If you are reading this then you have probably “googled” something like “cheap xbox live subscriptions”.  Well that is what I did and I came across a UK based site called live-codes.com.  At first I was a little dubious as I am with all things that appear to good to be true so I asked around and found no negative comments anywhere (there is a good reason for that).

Let me tell you what I know about the site.  They are a UK based Limited company with a genuine registered office (not just a mailbox).  They use Google checkout so you can rest assured that they are not going to run off with your money and their support staff were available to answer my email within minutes at 10.30pm.

I had done my digging and researched the company before purchasing and decided to take the plunge and purchased a 12 month X-Box live subscription card for the fantastic price of £28.99.  Google Checkout was an absolute pleasure to use as I already have a gmail account and felt the transaction went smoother than most other online payment gateways from the largest corporations.

So at 10:22 I completed the transaction and in the time it took to open a new tab and press home the code was sat in my inbox.  It wasnt just an email with the numbers typed in it was an actual scan of the subscription card, I’m guessing they do this to reduce the possibility of problems should anything go wrong.  So as you can imagine I am over the moon at the speed my card was delivered I then entered the code into my X-Box and within seconds my Live account was refreshed for another 12 months.  I was so happy with the transaction I thought it would be nice to email them via their contact us form and tell them how impressed I was.  Within 5 minutes a very helpful person from live-codes.com had responded.  It wasn’t an automated response but a real human who replied to my every single compliment, this is something that will keep me going back time and time again.

It is very rare for an online retailer to have such an affect on me, I am still gobsmacked at the speed and reliablity of the service I recieved!

Now I know what you are all thinking, £28.99 is not as cheap as some of the Power Sellers on the evil Ebay.  This can be true however I have been burnt in the past ordering from a very trusted UK power seller who had 100% feedback.  It is also worth remembering that Ebay have changed their protection policy, so no longer are digitaly delivered items such as subscription codes covered by their buyer protection scheme.  So if you get sold a code that doesnt work then you have no protection whatsoever and will end up having to pay double to get your fix of online gaming.  Im not saying that every seller on Ebay is going to rip you off but in the current economic climate can you afford to take that risk?

I will be using live-codes.com again and will be more than happy to recommend them to friends and family, I suggest you do the same.

This is a snippet of the email that I recieved from them tonight:

We like to operate where; if you are pleased with our service you spread the word to friends and where you found our site (i.e forum etc). The site is fully automated so as soon as the payment is clear codes are emailed out immediately 24/7. We only ever deal in scanned cards, this avoids any typing mistakes and we feel scanned images gives confidence to the customer.

I think I should also add that it is not only X-Box live subscriptions that they sell, they also have Microsoft Points, Nintendo Points & World of Warcraft subscriptions and add-ons.

Go and check them out I guarantee you will not be disappointed!

Just look at the times of these emails!

Link Dump
Links to various sites mentioned in this blog.

Live-Codes.com: http://www.live-codes.com/
Google Checkout: http://www.google.com/
Ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/

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A helping hand, Gaming stuff, Online shopping cheap, cheap subscriptions, codes, ebay, Gaming stuff, help, live, live-codes, microsft, microsoft, microsoft points, ms points, trustworthy, www.live-codes.com, xbox, xbox live

Have Ebay’s recent changes increased the chances of dvd, cd and game piracy?

Well they certainly haven’t helped the fight against piracy, read on for my reasons why.

I am an avid gamer who tries to purchase new titles on or around the release date, normally paying top dollar for them.  I will play the game to completion and then jump online with it and make the decision to keep it or trade it.  Once upon a time I would take it to my local game shop and get a fair trade in price and swap it for something else and would continue to do so until I get a game that I will want to keep.  Now the major stores (Game & Gamestation) have lowered the trade in value of games so dramatically it just isn’t worth it, let me give you an example:  Silent Hill Home Coming on the 360, 2 weeks after release date I tried to trade it in and was offered £7 by Game and £12 by Gamestation.  They were selling the game for £39.99 new and £35.99 pre-owned, my copy was in pristine condition and was only 2 weeks old!

