Parenting Gamers

Best Buy’s Black Friday Deals

Best Buy released their Black Friday ad. There are some big deals if you are looking for video game related gifts. Here are the console bundles.

  • Xbox One Console Assassin’s Creed: Unity Bundle – $329.99 – This bundle includes an Xbox One console and the two latest Assassin’s Creed games, Unity and Black Flag. For $100, you can get a console with Kinect and an extra controller.
  • PlayStation 4 Black Friday Bundle – $399.99 – This bundle includes a PlayStation 4 console and two games, Grand Theft Auto 5 and The Last of Us Remastered (downloadable).
  • Wii U 32GB Console Super Mario 3D World and NintendoLand Bundle – $359.91 – This bundle includes a Wii U console and 4 games, Super Mario 3D World, Nintendo Land, Super Smash Bros for Wii U, and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.
  • 3DS XL with Mario Party: Island Tour – $174.99 – This bundle includes a 3DS XL and Mario Party: Island Tour

Besides the consoles themselves, many games will also be on sale from $14.99 to $29.99. These include some recent games like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, which will be $24.99, $35 off the regular price.

You can check out the video game deals here.

Black Friday Video Game Deals Are Starting Early This Year

Man, Black Friday sales start earlier and earlier every year. When I worked at Best Buy 12 years ago, we opened at 4am. A few years ago, stores started opening at midnight. And then last year some started their sales Thanksgiving evening.

This year, retailers are taking things to the next level. Polygon is reporting a lot of Black Friday ad leaks. Best Buy and Target are actually starting their sales on November 9th! And Amazon is already running “Countdown to Black Friday” deals.

Here are a few other notable links from the Polygon article.

Price drop coming on Xbox One

Engadget reported on Monday that Microsoft is going to drop the price of the Xbox One $50 heading into the holiday season.

Good things come to those who wait, and Microsoft’s now in the business of richly rewarding those capable of delaying their gratification. If you’ve yet to pick up an Xbox One, then holding off until November 2nd will see the company apply a $50 price drop across the range.

According the Microsoft’s Major Nelson, the price drop will be in effect from November 2, 2014 until January 3, 2015.

This price drop is not surprising. The PS4 and Xbox One have been out for almost a year. This holiday season marks the beginning of the real fight for customers. I expect Sony to drop the price of the PS4 as well. Also, I would be really surprised if the price went back up on January 3rd.

My recommendation if you want to get your gamer a new console for Christmas is to wait until Black Friday (November 28th this year). The consoles themselves may not drop anymore but you will probably be able to pick up an extra game or two.

I will keep my eyes on this, especially as we get close to Black Friday, to let you know of any other big deals.

News and New Releases – Week of January 20th

Last week I mentioned that January is normally a slow month for video games. This week proves that point with no news or releases.

This makes this week a good week to look ahead at some of the games coming out this year. Here are some of the games I will be watching.

For more games, check out Metacritic’s extensive list.

New Releases and News – Week of January 13th

January tends to be a slow month for game releases. Most games are either released in November/early December to hit the Christmas rush or after January to avoid the after Christmas lull. This year is no different.

New Releases

Tuesday January 14th:
Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC) Metacritic

This game is a re-release of Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation on the PlayStation Vita. The game has received a, “complete graphical overhaul, re-mastered music and sound effects, a revamped gameplay experience, and new missions”, according to the publisher, Ubisoft.

Since this is a re-release, you can leverage the information about the original game. For example, the Metacritic score for the original is 70. You can read the reviews from Giant Bomb, Polygon, and Game Informer, to name a few.

I would n0t worry too much about any technical issues those reviewers bring up. Any large issues should hopefully be fixed in this release. The reviews for the actual game should be out soon. These will tell you if the issues are still there or if any news one were introduced.

Rating: Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD is rated M (Mature) for Intense Violence, Blood, Suggestive Themes, Language, and Crude Humor.

The Banner Saga (PC) Metacritic

The Banner Saga is an epic role-playing game inspired by Viking legend. Hand-painted landscapes portray a world eerily suspended in perpetual twilight. Cities and towns begin to crumble into chaos. Heroes abandon their hearths and homes to traverse the snowy countryside, gaining allies along the way to help battle a strange, new threat.

The Banner Saga Game Overview

Rating: The Banner Saga has not been rated by the ESRB. You can read more about why here.

News

The biggest video games news so far this year has come out of CES this past week. CES is an electronic show so most of the news was hardware related.

The biggest news for gamers was from Valve. They announced their Steam Machines last year. At CES, they talked more about them, including giving some information about their partners that will be building Steam Machines. Here is Polygon’s recap of the announcement.

I will be writing more about the Steam Machines soon.