I just took a trip around to all my local stores that sell video games. After a trip at 1:30pm to Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Gamestop, EB Games, and Circuit City, I found that they ALL still have Elite systems in stock.

I know some of these stores got as little as 4 units, and they all have systems in stock. Is the demand not there? I would have expected the stores with the smaller quantities to at least sell out, but it doesn’t look that way.

A quick trip to Ebay shows systems selling for a premium over the retail value. Could my market just be an anomaly?

Let us know in the comments if you find Elite’s on the shelves.

In case you’ve been living in a bubble the past month or so, the Xbox 360 Elite is coming in a mere couple of hours. Word is most Best Buy stores will have around 20 units each, and the same with Target. Gamestop will have much lower allocations.

So, are you upgrading to the new system? Maybe just getting a 120GB hard drive? Let us know what you’re going to do with your 360.

I’ll be out at Best Buy tomorrow morning checking things out.

If you haven’t camped for one yet, you better get yourself down to your local Best Buy right now. There will be a minimum of 12 units per store today, but expect those numbers to be closer to 20.

There’s a lot of people still waiting patiently to get their hands on a Wii (naughty thoughts just ran through my head as I typed that). This might be your lucky chance.

The in-game ad firm Double Fusion inked a multi-game deal with THQ, which will allow them to place in-game advertisements in their upcoming titles and franchises. Included in the deal are not only static advertisements but also real time adverts.

I for one am on the fence about this whole in-game advertising movement. Yes I understand that the advertisement in theory will allow developers more revenue to expand their titles and offer gamers new experiences but at what cost? Will we soon begin to see a K-Mart in World of Warcraft or maybe a Best Buy in Phantasy Star Universe? I think that in-game advertising must be handled very carefully if not it will in fact cheapen our experience as gamers.

I actually had a chance to take part in what I thought was a beta test of Splinter Cell: Double Agent a while back, but it turned out to be a glorified ad agency asking how many adverts I noticed while playing. I was a bit upset by the whole thing and gave the lady a piece of my mind, I doubt she will call me back for another “test”.

There’s been rumblings of bad whammy bars on some X-ploder guitars for Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360. Yeah, guess who’s affected? This guy. If it can go wrong, it’s probably happened to me.

Kotaku got word that two model numbers are affected: 95055 and 95065. You can check either the back of the guitar or the back of the box for the model number. I went to exchange mine tonight (I have 95055), only to find my Best Buy only has that model number in stock. Guess I’m going to have to wait. It’ll give me a break from the game for a bit.

Where’s the QA these days?

Here is a new contest that can bag you $1,000 Best Buy certificate, worth checking out, even though Bullet Witch has gotten bad reviews.

Enter here.

I’m sure I am like every other RPG player, more specifically MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game), which gets drawn in full force and twitches if his/her fix of online enjoyment is not met. In all seriousness the addictive power of these MMORPG’s is ridiculous, it is like any other drug that man can get addicted to. Right now I am addicted to PSU on the 360, I want to start to wean myself off but it draws me in, it talks to me, just one more run, just one more level. I recently went to Best Buy and saw the Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft, I held it, looked at it, sniffed it (ok I didn’t really sniff it, but you get the idea) and decided against it. I am still thinking about getting the expansion and firing up my old WoW character, but I recall the utter engulfment it had over my life, I would get home from work and fire up the PC play for hours and eat by the PC, and constantly fight with my wife over logging off. My life became instance runs, leveling, grinding and I always had something else to try and do that would only take me a bit longer. I look at the burning Crusade and I say not again Blizzard, you will not get me in the clutches of your crack, I fear Sega has already drawn me in and it’s too late, but I won’t do WoW, not again. The major problems with these games is there is no end, there is no final mission or goal, and if there was the developers will put out some new content, missions, weapon, item, etc. that will make you continue to play, they are truly and open ended scenario where you take your character as far as you would like, some just never know when to stop.

Joystiq is reporting on next week’s circulars that list Wii for sale at some stores. They have scans of the ads as well. Circuit City will have “limited quantities”, Best Buy will have a minimum 20 per store, and Target is advertising Wii-motes and Nunchucks, but not Wii’s. No idea if they’re have any systems.

So if you still haven’t found a Wii and are dying for one, go camp out at your local Best Buy or Circuit City in the freezing cold for your chance at the uber fun console.

I have scored a system finally but now comes the fun of getting the accessories. I spent the last few days hitting every Best Buy, Circuit City, EB and GameSTOP in order to try and get a second controller and couldn’t find anything. I found a classic controller but decided not to pick that up yet as I don’t think I will download many games just yet. I did get a 1 Gb SD card for it for $20, just as a note of advice don’t fall for buying the memory cards in the Wii section of the store, they are like $60 for the same thing you can get for $20, you are paying for the fact that it says Wii on it. I am a bit pissed I got rid of al of my Gamecube stuff since you can use the controller and memory cards with the Wii, there is a panel on the back of the system that has 4 plugs for the GC controllers and 2 slots for the GC memory cards, I could use a Wavebird right about now. Also if you haven’t seen Circuit City has Rayman for the Wii on sale for $29.99 this week, unfortunately they were sold out when I went, but I will go back for a rain check.

I just got back from my local Best Buy to spend some more Christmas money, picking up Family Guy volume 4 DVD (Giggity). I wandered over the video game section just to check stuff out, because that’s what I always do. There was a big pile of 60GB PS3’s sitting there, 15 of them to be exact. Now, if this was 11am and they had just put out a new day’s shipment, this wouldn’t surprise me. But at 8PM on a Wednesday, it seemed a bit odd. I found the department manager and asked about the giant stock of overpriced consoles. Apparently, they had received 28 units for the Sunday ad, where they guaranteed a minimum 25 per store. These 15 are left over from that. So in 4 days, they sold 13 units. Pretty fucking sad if you ask me.

Has Sony brought upon itself such a negative stigma that no one wants this thing? I mean, every story you read just shits all over them. Has this caused the effect? Or is it the price of the console. Either way, Sony needs to wake the fuck up real quick and get some AAA exclusive titles on the market ASAP. A ridiculous marketing campaign couldn’t hurt either, possibly with commercials that don’t have me saying “What the fuck just happened?”