shot. I know how it goes when mom’s cooking dinner and the lighting looks best right near the kitchen, but you know what? It’s called “self-control.” Wait until she’s done cooking you dinner and THEN make the video. Think about it like this: What would Master Chief do?² I’ll tell you what he’d do: he’d crouch in the corner, reload and wait for a more opportune moment to flex in his new homemade cardboard armor. Are you Master Chief material? Yeah? Better start acting like it, then.

I know that might sound needlessly harsh considering he’s just a kid or whatever, but I’m not apologizing - that “kid” got like 30 headshots off me last night.

¹ Not to be confused with this video, or this video, or anything associated with this website.

² WWMCD?

Here’s our monthly look at the North American console and video game sales for October, courtesy of the NPD group. We should caution that none of the information contained within will validate your console buying decision, or invalidate that of your friends. Studies show that how well your chosen console has sold in a given month has little to no effect on the length of your penis*

*(re: RFC 793 - Proposed measure for the value of an Internet user’s arguments)

Hardware Sales (lifetime in brackets)

Wii 519K (5 million)
Nintendo DS 458K (13.5 million)
Xbox 360 366K (7.1 million)
Playstation Portable 286K (8.9 million)
PlayStation 2 184K (39.5 million)
PlayStation 3 121K (2 million)

Software Sales

360 Halo3 433.8K
360 Guitar Hero III 383.2K
WII Guitar Hero III 286.3K
PS2 Guitar Hero III (w. Guitar) 271.1K
NDS Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass 262.8K
WII Wii Play (w. Remote) 239.7K
360 The Orange Box 238.4K
PS2 Guitar Hero III (no Guitar) 231.7K
PS2 Fifa Soccer 08 129.7K
NDS Brain Age 2 116.9K

Xbox 360 sales dropped down from 527.8K last month, which suggests that the “Halo” effect has all but disappeared. Nevertheless, given its strong game library, the 360 should be positioned for a strong holiday season. That is, assuming it doesn’t garner any more negative publicity about the RROD problems - or worse. What are the odds of a 360 exploding and killing someone before Christmas? Probably not high. But also probably not zero.

Measured on a weekly basis, the PS3 did a bit better than last month, though that’s essentially the same as saying that it “sucked a bit less hard.” Fact: PS3 sales are still hilariously low. However, these figures are from the period before Sony’s latest round of cuts to the PS3’s price and feature list, so Sony fanboys are hopeful sales might pick up yet. Nevertheless, at $399, the PS3 still represents the most expensive console available. If sales don’t pick up soon, industry experts expect that by next summer Sony will have slashed the feature list down to the point where a PS3 is composed of little more than a Sixaxis tied to an egg carton with some yarn.

As for everybody’s favorite bowling and cow-riding simulator, the Wii climbed back up to the top of the hardware charts this month, despite having yet another soft month of software sales. What on earth are people doing with their Wii’s? Aside from “not buying games for them.” It kind of makes
me wonder if everybody else knows something that I don’t. Is there a hardcore porn Easter egg in the Weather Channel? I looked for weeks but the only thing I ended up with was a sore wrist.

In software sales this month, the big news is the success of Guitar Hero III. GH3 sold very well across all platforms, including a healthy 286K units for the Wii, and a whopping 500K for the PS2 version(s.) This suggests to me that whether you play games in 480i or 1080p, the only thing that matters in the end is that you play them like a hurricane.

Once a month the NPD group releases sales figures for the preceding month of video game sales in North America. Every month fanboys and industry watchers pore over these numbers, looking for surprises, trends, and evidence that proves their favorite system is beating the fuck out of yours.

If there’s one thing that Cracked’s known for, it’s providing thoughtful analysis of the video game industry. Well, that, and our hate filled xenophobic slander of other cultures. It’s in that spirit that I present below my thoughts on the September NPD numbers. This will hopefully become a new monthly tradition here on Cracked, or at least it will until our next relaunch in May 2008, when we plan to become an unsuccessful webmail client.

