[News] Microsoft Increases Price for Xbox Live Subscriptions

On November 1, 2010, Microsoft is upping the cost of the Xbox Live Gold Subscription plans from $7.99, $19.99 and $49.99 to $9.99, $24.99 and $59.99, with the prices for residents of the U.K., Canada, and Mexico seeing similar increases in price.

The prime suspect for these changes is inflation, as these prices were originally put up in 2002 and haven't been increased or changed until now.

Subscribers can lock in their current price, but would require them to continuously pay to never see the increase.

[News] Best Buy enters the used games market

After several months of testing with a few select stores, Best Buy opened its doors to buying used games yesterday. 600 of Best Buy's stores will be accepting used games from a list of over a hundred different games, and every week they will have an 'ad special,' where they mention 2-3 games in their ad that they will buy and you get not only the turn-in price, but a gift card as well.

They originally had commented on the possibility after Target announced their plans to enter the retailing of used games, and had already been accepting trade-ins on their website. With the entrance of these retail giants to the used games business model, will the original entrants like GameStop be able to keep up? They believe so. With $570.8 million in gross profit from the quarter ending on May 1st, and 48% of that coming from used game purchases, one can only assume their business won't be affected too badly as the new comers try to take a piece of the pie.

Welcome!

Hello all and welcome to Fire!Aim!Ready!, a new blog dedicated pc gaming news, reviews, and updates.

Lately I have been playing a game some may be familiar with known as Heroes of Newerth or HoN for short. Created by S2 Games and given licensing permission from DotA's IceFrog, HoN is basically a newer, better version of DotA. DotA is a team-oriented stadium strategy fighter map for Warcraft 3, where you and 4 others battle against 5 opponents to ultimately destroy the other teams base by gaining levels and gold faster then your enemies. You can accomplish this in a couple ways. By last-hitting more creeps and therefore getting the gold from them, or last-hitting your allied creeps to keep the enemies from gaining the gold and exp, or just simply killing that said enemy outright. HoN adds to this with new characters, a shiny new game engine, and features such as reconnecting to games if you disconnect, built in VoiP, a rating system, and a scheduled for release team-matchmaking system.