#It's just another fad to retailers they can market of off...

[neon-moon-beam]

The irony of stores selling "stim toys" or "sensory toys" and then blasting pop music really loudly and having bright, fluorescent lights, or even flashing lights...Really seems they think "stim/sensory" means "'satisfying' to watch on the video app du jour" and not what it actually means.

[ivesory]

How to Creating and also Marketing Your Products

Build a prototype

You can reveal this to possible consumers and purchasers to create a rate of interest in your product.Also check best invention help companies. You can also use a prototype as a design when you start to build your physical product.

While functioning digitally can assist, try to make a small physical prototype. This will certainly enable you to experience with products as well as discover the best combination to make your invention as solid as feasible.

Grow passion for your idea

Once you have a strong model of your item, start revealing it off. There is a range of ways you can produce the rate of interest in your concept. You want to try to find prospective investors as well as buyers.

One method to develop a passion for your suggestion is to go to the exhibition. You might also consider obtaining your booth at a trade show as well as show your item. Another method to build passion is to network with other inventors as well as obtain a feeling of what similar products are out there. You may have to fine-tune your product to provide yourself a side over the competitors.

Talk with a marketing research firm if it's within your budget plan. This can give you a feeling of fads on the market you're operating in, in addition to basic demographics

Speak to a patent legal representative

If you think you have an item that might potentially offer, get in touch with a patent attorney. You will certainly want to get a patent on your product to make certain it doesn't get taken by a competitor.

Patent regulation is made complex, so do not try to submit a patent on your own unless you have considerable legal experience. If you have a good friend that works in law, and also that recognizes patent law, you may wish to see if she or he will do some help at a discount rate cost.

Patents prices between $3,000 and $10,000 to file. While that may seem like a whole lot, if you've established there's a market for your product it's well worth the expense.

Patents take awhile to go through. It may take 3 years till you have successfully copyrighted your item. Use this time to continue researching the market and tweaking your item to meet customer demands.

Think about a fundraising project

It can be pricey to patent as well as market your product to the ideal target market. Think about doing an internet marketing campaign via a website like Kickstarter or GoFundMe. Along with providing the cash essential to obtain your product off the ground, this can also help create public interest.

Consider the most effective way to reach your target market. The social network would certainly work well for a more youthful audience, while an older target market may react much better to mass e-mails. Keep your target market up-to-date on your goals and let them understand how close you are to reaching them. Find out more advice by visit InventHelp

Inform your target market regarding your product and be sincere about exactly how the cash will be utilized. People will be much more most likely to contribute if they understand where their cash is going.

Decide whether to sell your concept or make it on your own

After producing public interest as well as patenting your item, choose what you intend to finish with your suggestion. Investors generally either sell licenses of their products to a larger business or create as well as market items themselves. Figure out which path is right for you.

If you want to offer the item on your own, consider whether you have the time as well as resources to do so. You might need to stop your task or minimize your hours. You should likewise weigh the prices of the sources it will certainly take to construct the product. The advantage of selling your permit is that you earn money from aristocracies. You might not need to quit your present work, yet you might quit a great deal of money this route. Generally, patent owners make about 2-7% of retail sales on their products.

Dealing with Troubles

Discover when to surrender on bad concepts

Some ideas merely do not work. Be all set to provide upon a suggestion if it's not functional.

Be willing to separate on your own from your concepts. Do not customize being rejected. Some concepts simply do not work as well as others. Becoming an inventor has to do with numbers. The even more ideas you have, the more likely you are to discover one that functions.

Maintain your day task

Even if you think you have a solid idea, keep your day task. You wish to make sure you have a consistent income until you begin regularly making money from an invention. On the planet of inventing, a lot is left approximately chance. Even if you think you have an investor in your concept, a great deal of might still fail. It may take years before you have a successful invention, so keep your day job until after that

Take denial with stride

Denial will take place in the process of success. If you want to be an inventor, you require to learn to take denial in stride. If you do refrain so, you'll have trouble prospering in the field.

Being rejected happens to every person. Try to keep in mind one of the most successful people encountered being rejected at some point in their specialist lives. Denial is hardly ever individual. There are hundreds of products on the market. Just because your own did not sell or attract anyone does not mean it was not a great idea.

If you think you have an item that might potentially market, contact a patent attorney. You will certainly desire to obtain a patent on your product to make sure it doesn't get taken by a rival. After producing the public rate of interest as well as patenting your item, determine what you desire to do with your concept. Investors generally either market licenses of their products to bigger businesses or develop and market items themselves. On average, patent owners make about 2-7% of retail sales on their items.

Also check InventHelp Instagram

[ketakidesai]

6 reasons why Digital Marketers should NOT ignore Gamification

For the uninitiated, gamification is most commonly defined as “…an informal umbrella term for the use of video game elements in non-gaming systems to improve user experience (UX) and user engagement…”. (1)

Brian Burke, Research Vice President at Gartner, in a podcast defines gamification further as “The use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals…it’s the use of game mechanics… and uses things like points and badges and leader boards… It is used in a digital engagement model” (2)

Let’s take a look at the 6 reasons why marketers must consider gamification in their digital strategy. (It's a long read but I promise it will be fun!)

Reason 1: Let’s accept it – gamification is not ‘just a fad’

The last decade has seen interest in gamification rise substantially. Growth in digital technologies has further propelled this interest across sectors like Healthcare, Real-estate, Education, and other sectors. Today, mobile technology is using game mechanics combined with UX design to enhance user engagement, aid employee learning, help students with problem-solving, and even help sales personnel reach their targets.

Reason 2: Gamification is everywhere, literally!

The earliest, less refined, version of gamification in marketing was recorded in 1896 (3) when retailers rewarded loyal customers with stamps received from marketers. By 2020, one can comfortably say that gamification in marketing has come a long way.

“It (Gamification) can be applied on many products, services, or any stage of the customer journey and it’s easily adjusted to any budget” (4)

Today, Gamification is seamlessly incorporated in our favorite digital platforms like Google Pay, Fitbit, and even Linkedin. It is common to see a mobile app use badges, points, or virtual currency to drive user engagement. While there are popular applications that have gamification at their core like Duolingo and Nike Run Club, there are apps like Zomato which have incorporated gamification into their product to keep app users coming back for more.

In 2019, Zomato launched Zomato Premier League during the IPL season. Users could predict a winner of the IPL cricket match of the day and gain 30% cashback if they predicted the winner correctly. Zomato released a scorecard of the activity that showed 224 cities and 14 Million predictions achieved during the IPL season. (5)

(On a separate note, Google decided to ruin the game and sent a notice to Zomato citing Play store policy violation – Zomato had to take off this feature in September 2020) (6)

Reason 3: Your digital audience wants to have fun

“Many brands don’t need brand awareness anymore, they already have it. So they’re looking at what’s next, they want to engage the audience, the influencers.” (7)

Digital marketers need not limit themselves to using gamification only in an app – digital engagement can be successfully created wherever the audience is including social media! Micro-gamification moments have been popular on social media platforms for some time now. One example of the micro-gamification moment is Stories Ordering by Burger King.

Burger King Spain used Instagram stories and had some fun with gamification. With “Stories Ordering” followers could pick ingredients and customize their Whoppers by simply clicking on the Instagram Poll Feature. This generated a unique coupon that participants could use to redeem their Whopper for free. A simple creative idea with zero media investment led to 270000 brand interactions.

Similarly, Star Movies launched Play @ 7 (8) to gamify the TV watching experience. Viewers were required to watch the movies played on the channel daily and play 7 games by tweeting the correct answers to the games. Star Movies created a leader-board on Twitter in real-time where participants could track their progress daily and weekly.

Reason 4: Personalise to Gamify and Gamify to personalize

“While the job of gamification is easing the daily tasks in different fields, the users’ interests and likes must be considered to create intrinsic incentives and a moral environment for them.” (9)

For a truly effective retention strategy, a brand must enhance the product experience for the user. For this ethically collecting relevant data along the user journey to personalize content and keep users engaged becomes important. Duolingo emails a weekly report to its users reminding them of their progress in comparison to the previous week. Similarly, Starbucks sends rewards points as a birthday treat to its users.

As the collected data gets richer in quality, marketers can then create loyalty programs, feedback mechanisms, gamified content, and much more, to personalize the user’s experience further.

Reason 5: Gamified marketing survived COVID-19

Locked up at home due to COVID-19, people were increasingly active online, consuming a variety of content, and playing games when not working. Between March 2020 and April 2020, comScore noted a 62% increase in the time spent on playing games online in India. Another report states that the US and UK saw a ‘40% surge in the time spent on online games’.

During this time, Burberry launched its summer collection through a gamified campaign. The luxury brand created a multiplayer game “that lets players dress up their characters in the brand's outfits before grabbing a surfboard and challenging friends to a race around a track”. The game rewards participants with daily prizes and AR-based digital rewards. (10)

ABC Entertainment decided to have fun promoting its classic TV game show “Supermarket Sweep”. To announce the return of the show, the broadcaster launched a Twitter game “Supermoji Sweep”. The audience on Twitter was required to “reply to its @SuperSweepABC account with combinations of nine emoji for grocery items including cheese, bread, steak, turkey and cherries”. Every emoji had a secret dollar value attached to it and the audience was required to guess the combination of items that would cost exactly $20. And the reward for the correct guess? A Special video message from comedian Leslie Jones, who is also the host of the show.

Reason 6: Gamification is about to get better

The overall Gamification market globally is expected to be worth $76298.9 Mn by 2030 (11) and for marketers, the opportunities are endless. Game mechanics are combined with AR/VR in education, tourism, healthcare, and entertainment industries.

In 2019, Ally Bank used AR and Gamification to create an online learning experience for consumers. “The augmented reality game brings Monopoly to life in six USA cities… Ally aims to improve consumers’ financial literacy through gamification while giving them the chance to increase their savings and win prizes."