So the only alternative to get some money back from my games would be to stick them on Ebay.  Most of my new games I will put on with a buy it now price but I used to pick up older titles and would sell them on when I played them to completion.  This is not financially viable since Ebay ammended its postage fee’s on CDs, games and DVDs.

Again let me give you an example, I bought Disney’s Car’s a couple of years ago for £30 brand new.  It has been played a few times but both disc and box are in immaculate condition.  If I wanted to trade it in I would get £3 for it which is not very fair considering I have seen a tatty version selling in Game for £20 PRE-OWNED!!  So I would normally put it on Ebay with a starting bid of 99p knowing that if it didn’t sell for more than £3 I have still gained more due to the low fee’s and postage costs.  Now they have forced all users to sell games without being able to charge p&p, which means if the game only sell’s for £1 I would not make any money from the sale at all and in fact it would cost me about 50p!!!  Can you imagine giving someone 50p to take a game from you!

Now this got me thinking, I am now less inclined to buy brand new games because there is every chance that 6 months down the line when its trade in value is only £5 I can’t put it on an online auction because it could end up costing me money!!!

There will be other people in this position who won’t just stop buying as many games, they could start downloading the titles.  I love to own the boxes so pirating the games just isn’t an option for me but it will be for some people.  This is why I think that Ebay is not helping the industry fight piracy!

Everything else, Gaming stuff, Online shopping copyright theft, ebay, fees, no postage, piracy, postage charges removed, ripoff, scam, scammy

As you are probably aware I am an xbox 360 user and a subscriber to the xbox live service.  I have been for many years and have always let the small problems that xbox live and Microsoft have pass without much complaint, until now.

I am a subscriber to Major Nelsons xbox blog, for those who don’t know who Major Nelson is, he works for the xbox live development team.  Everyday my RSS reader is filled with news about up and coming releases, demo’s and game content.  Overall this is a very good source of xbox news as it is always 100% accurate, but recently I have noticed a trend that is beginning to annoy me more and more.  That trend is Microsoft and the xbox live team only releasing content for American subscribers.

Just a couple of weeks ago I saw a post in my reader from Major Nelson’s blog announcing the “Xbox Live Marketplace Black Friday Sale”.  I was quite impressed at the range of content and games that had been discounted by up to 33%, until I attempted to download something.  I was met with a message informing me that my country wasn’t eligible for discount and it was only offered to US users.  So I decided to post my distaste on the Major Nelson blog basically saying how unhappy I was that this offer was only open to US residents.  My post was responded to by a barage of stupid people saying things like “stop whining xbox is American so of course we are going to get more stuff”.  This really wound me up simply because Xbox is marketed and sold in the UK so why shouldn’t we get a slice of the reduced price goodies?

There were other comments made suggesting that it could be due to copyright or licensing restrictions, this couldn’t be the case as two of the games are UK games and all the content is already available at full price worldwide.

This trend has continued today, I noticed that there is a nice new crappy little festive addon to the xbox dashboard, which is available in the US but nowhere else.  If this trend continues then I will be taking a trip to my local Gamestation with all my games and console and trade it all in for a PS3.

Gaming stuff major nelson, microsoft, microsoft rippoff, xbl, xbox live

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There appears to be a new wave of Phishing scams doing the rounds, this time it isn’t preying on the old or wealthy but the young gamers out there.

I am a gamer and also a web savvy type of guy but not everyone who is into gaming is as up to date with the world wide web.  With consoles offering full online capabilities more and more people are buying computers to make use of their broadband connection.  This has brought a whole new world of trouble into the homes of innocent Internet newbies.

Once upon a time the only people who were capable of being “phished” were those who used email and generally used the internet on a regular basis.  Now users of Xbox Live (Microsofts online gaming service) are getting caught up in the phishing scams.

