Multiplayer: And if someone drives themselves to a mall this Christmas season and sees on one end of the mall a GameStop and on the other a Wal-Mart or Target or any of your competitors, why should they walk into your store and buy the games there?
McKenzie: They’re going to have the best experience shopping at GameStop. Our people are passionate about what we do. They’re very knowledgeable and they’re going to be able to help the customer get into the right gaming experience.
This inspired a Kevin Pereira-like "really!?!!!?" out of me. Are you telling me that the same chain of stores that is trying to ram pre-orders down my stupid throat every time I get within 40 feet of the store is the "right" gaming experience? That the store that sold me an open copy of The World Ends With You as new because it was their last copy, but still charged me the full, new price is the "right" gaming experience? That the store that once tried to sell me on a third-party N64 controller by claiming that they came from the same mold even though you could clearly see that the controller was not at all like the official controller contains "very knowledgeable" people?
(OK, old grudges die hard, I guess. But that N64 controller was total garbage.)
Point being, I usually feel sort of filthy after leaving a GameStop.
For the record, I don't actually think that Target or Wal-Mart are much better, since you often have to flag down some shiftless wage-slave who's too busy trying to shake last night's bong session out of his brain to open the stupid glass case and get you a game. At least they usually share my sentiment of really not wanting to be there.
The runner-up for the lie of the week is only really the runner-up because it doesn't make me all outraged. It's technically way bigger and way more interesting. Cheap Ass Gamer apparently held some sort of secret sneaky contest through its podcast to trick gaming blogs into running a hoax. The hoax concerns a fake document that talks about a name change for the Xbox 360.
A bunch of blogs ran the story, and some of them got all pouty about it once it was apparent they'd been fooled. If we had been, you know, awake, we almost certainly would have run it, too, so please don't mistake this for some sort of holier-than-thou nonsense. Instead, take it as pretty firm evidence that the battle between speed and accuracy continues to rage on inside us all.