PetSmart used Snapchat’s AR feature to create a “gamified quiz based around educational reptile facts”. Using this feature users could use the filter to turn themselves into a reptile, answer questions related to reptiles, and win a 40% discount coupon that can be redeemed at a PetSmart store. As a result, PetSmart “has seen a 50% increase in reptile sales, as well as a boost in general pet sales as owners stocked up on food and supplies in preparation for lockdown..”

Digital marketers can leverage these technologies to present immersive and gamified experiences to consumers and expand the scope of digital marketing. Similarly, brands can work towards gathering relevant user data and utilize it to create a better user experience and consumer engagement through personalized in-app gamified experiences.

Parting Thoughts

From engagement to retention, gamification can support most of the marketing objectives. This is a great approach ONLY if the marketer is clear about what objective the brand is trying to achieve when adopting the approach. To elevate a user’s experience through gamification, marketers must weave storytelling or personalization.

But remember, creating a gamified experience is not easy. Experts have researched why gamification fails and these reasons range from lack of understanding of the target audience to not being able to create a compelling story. Brian Burke mentions that gamification fails when it is used to manipulate the user’s experience to meet the organization’s goal, instead of the goal of the customer (2). As a result, marketers must create an experience that helps the consumer achieve their objectives. And this means going beyond mere reward points.

I will leave you with two popular frameworks Elemental Game Tetrad Model by Schell and Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou. Both these should help you start off with planning and designing an outstanding gamification experience for your audiences/customers/users!

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FIN!

Thank you for reading this article. I would love to hear your views on gamification and how digital marketers can leverage game mechanics to improve user engagement.

If you found this article interesting or if you have any feedback for me, do share the same in the comments below!

All references and cited articles can be viewed here.

[daleisgreat]

15 Years of Xbox 360: Flashback Special!

I am usually timely with these, but the holidays has resulted in this 15th Anniversary of the North American launch of the Xbox 360 Flashback Special to be about a month late. The 360 was one of the first major consoles to have a near simultaneous global launch in the three major market territories. With the United States and Canada launching first on November 22, 2005, followed by Europe on December 2nd and finally Japan on December 10th with most other smaller markets over the following year. The 360 had an extraordinarily long life cycle, with it being eight years until Microsoft launched its successor, the Xbox One. I had major highs and lows with the 360 so get ready to take in my journey with the system. Like with past system specials here, I recorded podcasts based on RPG games and comic book games that released on the 360, PS3 and Wii and have embedded them at the bottom of this entry for supplementary material if you crave even more 360 games to learn about. Be forewarned, this is my lengthiest Flashback Special yet, so I have implemented bookmarks for ease of navigation you can click or press on below! With that out of the way, the last special I did here was on the PS2, and I want to begin the 360 Flashback Special the same way by expanding upon its unavoidable….. CHAPTERS Part 1 – The Hype Part 2 – The Launch Part 3 - Reinventing Dashboards with Blades & Achievements Part 4 - Revolutionizing Downloadable Games on Consoles Part 5 - An Awesome Debut Year of Games Part 6 - Upgrade to HD Part 7 - Three Red Lights Part 8 - Kinect + Avatars = Wii’s Userbase Part 9 - Backwards Compatibility & Indie Games…..not those Indie Games Part 10 - For the Love of Online Co-op Part 11 - Bringing on J-RPGs and Doubling Down on Western RPGs Part 12 - Becoming a Pinball Wizard Part 13 - Racing Away to One of the Best Eras for the Genre Part 14 - The Fad that was Plastic Instruments Part 15 - Non-Kinect Casual/Family Game Hits and the Failure that was NXE Part 16 - Wanna Wrassle? Part 17 - Sports-ball Forever! Part 18 - No Russian, No Cauldron Part 19 – Dubious Honors Part 20 - Lightning Round Quick Hits Part 21 - ”It’s an Ocean” (THE END!!!) Part 22 – You’re Still Here!? Well then…. (STINGER!!!) The Hype Microsoft garnered a lot of attention by pulling the plug on its original Xbox early because of the PS2 being an unstoppable global force, and was determined to launch its system a year before the PS3. The Dreamcast had huge success in North America for its first year by launching ahead of the PS2 a year early, so I could see where they were coming from. I covered E3 2005 for the long defunct gaming site, VGpub. I recall getting a closed door tour with a few other gaming press members for the Xbox 360 and was shuffled around to a few isolated booths that showed off the 360’s “blade” dashboard interface and went over some of the functions of the system. I recall being shown Kameo running side-by-side an unreleased build on the original Xbox to demonstrate the 360’s horsepower. 360 had a couple games playable on the show floor that year with Top Spin 2 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted. From my brief time with those two games what I took away the most was the much-improved controller being lighter, slightly more ergonomic, and the much appreciated inclusion of the shoulderbumper buttons to replace the peculiar white and black buttons from its predecessor. Of the several games I was shown and/or played from E3 2005, the one that impressed me the most was Saints Row. I walked out of that demonstration thinking it looked like the first viable open world contender to Grand Theft Auto after countless watered down GTA-clones were flooding the market. Sure enough, Saints Row did not disappoint the following year and would have three more successful sequels over the years.

Back when cable TV mattered before the dawn of streaming, this MTV reveal event delivered on building anticipation for the 360.

Microsoft’s E3 press conference, which happened in tandem with a much publicized MTV reveal event of the 360 filled with all kinds of celebrities made it impossible to avoid the 360 launch hype building up to its November launch. Then there was Microsoft’s truly extraordinary “Zero Hour” launch event in the Mojave desert to give people the opportunity to travel all the way there just to buy an Xbox. Then there was the Mountain Dew contest where they were giving away 360s every so minutes and you increased your chances to win by entering more codes on their website, and yes, I must have entered at least a 100 codes from weeks of gathering bottle caps from co-workers to no avail. All this blitz of marketing engagement made it impossible to not pay attention to the 360’s launch. I was a huge fan of the original Perfect Dark on N64, and thus was eagerly stoked for the prequel, Perfect Dark Zero which made it a day one buy for me. Amped 3 wound up as the second game I pre-ordered for launch day, and it was a solid snowboarding game, which got a significant boost from its irreverent narrative that pushed me through playing it. The Launch With my pair of launch games pre-ordered I went on to count down the days until the 360’s launch. I thought I had my launch system guaranteed on November 22nd, but last second shenanigans prevented me from buying it at the final hour, yet I was able to procure dibs on the first batch of second wave systems that hit retail three weeks later. Launch window systems came with a couple limited pack-ins in the form of a DVD remote control (yay?) and the downloadable XBLA puzzler game, Hexic HD. Hexic HD was a perfectly fine hexagonal based puzzler from Alexey Pajitnov, the same designer who invented Tetris, but I mostly played Perfect Dark Zero in those opening months of the 360. I only got about halfway through the campaign, but I played a ton of deathmatch with friends and/or solo against bots. Like the previous game, PDZ had a plethora of multiplayer options and maps and tided me by splendidly during the first months of the 360’s lifecycle.

Perfect Dark Zero and Amped 3 were my first two 360 games and both held me over nicely during those initial launch window months! Over the next few weeks I played a fair amount of launch games my friends brought over and picked up/rented a couple more. Top Spin 2 I played far more than I thought I would and wound up finishing its lengthy career mode. Call of Duty 2 was a local multiplayer hit that friends repeatedly brought over. A few years later I eventually picked up Need for Speed: Most Wanted and got immersed working my way through its “blacklist” of rival racers to vanquish. Launch title Condemned: Criminal Origins I did not start playing until recent years, and I am kicking myself for not starting it sooner as it is a trip of a suspense/thriller first person game consisting of intense hand-to-hand and melee weapon combat over traditional firearms FPS weaponry. The game is still fun to this day and I have made it a ritual to play it on Halloween for the past three or four years. Reinventing Dashboards with Blades & Achievements

Also worth highlighting here during the launch was familiarizing myself with the much-loved “blade” dashboard in the launch window. The four blades were filled with many options to separate game, videos, photos and music media. I made heavy use of custom soundtracks on the original Xbox, and loved how the 360 had support for it built into the user interface so they could be dropped into any game. Dashboard and online features on the original Xbox like friends list, voice chat, game invites and more carried over on the 360 and later evolved into so much more through system updates that introduced must-have features like Party Chat that made it so several users can voice chat together regardless of what game any of them are playing. It made catching up with family and friends on weekend game nights more manageable. The biggest hit of the UI during that launch window was Microsoft debuting achievements that were mandatory for all games. These became an instant sensation among any ardent game player when accomplishing the criteria for an achievement and hearing the endorphin-rush of a sound effect and accompanying on screen graphic that indicated you unlocked another achievement. Most of the launch window games had straightforward achievements like finishing campaign missions or getting X amount of wins in sports and racing games, but they eventually evolved and encouraged users to play games in new ways I never thought of (Crackdown was a great early example of this with its achievement design). Also the way the Blades made it easy and irresistible to compare what achievements you accomplished in a game against other people on your friends list that it only upped the friendly competition between friends to see who could unlock more achievements. It is gratifying to see Microsoft allowed each Gamertag’s linked Gamerscore to carryover from 360 to Xbox One and now Series S|X. While achievements are still around today, and I occasionally dive into going out of my way to unlock some if I am enjoying my time with a game, they do not compare to the early years of the 360 where achievement-mania was running wild. Revolutionizing Downloadable Games on Consoles

This was also the first time a major console had an online digital store implemented at launch. The original Xbox had a scaled-down store they experimented with late in its lifecycle with about a dozen smaller classic arcade hits and smaller sized web browser-esque “flash” games of its era that could be purchased, and the 360 expanded on this bigtime. Initially, the 360 digital game marketplace known as “Xbox Live Arcade” launched with games maxing out at 50meg download limits so the game could fit on a memory card, so all of the first year or so worth of XBLA games were mostly re-releases of smaller-sized arcade classics like Smash TV, Contra and Gauntlet along with similar simple browser-based flash game of its era like Bankshot Billiards 2. Over the 360’s lifecycle though they kept increasing the game size limits to the point where disc-based games were coming out digitally and were multiple gigs in size as memory card and hard drive storage options increased. During the first few months of the 360 after launch developers were not flocking to releasing XBLA games because they were unsure if they were going to take off like digital games were slowly starting to on PC at that point. The launch dozen or so XBLA games were met with success, but developers were not anticipating it so in those early months only one or two new XBLA games hit a month. The big breakout XBLA success was a straightforward adaptation of the card game, Uno that launched in May 2006. I can attest for many sessions of simple, pick up and play rounds of Uno while catching up with friends over voice chat online. Microsoft eventually patched in support for the 360’s first webcam, the “Vision” camera, which lead to some peculiar matchups with strangers online who wanted to make sure to demonstrate all their adult substances they were consuming that evening. Later throughout 2006 and 2007 XBLA grew to releasing a game every Tuesday, and Microsoft enforced every XBLA game have a demo/trial so it was an eager experience to see what game would be hitting that Tuesday, because most of the time Microsoft did not announce the game until maybe a day before at that time.