September Video Game Sales (from the NPD Group)

Hardware Sales (lifetime in brackets)

Xbox 360 527.8K (6.8 million)
Wii 501K (4.5 million)
Nintendo DS 495.8K (13.2 million)
PlayStation Portable 284.5K (8.6 million)
PlayStation 2 215K (39.3 million)
PlayStation 3 119.4K (1.87 million)
Game Boy Advance 75K

Software Sales

360 Halo 3 3.3 million
WII Wii Play (w. Remote) 282K
NDS Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass 224K
PS2 Madden NFL 08 205K
360 Skate 175K
360 Madden NFL 08 173K
WII Metroid Prime 3: Corruption 167K
360 Bioshock 150K
NDS Brain Age 2: More Training In Minutes 141K
PS3 Heavenly Sword 139K

Analysis after the break…

(more…)

If you’re into gaming news (and I am, in a big way), you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about the recent decision by Bungie to separate from its parent company Microsoft. Bungie, for those with lives, are the makers of Halo, the third installment of which might as well have been subtitled “you guys, please buy some Xbox 360’s already. Seriously, they’re just sitting on the shelves over here. Bill Gates is crying.”

Not that that strategy didn’t work, you consumer sheep. In fact, the first-day sales records set by Halo 3 are comparable to a major movie premiere, Harry Potter book release, or the change in Gates’ couch. Scratch that; he probably has some sort of laser couch that incinerates denominations less than thousand-dollar bills.

But even Bill Gates’ purported laser couch couldn’t generate the kind of raving, uninformed buzz that subsumed gaming forums in the weeks leading up to Bungie’s departure. Everyone who’s ever touched a Commodore 64 had their rabid opinion, the majority being that the whole thing was a hoax. Most of the responses to the guy who originally broke the story are along the lines of “you are a moron who deserves to have his life crushed out of him by an industrial press.”

The fact that all of those people were wrong isn’t especially surprising, but the resultant wave of forums posts along the lines of “no, sir, it is you who should be mercilessly killed, for I was correct” is a textbook example of how the net cheapens our very lives. Which, you know, is always good for a laugh.

So in the midst of all of this talk about nothing, what really happened? Bungie did leave Microsoft. Why? They’re not saying, although some folks have got some seemingly informed theories about the whole thing. I naturally have my own ideas:

Bungie execs came to realize that despite Microsoft’s promises, Mountain Dew: Game Fuel
still tastes like fucking Mountain Dew.

Bungie couldn’t resist the opportunity for getting thousands of knee-jerk journalists to include the phrase “Bungie Jumps” in their headlines.

They’re sick of making the same goddamned game over and over and over again so frat guys can pretend to shoot each other with rocket launchers.

It’s all to distract media from the fact that while working with Bungie on their newest project, Peter Jackson ate a level designer.

In the end, the most likely answer is that it was purely a business decision, and will allow Bungie some bargaining leverage when it comes time to split up profits form Halo 9. Even Bungie’s franchise director has said that in the foreseeable future, “day-to-day life won’t change much.” Translation: more Halo, more Microsoft soft drink tie-ins, and a hell of a lot more idiots using the internet to spout off about shit they know nothing about.

God, I love the circus.

Halo 3 comes out tomorrow, and it’s a sure bet to make Bungie enough money to choke a whole fleet of Arabian stallions (which is the unit by which I measure money). Their innovative advertising, depicting a diorama of the ubiquitous final battle between the Covenant and Master Chief, has been no small part of the hype machine leading up to the game.

On one hand, it’s nice to see that we’ve progressed beyond the need to prove in our gaming ads that our game can function successfully while wide-eyed eight-year-olds play and an urban stereotype declares it “radical.” Gears of War kicked things off nicely with their cinematic ad, and the Halo 3 team has followed in kind. On the other hand? The above ad, depicting a thinly veiled Russian Holocaust survivor reminiscing about how Master Chief allowed him to hold out hope against the invading Naz…uh, Covenant horde.

Major Czerneck even describes how they “ran out of ammo” and had to scavenge bullets from bodies on the ground, a familiar scenario for anyone who’s played the Russian part of Call of Duty. Maybe I’m a little oversensitive, but come on, are we really going to start marketing the HOLOCAUST now? Look out for Bungie’s next title, World of Warcraft: Birkenau.

Believe: in the power of American advertising.