Microsoft's official pirate speaks....

Regardless of whether or not you think the recently announced two-tier pricing system for Xbox 360 is a good idea, MS does have plenty of explaining to do. Around the time of E3 (and for a few weeeks after) they were fairly adamant that not only would the hard drive be a standard built in deal, but they also claimed that at least at first their would be one set price for the system. J. Allard (he would be MS' official pirate, having the shaved head and earring to look the part), was somewhat ready to field the public's questions, as he set up an online chat. I thought he defended the decision fairly well, but at the same time, was backpeddling about alot of things he claimed would be necessary for the next generation. This along with another top MS exec claiming that 95% of 360 games would not need the hard drive. But this statement is a bit misleading in itself. While a vast majority of games may not need the hard drive, the fact of the matter is that even if you never downloaded content or saved music to your hard drive, standard memory cards are notoriously small and can only store a handful of game saves (especially any game that has career or season modes to save), so odds are you would probably need at least two memory cards, thereby making the hard drive again a more than worthwhile purchase since it costs about the same as two and can store a helluva lot more.

But some hopefully good news has leaked out-MS is supposedly pricing their first party 360 games at $49.99, meaning we hopefully won't see any hike in price (although who knows what 3rd parties will do) from current games.

I picked up the first season of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman last week, and as campy & cheesy as I remember the show being, time has made it seem even more so. But somehow, it still retains a large amount of it's charm. It's also sort of interesting to see where all those then young up & comers have ended up. Last I checked, Jonathon Shea (Lex Luthor) was on some syndicated Sci-Fi show called Mutant X, Dean Cain was hosting Ripley's Believe it or Not, and Teri Hatcher is on one of the top TV shows right now.

Finally, I did see both Red Eye & 40-Year Old Virgin over the weekend. Red Eye was a solid thriller, but gets a little silly and over the top at the end. It's worth seeing for Cillian Murphy's performance; between this and being the Scarecrow in Batman Begins, he'll have a nice long career as a creepy psycho. 40-Year Old Virgin is easily the funniest movie I have seen all year, it's an absolutely flawless fun comedy, Everyone is the cast is absolutely hilarious, and Carrell really shines in his first lead.

That's really it for now, but I'll defnitely be back later today or Wed. with some more thoughts on what's happening in the world of entertainment.