It took over 20 years, but it was worth it to relive the iconic X-Men arcade game with online co-op, and EA did a bang-up job bringing back NFL Blitz for two of my most played XBLA titles! There are so many success stories of XBLA games to go on about, but I want to highlight a few of my favorites. Seeing the re-release of many classic arcade, 8 and 16-bit titles with enhanced graphics and online support was a big win for XBLA in this department. I remember interviews with the XBLA executives from this time answering fans demands and going through the legal hoopla with Konami to bring back arcade favorite beat-em-ups like TMNT, X-Men and The Simpsons, and all with online play! This treatment went doubly so for fighting games. It started with Street Fighter II: Turbo receiving the XBLA treatment, and within years Capcom, SNK, Namco and other studios were porting over their greatest hits onto XBLA like the first two Marvel vs. Capcom and Soul Calibur titles, many King of Fighters re-releases. My personal favorite is the remake, Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix that saw all new gorgeous artwork and a new officially endorsed ReMix soundtrack from the fantastic ocremix.org community.

Non-fighting game wise I was surprised by EA Sports’ revival of NFL Blitz. It is one of the few games I somehow got addicted to online, and become somewhat legitimately good at too and was able to genuinely earn the 10 straight online wins achievement against random ranked opponents! Renegade Ops is an addicting twin-stick shooter in an mini-open world unleashing destruction as pint-sized vehicles with a gruff CO barking orders from the chaotic minds from the team that also made Just Cause. Valiant Hearts I originally played on 360, and loved the passion they showed on their unique adventure/action take on a World War I game. I 1000% related to Double Fine’s take on being a wide-eyed kid caught up in the whimsical spirit of Halloween in both of its RPG-lite Costume Quest titles. Fans of past Sega consoles like the Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast were well treated, and new fans emerged after a plethora of XBLA re-releases of titles like Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, both Sonic Adventure games, Daytona USA, Ikaruga, Virtua Fighter 2, Nights, Jet Set Radio, Sega Bass Fishing, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Rez and others saw new life in XBLA form. The Genesis saw packs of three games re-released in bundles themed around best-sellers in the Streets of Rage and Golden Axe 16-bit entries. Although I would recommend skipping the XBLA Genesis packs in favor of the 360 disc release of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection that has 40 Genesis games and bonus unlockable Arcade and Master System titles. Sega obviously treated its back catalog well on the 360, and I put in many hours revisiting these past favorites. I bought into the hype for Shadow Complex, and it became the first “MetroidVania” I ever finished. Hydro Thunder Hurricane perfectly captured the nature of the 1999 arcade boat racer, while successfully evolving its gameplay into the HD era. Adorable puzzle-platformer Ra-Skulls brought back pleasant memories of Mr. Driller! Twisted Pixel’s Comic Jumper made smart use of implementing FMV-video into its charming superhero platform-action title. Despite its stomach-turning title, Deathspank is a lighthearted action-RPG I saw through to the end with a twist ending I did not see coming. That same developer, Hothead Games, released the first two turn-based RPG Penny Arcade games I ate up that perfectly encapsulated the popular web comic in videogame form.

Two of my best-of-class XBLA recommendations are Trials HD and its sequel, Trials Evolution. It is an exemplary example of the adage, “easy to learn, tough to master.” Its quirky, bouncy motorbike and instant reloading spawns made it easy to succumb to endlessly retrying its inventive stages after each wipeout. It also had innovative use of implementing Friends List leaderboards with their ghost times appearing as you play, just teasing you more and more upon each crash when coming close to usurping their times! The sequel added online multiplayer that clicked and made perfect use of Trials unique gameplay. Microsoft I recall got a lot of flak for their curating policies for XBLA at the time because they would only allow one game to release each Tuesday, and there were many indie developers lashing out for being on the short end of the stick for not getting their game slotted for release on XBLA. Eventually Microsoft upped it two XBLA games a week, with usually a more anticipated game hitting on Tuesday and a lesser known title from a smaller studio hitting on Friday. Looking back on this the obvious downside is the lack of quantity of XBLA titles with only one or two releasing a week, but the curation process lead to the hit-to-miss ratio of them being significantly in favor of the hit range. Sure there were some stinkers that creeped in their like the disappointing Turtles in Time Re-Shelled remake, but the good outweighs the bad greatly in the XBLA market, especially compared today to the ridiculous amounts of low-rent DIY shovelware hitting every week on all consoles with there being seemingly no restrictions for any developer to get their game on a current console, for better or worse.

The digital store also made game demos more easily accessible instead of the traditional demo disc, and downloading demos in the early years of the 360 was kind of a big deal, especially when they had major opening acts of action and intriguing narratives like the Prey and Just Cause demos that made a huge impression on me and triggered me to rush out and buy them. This also worked against games, with the most egregious case being EA Sport’s planned reboot of its basketball series with NBA Elite ‘11’s demo being so plagued with bugs and glitches, that EA infamously flatout cancelled the game days before its street date release and forced retailers to return their copies of the game. That last minute recall tempted overzealous retail employees to snatch up precious copies to make it one of the rarest physical releases on the 360, with copies going on eBay for many thousands of dollars. An Awesome Debut Year of Games

I have no idea if it was happenstance, or intentionally planned, but it worked out pleasantly in the 360’s favor in its first year of next-gen exclusivity they had one or two AAA exclusive games launching per month. Noticing multiple users on my friends list playing the latest AAA game, and with the dawn of podcasts in 2005 featuring their affable hosts discussing the latest games in exhausting detail on launch week is what I feel created the horribly named sensation, “Fear of Missing Out.” I ate up gaming podcasts upon discovering them in 2005 with 1up Yours, The Hotspot, Broadcast Gamer and Team Fremont Live being early favorites of mine and influencing my gaming purchases with their genuine positivity on the latest games that made it difficult to ignore their top picks. They, along with traditional print and online gaming press made it easier to keep up with the latest must-have game of the month for the 360’s first year. A month after launch Dead or Alive 4 snuck in at the end of 2005. It was the first fighting game on the system, and with it having a Spartan character from Halo’s universe as a guest fighter, and an innovative-for-the-time pre-fight lobby system lead to me spending many hours in it online and offline. I was terrible at it, but still had countless hours of fun, even while legitimately earning the dubious zero point achievement for 25 straight online losses.

Oblivion’s Adoring Fan I loved seeing respawn every couple of in-game days to tag along on my adventures before quickly getting slaughtered, and Test Drive Unlimited was an unprecedented always-online open world racing title that laid the foundation for Forza Horizon and The Crew! A couple months later, the first big RPG hit on 360 with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It was a huge improvement from Morrowind, and this Western open-world RPG was publisher Bethesda’s first mainstream console hit. It took me well over a hundred hours to finish that I spread out over the course of five years (just in time for Skyrim!). I had to resort to abusing the hell out of the dupe glitch for infinite invisibility potions to get past those dastardly Oblivion Gates, but it was an immensely gratifying experience to complete and fully 1000 gamerscore Oblivion! Pro tip, make sure to avoid a near freak-out experience like I had and have a bow in your inventory on the final Thieves Guild mission where you steal an actual Elder’s Scroll!

The string of big-release games kept rolling through 2006. Test Drive Unlimited broke new ground for the racing genre with its always connected open world! Before From Software had blockbuster success with their string of Souls games, they were known at this time for their niche mech games, and had their most success yet with the release of Chromehounds in 2006. The online-focused mech game was more accessible from their previous feature-extensive Armored Core titles. A pair of popular third-person Tom Clancy games hit in 2006 with the first Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Rainbow Six: Vegas titles. I rented both of these and was terrible at them online, but I do recall having fun as the decoy in Vegas to draw out enemy fire so my friends could pick off my assailants! My anticipation for Saints Row paid off, and it wound up being an awesome GTA-clone done right that year! The first Gears of War was the big 2006 holiday release from Epic Games, riding the success of several hit Unreal FPS games, but long before their current Fortnite fame. It lived up to the hype and delivered with its unapologetic brand of in-your-face gore, and smooth drop-in/drop-out online campaign play. It became one of my favorite franchises on the 360, and I would up playing through the campaign of every single game released to this day! The final big 2006 release I want to highlight is Dead Rising’s brand of campy, zombie mayhem from Capcom that became a huge new IP for Capcom and also the catalyst for many 360 owners to… Upgrade to HD Up through most of 2006 was when I used a traditional CRT (AKA “Tube TV”) as my main gaming television. HDTVs were first noticeable on the market during the PS2/Xbox/GCN era, and a fair number of games supported HD resolutions (especially on Xbox), but HD graphics were never a marquee bullet point of that gen. That all changed with Dead Rising. For the first several months I remained content with the CRT visuals of launch window 360 games, then when playing the Dead Rising demo, I could not help but notice the game’s text was rather tiny and kind of difficult to read. Upon listening to podcasts I learned I was not alone on this and it turned out the game’s text was optimized and quite readable for HD resolutions. Many more games would soon follow this trend in the following months. I noticed this even more when a friend brought over a smaller HDTV and we put them side-by-side running Rainbow Six: Vegas and I saw for myself the difference in the legibility of the in-game text. So yeah, the core graphics for all games where shinier and crisper in HD, but my primary reason for upgrading at the end of 2006 was just to read the damn text. History is repeating itself in recent years with text starting to look smaller and requiring more eye-squinting again to read in games like Wreckfest and MLB: The Show for me, when I later learned that is so because the visuals are optimized for 4KTVs (which I finally upgraded to several weeks ago).