I receieved a message from someone on my xbox friends list called KELTS REVENGE, the message told me to visit a website to get 2100 free microsoft points. The website in question simply asks the user for his or her Gamertag, password and email address.  As most people will assume that the password that is being requested is your xbox live password, the scammer receiving the data will be able to hijack your xbox live account and get access to all your personal data such as your real name, address and credit card details.

Microsoft points are a type of cyber currency used for buying games and content through the xbox live service, these points have no resell value and can only be used to buy content and games on your xbox.  Microsoft has released a new xbox360 dashboard with a brand new feature that allows you to buy content as a gift to people on your friends list using Microsoft points.  If anyone was to get access to your xbox live account they could very easily spend all your points buying things for themselves then cancel your account in a heartbeat.

There will be lots of people falling for this type of scam because of the high cost of Microsoft points (about £17 for 2100).  The average price for a game on xbox live is 800 points so most people would jump at the opportunity to get cheap or free Microsoft points.  I have already mentioned lots of people who are old hands at playing games online may not have had much dealings with life on the internet and would not be aware of such scams.

I urge anybody who receives one of these messages to report the user to xbox live and if you are feeling charitable message everyone on their friends list warning them of the scam.

Link Dump
Links to various sites mentioned in this blog.

Xbox
Microsoft

* Phishing Image credits go to http://www.konsolkoll.se/

Gaming stuff microsoft, phishing, scam, scammers, scumbags, xbox, xbox live

As some of you may be aware, us lucky xbox 360 owners are eagerly awaiting the “fall update” to our consoles dashboard.  This new update is a total revamp for the box and will do away with the much loved “blades”.  There have been various videos floating around that show a simulated version of the new look and to be honest with you it looks great.  This however is not the reason for me writing this, it is a much more sinister reason, THE XBOX AVATAR SYSTEM.

It has been announced that we are going to be getting an avatar to customise and use on our new dashboard, it should be noted that this avatar bears more than a passing resemblance to the Wii’s Mii’s.  I can appreciate that the xbox team have spent a great deal of time making this update look as good as possible but these avatars are a step backwards for the hardcore gamers the xbox normally attracts.

It is still unclear if these avatars are compulsory but it would appear that we will be stuck with them.  Take a look at the video below to see what these new avatars will bring to the new xbox experience.

As you can see the new dashboard looks very nice but the avatars seem a little childish, in my opinion each of the consoles have a certain type of person play them for example:

• The PS3 user is normally someone who never played the original xbox and will remain loyal to the sony brand.  They care a lot on how a game looks rather than how it plays.
• The Wii users are either young families or part of the ipod youth generation and aren’t interested in how a game looks.
• The xbox user is a more mature gamer who has been around computers for a long time and is more interested in how many “online features” there are.

These are just my opinions so please don’t start calling me a “fanboi” I can see good in all three consoles but have chosen the xbox because of the live community.  I just think that the new xbox avatars are slightly better than the Nintendo Mii’s but not as good as the PSN avatars and this puts Microsoft in uncharted water!

I can see why Microsoft have done this, first they reduce the price to undercut everything else on the market then they release a more family orientated console.  They are simply trying to push the xbox into the mass market and make it accessable for everyone, whist this is good for Microsoft it isn’t all good for the xbl community.  It would seem that most users who post on Major Nelsons Xbox blog are opposed to the new avatar system for the same reasons as me.  The xbox is a hardcore gamers console and opening it up to the Wii market will only slow down the progress of more mature games.  I personally think the community will suffer when the new intake of family users start playing online, in the same way that pubs suffered when they started to allow children in them.

Link Dump
Links to various sites mentioned in this blog.

Major Nelsons Blog
Xbox
Microsoft
Wii
PS3

Gaming stuff avatars, microsoft, ps3, wii, xbl, xbox live