In July Infinity Ward announced at E3 that they were having a beta for Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox 360 sometime in August. I was pumped for that after being a member of their site since day one. This past Wednesday they open up a lotto where you could send in an e-mail answering three questions and hope to get selected. While it wasn't a small choosing of people, it wasn't large. Days went by and I wasn't in, but finally today I got in. Checked my e-mail and their was my code and the congratulations from Infinity Ward. So I am glad to play it before the big rush of people come in on Monday once it becomes more available to the public of those who live in the U.S.

Tonight I played a little with Earthking and I must say the beta is amazing. There are three maps and each one is designed well and offers a great experience. The classes you can choose to be and the ranking system is cool too. I am normally a Heavy Gunner and have liked the weapons the class offers. Infinity Ward really has produced a game that will be great on the day it releases, this just from the beta. I haven't experienced much lag, so it has been good.

If you got in we need to play and start a Party Group. I love games that have a Party system built-in. The matchmaking has been excellent too.

Anyways, I start back up on school on Wednesday. So comes the end of my summer and here I go back to school to have loads of fun. I'll be glad to see my friends I didn't see in the summer, but by the third week I'll be wanting Christmas to come. Luckily Halo 3 comes out on September 25th! Less than a month now!

This week I get to go back to football to at least help out at practice. I am glad because I have been getting bored being at home since I had my tonsils removed. Then the following week I should get to practice again. I am excited for that to happen.

Anyways, Call of Duty 4 is something you need to sign-up for if you have a Xbox 360. Go to CharlieOscarDelta.com and on Monday those who live in the U.S. have a good chance to get. It'll be at 12:00 P.M. EST.

I am upset that Virtua Fighter 5 will be exclusively available on Playstation 3 and completely unavailable for Xbox 360. I know that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are excellent businessmen, but I now believe that they have delegated too much responsibility to the wrong men! Guys like Robbie Bach, J Allard, and Peter Moore have lost a great deal of my respect, because they are not taking enough of the Japanese market into consideration! Japan may only represent a 15% share of the worldwide videogame market at this point in time, but many of the worlds best game designers are based in Japan, which makes some of the Japanese designers biased towards the products selling well in Japan.

Just because the Virtua Fighter series was never very popular with the mass market of gamers in North America or Europe does not mean that it isn't important to the success of Xbox 360! The Virtua Fighter franchise is by far the most successful and most popular fighting series in the Japanese market, which means that Sony will instantly attract a large market of wealthy hardcore enthusiast gamers in Japan, regardless of how much the system costs. There are about 500,000 consumers in North America who feel the same way; that is the entire reason why they bought the Sega Saturn system. 500,000 systems may not be enough for the Saturn or the Playstation 3 to succeed in the long run, but it certainly does help lay a foundation for success.

Peter Moore used to work for Sega, and he should know how important Virtua Fighter 3 was to the launch of the Dreamcast. The Virtua Fighter series is FAR more popular in Japan than the Dead or Alive series. Dead or Alive is much more popular in North America, but in Japan it is Virtua Fighter that is more popular. Microsoft messed up BIGTIME by allowing Virtua Fighter 5 to appear exclusively on Playstation 3.

Microsoft should not have had a goal that was focused on allowing games like Virtua Fighter, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Quest to appear on both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Microsoft should have had the goal of doing what Sony did; Microsoft should have made sure they ended up with Virtua Fighter, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Quest as Xbox 360 exclusive franchises!

Sony clearly has the "eye of the tiger" in a way that Microsoft does not. The strange thing is that Microsoft has financial reserves so much greater than Sony. Perhaps Microsoft should stop giving billions of dollars away to charity and instead focus on doing what it takes to succeed in the gaming industry. Either that or they could just fire Peter Moore; the guy who lived in the shadow of Bernie Stolar and then killed off the Dreamcast almost instantly with his poor management.

Man-oh-man; I just can't believe that enthusiastic men like Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates, J Allard, or Robbie Bach would allow the Xbox 360 to go without the Virtua Fighter franchise. Virtua Fighter is the gaming series that brought 3-D fighting into existence. It is bad enough for the Xbox 360 that the Playstation 3 had Namco's Tekken franchise exclusively, but with Namco's Tekken 6 and Sega's Virtua Fighter 5 the Playstation 3 CLEARLY owns the home 3-D fighting target market!

When the Xbox 360 loses billions of dollars, just like the Xbox, they can think about this moment in time. When Microsoft looks back at the way the Xbox 360 failed in Japan, they can look back at this moment in time. When Microsoft looks back at why the Xbox 360 didn't achieve the kind of success that it could have, they will say that it was because they allowed franchise games like Ridge Racer 6 and Full Auto to be released the next year in the form of Ridge Racer 7 and Full Auto 2 as exclusive games for the Playstation 3.

Up until this very moment, I was confident that Microsoft would end up gaining the largest worldwide market share in this videogame generation. However, I now believe that the Xbox 360 will be the best selling console in every major geographic market, except for Japan. I don't say that simply because of the importance of Virtua Fighter 5 or Tekken; I say this because it clearly shows that Microsoft is not hungry; they don't have the "eye of the tiger" like Sony does when it comes to making sure that games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest appear on the system.

I think this should be a big concern to Microsoft stock holders. If Microsoft employees lack the simple visionary objectives necessary to give players the ability to enjoy a legendary fighting franchise such as Virtua Fighter or Tekken, then how in the world are they going to defeat a company like Google that is very hungry and has "the eye of the tiger."