Did you experience the ‘Look and Sound of Perfect’ with 360’s HD-DVD player, along with its killer app of a film in Tokyo Drift? HD movies also arrived to the 360 in 2006 with the release of the ill-fated HD-DVD add-on. Sony getting the better end of the stick in exclusivity deals with studios lead to it losing the physical HD format war against BluRay, and movies stopped releasing on HD-DVD by the end of 2008. I almost impulse-bought the add-on upon seeing it on the clearance rack for $50, but thankfully I held off. By that time however HD streaming was starting to take off with TV shows and movies available to rent and purchase from 360’s online marketplace, and the 360 nabbing a year exclusive on being the first non-PC device to offer streaming Netflix. Streaming movies and TV shows exploded in popularity and before I knew it, almost anytime I logged on nearly half of my Friends list was making use of one of many streaming apps that would become available on the 360. A couple years before the 360 got to this level of success, it had a couple major hurdles to overcome, especially the right-of-passage a vast majority of early 360 owners fatefully dubbed…. Three Red Lights There have been a fair number of platforms that have been notorious over the years for noteworthy faulty hardware ratios like the first three original PlayStations and the problematic powering on trickery required to boot NES games, but those all pale in comparison to the atrocity of the launch year 360 units. Within a few months after launch more frequent whispers started to become prominent of knowing someone who had a 360 that failed on them with the telltale indicator being three flashing red lights on the system. Users would then have to call Microsoft to set them up with a shipping container to mail to Microsoft to repair and mail back. I was the first among my local friends and peers to get the three lights of doom, and I have painful memories of it because my system was lost in UPS transit for three months before I finally got it back after visiting the local UPS center’s lost and found.

360 #2 only lasted several months before red-lighting in 2007, and the third met its expiration date in 2011. I will refrain from going into the nuts and bolts of the architecture problems, but in layman’s terms Microsoft was in such a rush to get that year head start on Sony, that a high amount of faulty chips made their way to manufacturing and resulted in the system’s high failure rate. To Microsoft’s credit, they gave all launch year 360 owners an extended three year warranty to get their system replaced free of charge, which I took advantage of twice. The third one died after the extended warranty, but by that point Microsoft had a slim version of the console on the market releasing alongside Gears of War 3 that I snatched up, and **fingers crossed** have had no issues yet with. Being the first to be hit with the three red lights amidst my immediate local circle of friends and co-workers made it interesting. Over the next year every couple of months another friend would call or text me, and/or another co-worker would catch up with me at work and relay to me their troubles of their 360 bricking and I would be their unofficial tech support on how to get ahold of Microsoft to the point where I still remember the phone number to this day (1-800-4MY-XBOX) to get set up with the replacement system. I wound up buying a hard drive transfer cable to transfer data to new hard drives when switching systems and I recall at least a handful of people borrowing it from me when they switched systems due to switching systems and/or upgrading hard drives. In a bizarre twist, I will put a curse on Hollywood Video for my first two 360s red-ringing! The first time it happened I was playing a rented copy of Chromehounds. The Hollywood Video curse struck again in 2007 when renting Shadowrun caused my 360 to crash!!! As ubiquitous as the three red rings became, Microsoft wanted to ensure a 360 makeover image with a marketing assault for the 2010 launch of… Kinect + Avatars = Wii’s Userbase Nintendo’s Wii launched Holiday 2006, and the motion-based console was an initial sales juggernaut, and it took over two years before it was commonly available on store shelves. Both Sony and Microsoft initially had meek responses to it with Sony essentially patching in motion controls in time for the PS3’s launch with the Six Axis controller that was not that well received or regarded for its precision, and the 360 had the aforementioned Vision Camera, which was essentially Microsoft’s take on an Eye Toy that only saw a handful of games support it for motion controls. Holiday 2010 saw both companies with a meaningful response with PlayStation Move on PS3, and Kinect on 360.

Microsoft pulled the same marketing strategies as Nintendo did years earlier intentionally marketing the Kinect towards families and advertising it heavily on daytime television. Most of Microsoft’s Kinect games were more-or-less their takes on the hit Wii versions. This is when Microsoft implement cartoony characters that could be implemented across games called “Avatars.” They were especially prominent in Kinect games, and one cool side effect for them was the many digital clothing items for them that could be either bought off the Avatar Marketplace, or unlocked for free by playing through games. I am especially proud of my You Don’t Know Jack dummy, and goofy oversized head ornament I unlocked from finishing Comic Jumper. A fair amount of late gen 360 titles supported Avatars in-game, which made for some interesting sights like having your Avatar onstage in Guitar Hero 5 jamming out next to Kurt Cobain. Microsoft’s gamel paid off, and for two-to-three years, the Microsoft moved millions of units of that camera. It is safe to sumrise that the 1-2-3 punch of Kinect, Move and smartphones all combined to steal the “casual gamer” userbase that the Wii was known for and the Wii’s console sales in America plummeted from 2011 onwards. The Kinect boosted 360 console sales so much from the Holiday 2010 period until the Xbox One and PS4 launches in Holiday 2013 that in that three year timeframe Microsoft sold the most systems in America for all but a handful of months. By the Holiday 2013 launch of the Xbox One/PS4, the 360 overcame the Wii’s sizable lead to become the best-selling console of the Wii/360/PS3 generation in America.

Only Kinect game I ever played was the river-rafting follies seen in Kinect Adventures, but surprise hit games like the Gunstringer seen above tempted me to almost get a Kinect on multiple occasions. I never bought a Kinect, but did play Kinect Adventures at a friend’s….yes, it was that damn river raft mini-game. I paid attention to the games releasing for it and supporting the peripheral, and a few looked like genuinely entertaining games and went on to have critical acclaim. Many traditional games added optional “Better with Kinect” features like zoom-in art gallery halls, or audio play-calling in sports games. Even though the ardent game player in me despised the change in direction Microsoft took with the Kinect, I cannot deny there were still several games I wanted to try on it after seeing the positive reactions for Harmonix’s trilogy of Dance Central games, Twisted Pixel’s The Gunstringer and even the limited on-rail experience that is Fable: The Journey. Backwards Compatibility & Indie Games…..not those Indie Games Hitting around the same time as Kinect was Microsoft patching in a new division of purchasable digital games initially called Community Games, but later rebranded Indie Games. Microsoft made its XNA development tools easily available for almost any level of experienced developer. This lead to a deluge of DIY games that looked like they were made as a semester long development school project flooding the Indie Games channel. Some developers embraced the campy nature of the amateur works that dominated the 360 Indie Games scene, with Silver Dollar Games especially unleashing a plethora of their…brand…of games like Try Not to Fart and the ironically titled, Why Did I Buy This?

The 360 Indie Games scene left a lot to be desired as seen above with the quality of games from infamous companies like Silver Dollar Games There were a few gems in the rough to be discovered in the Indie Games channel, and like XBLA games, Microsoft enforced a free trial on all games so you knew what you were getting yourself in for before throwing down some hard earned Microsoft Points, which are like regular points, but fun! There are two DLC Quest games that are fun quirky $1 platformers riffing on how gratuitous in-game DLC would become. Tribute Games gained notoriety on here with their adorable Breakout homage, Wizorb. Finally, I was a huge fan of Zeboyd Games that earned their reputation for their 360 Indie Games and I played through and devoured all four of their humorous takes on throwback pixel RPGs (Breath of Death VII, Cthulu Saves the World, Penny Arcade’s Rain Slick 3 & 4) that released as Indie Games. Zeboyd earned their development stripes on the 360 Indie Games platform, and I am happy with their continued success today! For every one of these hits that broke through however, there were at least a few dozen forgettable releases overshadowing them. Indie Games was Microsoft’s answer for their curation policy to XBLA, but as you can see it only went so far.

Zeboyd’s four 360 Indie Games are excellent retro-style RPGs well worth your time and can be found on Steam today to experience these gems! Microsoft had similar lukewarm success with their backwards compatibility efforts on the 360. There was a huge demand leading to the 360’s launch to be fully compatible with all original Xbox games. Microsoft only originally promised that the first two Halo games would be back-compat on 360, but after enough user outcry, Microsoft released several updates over the 360’s lifespan patching in support for what ended up being a little under half of the original Xbox’s library being supported on the 360, but the software-based emulation had a list of issues and bugs that accompanied each compatibility update. Aside from a fair amount of both Halo games, I played through Fable and Spider-Man 2 via 360 back-compat, and ran into intermittent bouts of slowdown with the former, and random little portions of graphic flickering with the latter. Still enjoyed my time with both, but not without these added issues. Speaking of Halo…. For the Love of Online Co-op

The 360 featured countless games that supported online co-op which made playing the latest big AAA title all that more fun. This primarily effected first and third-person shooters with the big example for this being the Halo titles on the 360 (3, 4, Reach, ODST, Halo Anniversary Remake). I played through all five of those games in online co-op and enjoyed them all tremendously. I will give props to Halo 3 and 4 having my favorite narratives, and I loved the final level of Halo 3 being an homage to the last level of the first game where you drive a warthog through a lengthy labyrinth of enemies and terrain to navigate before a time limit expires and everything explodes, MacGrueber-style! Halo 3 brought in four player online co-op, which I experiment with friends online by trying out the “Skull” modifiers which only upped the difficulty and lead to us finishing a good chunk of the game on the highest difficulty. Halo 4 I continue to this day to reference an ill-fated moment I had when playing with my friend Derek, where I was controlling the Scorpion tank whilst marching it up a lengthy incline, and he was walking alongside me and I misinterpreted the level’s geometry where I did not see a turn and nonchalantly drove the Scorpion tank off the edge of a level and plummeted it down to its awaiting death to the erupting laughter from Derek on the headset.

While I had a lot of fun with the Halo titles online, there were plenty of other worthy options, with the first Crackdown standing out among them. Getting lost in that open world with a friend and wreaking havoc with powered-up heroes whose jumping abilities had seemingly no limits was a blast, so was coming up with random challenges for each other like making a competition to see who could race up to the top of the mammoth Agent’s tower first. Saints Row 2 is another open world game that had online co-op, and made discovering some of the game’s secrets I had no idea about like its hidden mall worth going out of the way to show to friends. Dead Island’s online co-op stood out to me with its in-depth crafting system and emphasis on melee combat ala Condemned. The four Gears of War titles on the 360 all feature first-class online co-op. Gears of War 3 I have classic memories of bringing over to a friend’s the night it launched and we set up our TVs next to each other and played through the entire journey over two days. The survival-based Horde modes from the Gears titles created a new sensation for online co-op, and I played many hours of it online in the first three Gears. I even became invested into the “deep” lore of the Gears franchise to the point that I read a couple of the novels. Gears of War: Judgment switched developer to People Can Fly who tried to freshen up the controls and gameplay a bit. They also focused the narrative on Baird and Cole’s origins which did not go over well with the fanbase, and while it was the least popular of the four on the 360 I will still give Microsoft props for trying something different with it.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance’s final boss battle with Galactus was made to experienced and conquered with someone in co-op, and while the Army of Two games weren’t perfect, I would be lying if I didn’t admit to having some fun times with all the games in online co-op If it was not for online co-op I would have not broken my curse to finally finish the first Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I started and never finished that campaign on five, yes five, separate occasions with different sets of friends each time and stopped because we either lost interest and/or ran into logistic issues setting up times for everyone to meet together. A former co-worker Sean reached out to me to play with him online and I reluctantly agreed and started it the sixth time, but sure enough we stuck with it and completed it, and it was worth all the starts and stops because it remains years later one of my all-time favorite comic book games. That Galactus boss fight is a final boss fight that I will never forget and a truly epic final encounter to close the game! The second Ultimate Alliance game also featured online co-op and I finished that game on a much timelier basis because a lot of my co-workers also picked it up and we met up regularly for a couple weeks to finish it twice because it focused on the popular Civil War Marvel event that had two separate storylines. It had a more polished presentation, but the first Ultimate Alliance I easily rank as the superior game!

Some rapid-fire quick online co-op memories to wrap this segment up on: The first Kane & Lynch game was an interesting experience in co-op because I played it on this insanely huge HD projector. The first two Borderlands games were both huge hits with my friends and peers that won us all over with its loot-driven FPS gameplay. Credit to Derek for having patience with my crazy work hours and sticking with me for the better part of a year to pick away at and eventually finish Borderlands 2! To a lesser extent, another fun FPS co-op focused title were the Army of Two trilogy of titles. The games all had noticeable control issues, but the teamwork focused gameplay worked for us, and the franchise had a certain charisma to it with their many unlockable masks and charming fist bump animations to equip. Real time strategy games have historically been troublesome to pull off on consoles, but Ensemble Studios found the magic formula to make it work with Halo Wars, and somehow made online co-op viable with it too, and it was another game I found myself teaming up with Sean in a very enjoyable campaign that also featured some of the best CG cutscenes that remain stunning to this day. Finally, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand has likely the most ridiculous storyline of all these co-op titles where you play as 50 Cent himself to track down a prized skull across the middle east that made it a zany quest to just shake my head and go with to see where it took me next, and also for my friend Matt and I to jam out to its hip-hop flavored soundtrack to throughout. Bringing on J-RPGs and Doubling Down on Western RPGs In the console space, before this generation, role-playing games were dominant on the first two Nintendo and Sony platforms. That surprisingly changed this generation. Microsoft made pitches to Japanese developers in the early years of the 360 to release their games exclusively, or at least timed exclusively on the system. This lead to Square-Enix releasing exclusives like Infinite Undiscovery and Last Remnant on the 360, and porting its MMO, Final Fantasy XI onto the 360 in 2006 and making it cross-platform-online compatible with the PS2 and PC versions which meant it was the first game to share online user bases between consoles from different manufacturers. It took a little over a decade for this to happen again, so this was kind of a big deal. I still recall Square stunning gaming fans with their E3 announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would release day and date with the PS3 version (along with XIII’s two sequels later on), so it was surprising during this time to see Square open up its publishing portfolio on other platforms.

As twisted as its plot may be, I still got a lot out of Eternal Sonata with its highly entertaining battles. Blue Dragon was another early J-RPG that drew a lot of attention that Microsoft was serious about RPGs this gen. Other Japanese developers also released RPGs in the early 360 years with Blue Dragon, Enchanted Arms, Resonance of Fate, Eternal Sonata and Lost Odyssey all appearing. I purchased nearly all these games, but only one I played through of these was the bizarre Eternal Sonata, which is a traditional J-RPG set in the mind of dying legendary composer Federic Chopin. Its plot is as out there as its premise, and I will never forget its equally bizarre post-credits stinger, but I loved its engaging battle system that kept me glued in all the way through. I was also taking a music history class in college at the time, so the brief Chopin historical fact interludes between acts also did a lot for me. While Japanese RPGs took off on the 360, so did…. …. “Western RPGs” from companies on this side of the global hemisphere. Bethesda and BioWare are the two most prominent developers responsible for this slate of RPGs this generation after lighting the fire on the original Xbox. I already discussed my love for Oblivion, and Bethesda capitalized on that success with another blockbuster in the form of Fallout 3. Take the medieval fantasy world of Elder Scrolls and apply a retro-50s post-apocalypse skin to it and you have the formula for another Bethesda best-seller I once again put in over 100 hours in completing the main campaign and all of its DLC expansions. After that I needed a break from Bethesda’s games and have yet to play New Vegas. I did start up the Oblivion sequel, Skyrim and briefly made some headway into that, but got sidetracked by other holiday tent pole releases at that time and it regrettably succumbed to becoming lost in my backlog. I eventually picked up the remaster on Xbox One, and one day I will restart and finish that game!

Giant Bomb’s videos of their complete play-throughs of the Mass Effect trilogy is some of their best work that should not be missed! A series that did not get lost in my backlog was BioWare’s Mass Effect trilogy. The first game I initially got into as an awesome modern-day take on Star Trek, with an engrossing cast of crew mates on the Normandy. The first Mass Effect was a little rough around the edges, so I eventually fell off halfway through, but picked it up a couple years later and plowed right through it. The same thing happened with Mass Effect 2, but the advantage to finishing it in 2014 was that all the bonus story DLC add-ons were released and combined for a gratifying experience all together. ME2 delivered on hyping up being careful with pivotal story decisions that would have consequences in the infamous final “suicide mission” in the game. My initial run through of it saw three of my crew members not survive it through, and it gutted me so much I restarted that final mission and had to compromise with only two crew members passing away. Immediately after finishing ME2 I jumped right into ME3 and this time saw it all the way through within a couple months, luckily by this point the extended ending and all the story DLCs also just finished releasing and I was stunned with what Bioware held out of the core game and I can feel for players who initially played it and missed out on having a central character like Javic locked away behind DLC and missing out on essential storyline DLCs that dealt heavily with the origins of the Protheans and Reapers. The way I played it felt like a complete experience with all the DLC, but without it I sympathize for the critics who stated it felt unfinished upon first release.

There is also the fantastic “Citadel” DLC I want to give props to which is its own standalone swashbuckling adventure full of lighthearted campy jokes, and concludes with throwing a the party of all parties for all your friends! For people who have not played the initial Mass Effect trilogy, at least give a couple episodes of Giant Bomb’s Mass Alex play-through videos of all three games in their entirety a shot. I am almost wrapped up with them as of this writing, and it has been wonderful experiencing that trilogy all over again this way. Like Gears, I became so absorbed into the Mass Effect lore, that I have bought and read all of the novels, and almost all of them are good, even the Andromeda-based ones! I know the first Fable has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism over the years for not delivering on all of its promises, but that does not take away from the final product on original Xbox still being a astounding action-RPG! I treasured my time with it, and the “Lost Chapters” expansion, and late in the 360’s life in 2014 it got the remastered treatment to bring the entire trilogy (and the spin-off Kinect game, The Journey) all on 360. Fable II from what I gathered has been the highpoint of the series from everyone I have talked to. I have only played through the prologue, and failed at getting back to it while covering other games in the gaming press at the time amidst another busy holiday release season. Fable III sounds like it did not win everyone over with its major storyline hook it marketed of overthrowing a corrupt sibling at the throne, and sadly the Kinect game, The Journey was the last major single player installment of the series as of this writing. Becoming a Pinball Wizard I have played various videogame pinball titles over the years, but for whatever reason the 360/PS3 gen is when it got ahold of me and never let go. It started with Crave’s Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection. Each real life table replica had their own set of goals to accomplish in order to unlock an achievement for each table, so I kept plugging away, and little-by-little I found hooked into addicting tables like Gorgar, Medieval Madness and No Good Gophers especially being my favorite. Later on Crave released an XBLA pay-per-table platform with tables from multiple companies called The Pinball Arcade. Every several months a new batch of tables were released and I found myself immediately downloading them and studying the in-game instructions for each table to thoroughly learn all of its intricacies and the addicting nature of filtered online Friends-list leaderboards had me plugged in to top the scoreboard for each table.

Well over 100 hours I invested into Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX on the 360. Two of my favorite tables are pictured above with No Good Gophers on the left, and Mars on the right. The same exact thing happened with Zen Studio’s XBLA title, Pinball FX. Their tables were not based on real tables, and as they gradually released more tables for download, they embraced their interactive nature and featured more computer animated toys that flew off of and around the table, and more dynamic special effects on the playfield that simply are not possible on real life tables. Despite them being not lifelike, and featuring more exaggerated pinball physics, I still embraced them when I was in the mood to switch up from the real tables in Pinball Arcade. Zen released a sequel a few years later in Pinball FX2 that had more dynamic community and hub-based features and integrated online friends leaderboards into actual gameplay with in-game pop-ups when your score was approaching a friend’s high-score which only intensified every attempt and kept me coming back more frequently. Some of my favorite tables from the first two PBFX games are the spooky mystery pin Paranormal, the Monty Python-influenced Epic Quest (with RPG stats and leveling that carries over in each attempt!) and the outer space themed Mars. Pinball FX3 on Xbox One/PS4 added even more community based features that keep me playing it weekly to this day, but that is a story for another time! Racing Away to One of the Best Eras for the Genre I believe Microsoft somehow found a way to publish one marquee AAA racing game each year for almost the entire 360 lifespan. They originally rotated between Bizarre Creation’s Project Gotham games, and Turn 10’s Forza Motorsport series each year. I never got into either of those series that much. Forza is the more serious sim, and I have tried out a couple installments over the years, but the intense sim mechanics are just not for me. If I would have put more time into PGR I feel I would have really got into that series, and I have some fleeting memories of getting into the second game for a brief moment on the original Xbox.

While I did not get reeled into Forza Motorsport, I fell hook, line and sinker into PGR’s replacement, Forza Horizon from the developer, Playground. It lightened up the sim-based controls and offered up enough assist options to procure that comfortable blend of sim and arcade racing. I also wound up in favor of its open world hub nature to either drive around to new races and take in the country side, or hang around the game’s central music festival. The first Horizon had such a fitting licensed soundtrack of rock and electronica-based songs that I sought out the entire soundtrack and it is its own separate running playlist for me. Since I did not upgrade into the Xbox One/PS4 gen until 2016, that meant I picked up Forza Horizon 2 on the 360 instead, and thankfully it was not all that downgraded from its Xbox One version. Both games I wound up completing all the races, challenges and finding all the hidden barnyard cars. Yes, I even played through all of the Fast and Furious licensed expansion for Forza Horizon 2 where Ludacris himself as Tej provided voiceovers to set up each race. Before Forza Horizon, another game attempted the same thing a couple years earlier with Test Drive Unlimited. It featured a sorta-GPS replication of the entirety of Oahu as its open world hub and I absolutely ate it up and was white-knuckling the final race which was a one-on-one endurance race against the top ranked AI around the entire outer highway of the island. The sequel was fun too and added another island, but I think one Alex Navarro’s reaction to the opening cutscene in his Quick Look video will be my main takeaway of it. I have mentioned in previous console flashbacks how I love demo-derby racing games, and on 360 Flatout: Ultimate Carnage was king! It is a fantastic follow-up to the PS2/Xbox games, and my brother and I played it online regularly for years, I can go on about it forever, but instead I will embed below a special three-part video where my brother and I raved about why it was one of our favorites….

Many years ago my brother and I made this three-part YouTube series on our fandom for Flatout: Ultimate Carnage The summer of 2010 saw two new arcade racing games debut that both should have been successful new IPs with sequels to this day, but since the two released within a month of each other they presumably took up each other’s player base and both Activision and THQ did not pick them up for sequels. Activision invested in Bizarre for an all new racing IP in Blur, which is essentially conflating the power-ups of Mario Kart with underground street racing, and it was indeed as awesome as that pitch sounds. I played hours of it in the main career mode and online as well. On the other end THQ invested in Black Rock Studios with their innovative racer, Split/Second, a reality show-based driving game where studio directors would triggers obstacles and destructible environments to activate and provided an all-new gripping racing experience. It too was also a riot to endure and 100% finish, but it sadly never received a sequel either.

I loved the Burnout series the previous gen, and EA delivered with an upgraded port of Burnout Revenge that remains my favorite entry in the series to this day. I got into its open world follow-up, Burnout Paradise and developer Criterion were aces with their long-term support of free updates that kept me coming back to it. EA’s other flagship racing series, Need for Speed had a few entries I put serious time into. The 360 launch title, Most Wanted had an intriguing concept of working your way up the “Blacklist” of the most wanted street racers to compete against. When Criterion did an all new reboot of Most Wanted several years later, it combined that concept with the blazing fast gameplay from the Burnout series to my approval. Finally, I will give head-nods of recommendation to both of Sega’s Sonic kart-racers on the 360. They are the top Mario Kart-clones out there, and ooze with Sega fan service. The second game, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed successfully innovated with evolving stages that switched up from racing in karts, then into mini-bi-planes and then onto water-based hovercraft. I completed the careers for both games and put in a fair amount of online play with both entries too. The Fad that was the Plastic Instruments My gut told me the original PS2 Guitar Hero was going to be big within minutes of trying out the original demo in the fabled Kentia Hall at E3 2005. Adored the first game, but the second game was when it went mainstream, and was thrilled with the second game’s HD 360 release in 2007. 2005-2009 was the apex of the genre for my friends and me. There were countless nights of my friends and family passing the guitar around trying to best each other’s scores, and when 360 introduced online leaderboards for each song it upped the competition level even higher. Local city clubs and bars did Guitar Hero tournament nights and my favorite memory from these was on a Guitar Hero III tourney night when it was my turn to go up on stage to pick a random song out of a hat I was the lucky soul to draw one of the hardest songs in the game in the form of Slayer’s “Raining Blood.” I suffered on stage, and barely managed to finish, yet it remains a memory I shall cherish! In fall of 2007, Harmonix splintered away from Red Octane and teamed up with MTV Games to unleash the revolutionary Rock Band that brought in drums and karaoke to the fold for four player co-op play!

I will forever love the countless Rock Band nights I had in the first two Rock Band games that hit in 2007 & 2008, especially the nights I played with my old podcast co-hosts Chris and Scott. I downloaded well over a hundred extra DLC songs over a few years for it, and we would routinely meet up one or two nights a month for Rock Band nights for two years. Almost always, our last song to finish off a session was the final song in the first Rock Band’s career mode that was filled with many wrist-suffering solos, yes I am talking about Outlaws’ “Green Grass and High Tides”. Our Rock Band addiction culminated with the “Bladder of Steel” achievement which we procured when playing every song straight without a fail over the course of several hours! I was almost always the drummer on Rock Band nights. At first no one else wanted to do them, but eventually I got into them and kind of became somewhat decent at it on medium difficulty. One night at an Alice Cooper concert I became entranced at watching the drummer wail away all night that I convinced myself after the show to lay down a $200 pre-order for the premium ION Drum Set for Rock Band….though after a few months something about that bulky set did not gel with me and I did not prefer the way the drumsticks clanked off the pads and I never developed a rhythm for them and eventually gave them away to free up space.

The forgotten gem Rock Band title no one talks about, LEGO Rock Band! Behold one of its awesome boss stages with the Ghostbusters theme song! The plastic instrument genre quickly became oversaturated with numerous entries a year from Activision and EA. At first it was kind of interesting to dive into some of the band focused entries of the series like how Harmonix did a wonderful tribute to The Beatles with reliving their career and its groovy “Dreamscape” stages in The Beatles: Rock Band. The Metallica nut in me feasted on forcing carpal tunnel upon myself with the painfully intricate, yet entrancing solos from almost every track in Guitar Hero: Metallica. By the time Green Day: Rock Band and Guitar Hero: Van Halen rolled around though and other offshoots that I completely skipped like Band Hero and Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits, it was clear the writing was on the wall for the genre. I did manage to sneak in some last doses of fun with a couple other off-the-beaten-path entries though before this genre faded away from its zenith.

The head-bopping mash-ups of DJ Hero with its uniquely intuitive turntable controller and feeding my karaoke addiction with Lips were breaths of fresh air for the genre late in the 360’s life.

Microsoft’s karaoke series on 360, Lips, supplied a fair amount of fun with its unique glow-in-the-dark microphones and four volumes of songs released before Microsoft eventually morphed it into a karaoke pay-per-song app late in the 360’s lifecycle. My buddy Matt introduced me to LEGO Rock Band, which Matt got for free with any Black Friday purchase one year at Kohl’s and we were both nearly burnt out on the genre by this point, but thought we would at least give this graphically unique version a shot. The adorably twee nature of the LEGO visuals with its complementing soundtrack were irresistible, and it instantly won us over. We stuck with it all the way through, and were fans of its music video-esque “boss” levels, with the Ghostbusters theme song stage being one we replayed far too frequently. Another refreshing take on the genre was through DJ Hero and its sequel, DJ Hero II. I loved that turntable controller, and it flawlessly placed me into the DJ world with its mash-up stylings soundtrack and fitting club visuals. Both games were unsung heroes of the genre when they released because they both came out a year or two removed from the apex of the genre’s success, but the DJ & LEGO games brought in some much needed fresh air in that scene. Non-Kinect Casual/Family Game Hits and the Failure that was NXE Now while I almost entirely avoided the Kinect, there still remained deluge of non-Kinect casual party games that were a hit with the family on holidays and friends on game nights. The two Microsoft published Scene It games that came bundled with their user-friendly big button wireless controllers were family favorites for a few years and successful adaptations of the hit movie trivia DVD-board game. A guilty pleasure of mine is legacy licensed trivia/board games/game shows on consoles, and the 360 had plenty of them with solid editions of Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Apples to Apples, Risk and Family Feud 2012. Doritos Crash Course seemed initially like a forgettable promotional game that was free on XBLA that only offered avatars racing each other on a variety of obstacle courses, but somehow its simple gameplay was addicting and far more entertaining than it had any right to be at family and friend gatherings.

You Don’t Know Jack was a fun revival of the hit PC irreverent trivia series that was dormant for nearly a decade before THQ brought it back on consoles in 2011. Friends and I played through every episode on the disc and its DLC packs, and I revisited it for several years because of one dumb habit where the adorably jerk-of-a-host, Cookie Masterson, would have a unique greeting to open the game if you played on a holiday. The success from this You Don’t Know Jack revival got the developers at then-Jellyvision to revitalize the brand and include a bunch of other party games in the popular yearly Jackbox games that are still going strong as of this writing. I also wanted to squeeze into this chapter of the flashback Microsoft’s polarizing decision to appeal the UI of the 360 to a more family/casual audience and changed the fan favorite “blades” UI into the detested “New Xbox Experience” (NXE) in 2008. Microsoft was trying to synergize with the equally detested UI of its latest PC operating system, Vista. Tablets were starting to become trendy at this point, and Microsoft was resilient on forcing a tablet-esque UI across all its devices and the results were a total system failure. I was among the many who made their outcry heard over how ugly the many rows of diagonally aligned boxes filled with ads were a visual nightmare on the eyes. I was use to some minor ad implementation in the Blades UI before promoting other 360 games available, but the NXE mixed in all sorts of commercials, movie trailers and other assorted promotions that hit the same wrong nerves as those eye-blasting web browser ads.

Microsoft eventually updated and tweaked the NXE into a much more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly UI that remains on the 360 boot-up today. With the 360 user base understandably a modicum from what it was in its prime today, it is refreshing to see Microsoft lay off as of this writing with a complete absence of ads on the UI. I will also use this space to shout out the premium theme backgrounds that I have used for many years being the pumpkin patch and winter wonder land themes that are always a delight to see when I boot up the 360. Yes, the Xbox Live 360 servers are surprisingly still online in 2020, 15 years after the 360 launch. Most 360 online multiplayer supported games support peer-to-peer multiplayer so as long as Microsoft keeps the lights on, you will still be able to play 360 games online. Microsoft only kept the original Xbox Live servers up for seven and a half years, so to see them more than double that for 360’s servers as of today is…astonishing. Worth noting is some games like Chromehounds, Final Fantasy XI and all EA-published games utilized their own private servers which the publishers have shutdown long ago, so those games are unplayable online, but a vast majority still support the option. Wanna Wrassle? For several years on the 360, one of my yearly holiday season traditions was to buy the latest WWE Smackdown vs. RAW game and complete the career/season story mode and unlock all of the hidden wrestlers and features over the course of a few months. I did this from WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2007 through 2011. For one of the yearly installments I was so close to unlocking all the achievements to get 1000 gamerscore, but the last one I needed required a grind to complete the main single player career mode five times. I decided at the time this was a perfect opportunity to catch up on past seasons of 24 and brought a second, smaller TV next to my living room TV and absentmindedly button mashed my way through those extra career mode playthroughs, and it took almost the entirety of the second season of 24 to accomplish that feat and earn that final achievement. No regrets!

WWE's yearly Smackdown vs. RAW games featured zombies in their storylines, while All-Stars shifted the gameplay to more arcadey fun for all! The story modes in those yearly WWE games were worth playing through because the writers in some cases got creative and did things that were not possible on TV like having the Undertaker cast mind control spells for example. They added and experimented with a plethora of new modes and options, with the WWE Universe mode being a prime example of going all out creating dream cards and custom storylines. The creation options became incredibly in-depth each year too, in the later installments the developers added a Create-a-Storyline feature that had a surprising level of customization full of custom text entries for dialogue and branching cutscenes. One infamous online community, Video Game Championship Wrestling, became famous for its machinima they created with this system that contained intricate storylines with created wrestlers in its league consisting of video game character icons, developers, comic book & anime characters, fabled movie legends and yes even sprinkling in a few wrestlers. I dabbled in creating a couple simple storylines, but it was too much for me to invest into, but thankfully users could upload and download storylines from the community which added seemingly infinite replay value.

You have not lived until you witnessed an episode of the acclaimed wrestling videogame machinima that is Video Game Championship Wrestling. Will it be Gabe Newell or Dr. Wily who will emerge here as VGCW champion? WWE released a couple spinoff games that were not as feature-dense, and contained more accessible, arcade-like controls. They were on the right path with Legends of Wrestlemania, which highlighted the 80s success of the then-WWF, but absolutely nailed it with WWE All-Stars which featured a hybrid of past legends and current stars, and all of them were intentionally designed to look like roided-out action figures capable of larger-than-life moves like hurling opponents 30 feet into the air in addition to juggling, fighting game-like air combos. This all combined for fun multiplayer sessions with friends and family members who usually are not fans of wrestling games, but genuinely got into the gameplay to my surprise. I rampaged through everything All-Stars had to offer within a couple months after the latest Smackdown vs. RAW game, and was kind of burnt out on wrestling games after this for a while and skipped all future WWE games for several years starting when they changed the branding with WWE ‘12.

TNA iMpact! was from the same people who made All-Stars and had super-fun Ultimate X match as seen above! FirePro Wrestling on the other hand features only controllable Avatars and none of the trademark legacy 2D gameplay the brand is usually known for. There were a few other non-WWE games I tried out before I took a 360 wrestling game sabbatical. Rumble Roses XX was the first 360 wrestling game and the second all-women wrestler game in America after its PS2 predecessor. Never put as much time into it as I meant to, so I cannot leave any lasting impressions on it other than it gave Dead or Alive a lot of competition with its variety of costumes. I did put a lot of time into TNA iMpact! however, which was the game the All-Stars developers worked on before. At the time it hit, I was into the TNA promotion, and the game was a pretty good representation of that product with a fun Ultimate X mode, and a story mode circled around a fictional costumed wrestler named Suicide who went on to become an actual wrestler in the promotion in 2008, and the character has remained there off-and-on to this day. Lucha Libre AAA Heroes del Ring introduced the high-flying luchadores from Mexico with their own exclusive game and featured some familiar past WCW/WWE/TNA stars, but had problematic controls to prevent it from having any lasting appeal. I never played the Kinect motion-based wrestling game, Hulk Hogan’s Main Event, but I have seen clips online to witness it in its near-broken state that lives up to one of my favorite reviews on Game Informer where it became one of their worst rated games ever. There are a couple of low budget Avatar Wrestling games on the Indie Games channel on 360 that are basic affairs, but there is one Avatar-based grappler that somehow got a full fledge XBLA release with the much-respected, best-in-class FirePro Wrestling branding. Those games have been a decades-long line of some of the best 2D wrestling games of all time, and somehow Microsoft was able to secure that branding for an admittedly decent and accessible Avatar wrestling game, but a game that should in no way be worthy of that elite branding. That would be like Phillips securing the Zelda and Mario licenses for their own low-rent made games on their CDi system….oh wait. Sports-ball Forever! Time to highlight some of my favorite go-to sports games on the system. Starting off with football, there I got use to buying Madden every two or three years. I only rented the 360 launch title, Madden NFL 06, which wounded up being one of the worst debut Madden titles on a console ever. This is because of EA’s overblown “Target Gameplay” video they debuted at a previous E3 where the final game, while still graphically a leap above Xbox/PS2, was far from what they teased. To make it worse, that was the same year they debuted the doomed “vision cone” gameplay feature in the earlier PS2/Xbox versions that went over so poorly that they had to disable it as a default option for the 360 version and hide it in the options. This was also the first lead Madden game to remove John Madden himself (and co-commentator Al Michaels) from commentary in favor of a nameless afterthought of a radio-style announcer. Madden NFL ‘06 is easily the all-time worst lead-platform version of Madden!

This video encapsulates why Madden 06 was an atrocity of a debut on the platform…at least it had easy achievements.

EA stepped it up with later entries, with Madden ‘10 remaining a favorite of mine for the brand this gen. I still recall that edition was when EA initially introduced their cash cow microtransaction-focused “Ultimate Team” feature as a free DLC a few months after its release. How foolish I seem now for at first dismissing it as an interesting curiosity I could not bother to invest a dime into ever, but only to see it blow up in DLC sales for EA and become integrated across all of EA’s sports titles and other publisher’s sports games within a few years. I only picked up one college EA effort this gen via NCAA Football ‘12 which was technically free with a six-month subscription to Sports Illustrated, but I got the most out of that game, and was huge into its “Road to Glory” mode. Road to Glory had my created player play out his final year of high school, and then go through a full college season. EA were absolute pros at this point with their college game, perfectly capturing the college game pageantry by jam-packing the it full of college anthems, cheerleaders, mascots and first-class commentary from the old College Gameday crew of Kirk Herbstreit and Brad Nessler. EA was also surprisingly generous with a community create-a-school option where users could create and upload teams and stadiums, and sure enough someone created my middle-of-nowhere Midwest FCS school and high school teams. It remains a heartbreaker (for good reason though) that EA pulled out of college sports games after the NCAA student athlete class action lawsuit, with NCAA Football ‘14 being their final installment. I do not feel that much love for EA though because of how they squashed 2K’s attempt at returning to football videogames with All-Pro Football 2K8. 2K signed on a couple hundred retired legends for their game, and players could pick a handful of legends to be the standout stars on their otherwise auto-generated teams. It was a fun, different approach, which EA quickly put the kibosh on by signing many of those legends away to appear in throwaway historical features in future Madden games. As I mentioned earlier though, EA did win back some favor with me by resurrecting the Blitz franchise with their excellent XBLA version of NFL Blitz.

There were a few other non-NFL games on the 360 I gave an honest try to, with Midway releasing an unlicensed, M-rated version of Blitz before they went bankrupt with Blitz: The League II. It showcases M-rated behind-the-scenes drama storylines, and more brutal and violent hits that bestow it the M-rating, and if you can handle that, then it is worth checking out. Finally, Backbreaker was an ahead-of-its-time pigskin game that debuted an all new physics engine that EA would eventually incorporate into Madden games. While the tech was not quite all the way there, the thing I associate most with that game is it playing P.O.D.’s “Here Comes the Boom” on every…single…kickoff. It was a huge detraction in my review, and I was surprised to see a few weeks later an email from my editor at the time passing along a note from the developers to revisit the game after an update addressing reviewer feedback, which did address a multitude of things, but at the top of the list was reducing the amount of times P.O.D.’s jam played to only twice a game, thank god! On the basketball side of things, I remained a huge fan of the NBA 2K series. The 360 carried over the awesome 24/7 mode I adored from PS2/Xbox era, which was an in-depth career mode for a single created baller, doing a global tour of the street hoops circuit. The 2K games struck gold in NBA 2K11 when Michael Jordan graced the cover and the game added a new historical Jordan mode where he relived his most monumental games with historically accurate rosters, and vintage 90s telecast presentation and commentary. The Jordan mode was a success, and integration of NBA legends became a big selling point on the 2K games going forward with future installments having a theme around the Jordan/Magic/Bird NBA breakout success of the 80s and the iconic ’92 Olympic Dream Team.

EA had a downward spiral with their sim hoops games, and I only tried out a couple demos of the earlier NBA Live titles this gen that did not win me over, including the attempted re-branding of the series with NBA Elite ‘11. That doomed demo was so glitch-laden that it got EA to cancel and recall the game from retailers mere days before its street date, and took them three years to launch another proper console NBA sim. I did love EA’s re-launch of NBA Jam however, along with the XBLA sequel, On Fire Edition. They hit all the right notes on re-introducing the classic arcade gameplay to a new generation. No idea why they have not done another NBA Jam since however, but at least On Fire Edition is back-compat on Xbox One and Series S|X. The PS3 consumed the bulk of my baseball playing time with their awesome MLB: The Show games of that era. However, I do have one chuckle-worthy memory of staying up late playing a lot of 2K’s arcade take on baseball, The Bigs, at a friend’s place one night. We played several games and I recall being impressed at how fast each game breezed by. I skipped all hockey sims this generation too, with the only time I digitally hit the ice this gen being EA’s killer NHL game on XBLA, 3-on-3 NHL Arcade, which delivered the hat trick of arcade fun gameplay, creative power-ups and intuitive controls.

For alternative and single player sports games, I already raved about Top Spin 2 during the 360 launch window. I could never get into EA’s thumb-stick controls for its Fight Night games, but I did enjoy 2K’s Don King’s Prize Fighter, which came from the same team that made the Rocky games on the previous gen I preferred more. Of all the MMA games, I briefly got into THQ’s UFC 2010, but the game always became a chore when gameplay transitioned into ground submissions. I enjoyed Tony Hawk’s Project 8 when it launched, but that series also had a fall from grace with several failed experimental games once EA stepped up the competition with Skate. One of the greatest mysteries in gaming history to me will always be Skate 3’s staying power in sales seeing it on sale for so many years that eventually EA repackaged the game in an Xbox One case with a sticker on it saying it is playable on both the 360 and through back-compat on Xbox One because there were no longer any other 360 retail games on store shelves. I tried a few times to get into Skate, but like the Fight Night games, the thumb-stick focused controls never gelled with me and I could never adapt. No Russian, No Cauldron

For several years straight, from the 360 launch in 2005 through 2012 I played every yearly installment from Activision’s flagship brand, Call of Duty. The first couple of years it was not that much though. Call of Duty 2 I only played several times in local couch multiplayer battles when friends brought over a copy. I always regretted never renting or buying it cheap to play through the single player campaign which I heard is excellent. Ditto that for the original CoD which eventually got a re-release on XBLA as Call of Duty Classic. However, I played through the entire campaigns for the next six games. CoD3 I rented from GameFly and breezed through in a weekend in split-screen co-op with my brother and did not think much of it at the time, but came to learn later that when playing in co-op it removes a few levels that proved to be too daunting to be handled in split screen. Then in 2007 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare released and first person shooters as we knew it changed. 13 years later it still has two of the most powerful moments in a FPS campaign in the form of the nuclear blast and its immediate fallout in the failed helicopter escape, and THE sniping level of all sniping levels in the flashback mission which immerses the player so well into the sniper role at its apex moment, that few other games since have managed to achieve. It overall was an incredibly gratifying campaign, which was equaled with a revolutionary online multiplayer experience that popularized persistent online multiplayer unlocks with a seemingly endless barrage of weapon and character customization unlocks to keep players reeled in. I was never “hooked” into the multiplayer on a regular basis, but starting with CoD4 and for the next few games I would occasionally pop on and play with colleagues who did play all the time, and had a blast catching up while apologizing for not carrying my own with my less-than-ideal kill/death/ratio.

World at War was an interesting revisit back to World War II and I enjoyed Keifer Sutherland’s voiceover talents as a superior barking orders at me throughout. It also debuted its survival variant in Zombies mode that was a hit that year and frequently played with co-workers on game nights. While that mode would become a bigger focus and more expanded with each successive CoD game, for whatever reason it never became as popular or played as much then as in World at War. 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 somehow met the high bar for the quality of campaign that the first game set, and its “No Russian” level I will never forget and I was bug-eyed throughout it as I never experienced anything like it before or since while my character attempted to keep his cover. As good as Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare titles were, Treyarch stepped it up with 2010’s Black Ops and its Vietnam War setting. It remains my favorite single player campaign from this stretch of CoD games. The meaning of the “numbers” touched on throughout the campaign had a meaningful payoff, and I loved how Treyarch sprinkled in their own unique gameplay intricacies like “diving to prone” and my love for the RC Car killstreak bonus in multiplayer. No matter how much of a weak link I was for my coworkers in online multiplayer, as long as I got just one set of three kills straight to get that fun RC Car perk, then I considered that a successful multiplayer session! Infinity Ward had a satisfying conclusion to the Modern Warfare trilogy with MW3 in 2011, but 2012’s Black Ops II was surprisingly underwhelming to me. It felt like they tried to do too much with the campaign, and sprinkled in optional bonus missions I felt obligated to do, but broke up the narrative for me. Of course, it could have been CoD burnout by this point, and I have never played another CoD game since. If I were to play the campaign of just one CoD game after this from 2013 on, what would you recommend?

For five years I anticipated the low budget FPS efforts from Cauldron that had me reliving past historical battles and as a DC Secret Service agent seen above. Interestingly, while Treyarch and Infinity Ward took turns each year this gen delivering Activision’s big holiday FPS hit, quietly another studio, Cauldron, yearly released five budget-tiered FPS titles under the Activision Value banner. These little publicized releases always caught my eye, and I had no idea if it was the case, but Cauldron’s games felt like where Activision would send freshly recruited developers to get their feet wet before getting promoted to the CoD teams. Three of Cauldron’s five games were History Channel licensed games themed around recreating and reliving both sides of war in two installments based around the Civil War, and another in the Japanese theater of World War II. The history nut in me appreciated the History Channel-produced intro video for each level, and it was a budget-friendly alternative come down FPS game to breeze through in a weekend after the latest blockbuster CoD game. Cauldron also did a DC-terrorist themed FPS in Secret Service, and Jurassic Park-inspired FPS titled, Jurassic: The Hunted. I imagine all of these play horribly outdated now, but I still will appreciate them for what they brought to the plate. Dubious Honors

Hulk Hogan’s Main Event and NBA Elite 11 top the dubious honors list for reasons I already ranted on above, but wanted to make sure to at least notate here. Moving on to other bad games, here are a handful that I was not a fan of: Rogue Warrior was a super-short and barebones functioning FPS published from Bethesda, but bizarrely got AAA buzz and marketing. It did have a catchy closing credits song though. Turning Point was an FPS from Codemasters with an interesting concept of a post-WWII shooter if the Nazis won the war, but poorly executed and reason why Codemasters has primarily stuck with racing games since (although they did attempt one more FPS with Bodycount which I did not play, but understand is just as atrocious). One game that went on to have a misrepresented history I reviewed at the time was Bullet Witch. It was a middle-tier single player action game published by Atari, and while it had some problems I made sure to point out in my six out of ten review, I received serious flak from a few friends for overrating the game. While I addressed the game’s issues and marked it down appropriately so, I did have a fair amount of fun with the boss battles and messing around with some of the more powerful spells. Over the years I have seen many bill this game with the label that it is among the worst on the 360 with the same kind of tone and vitriol as ET received on the 2600. Even Mr. Microsoft Larry Hyrb poked fun at the game in an online video long ago. Again it is not a great game by any means, but it is far better than what a lot of people make it out to be.

An XBLA game that got one of their marketed themed event releases (‘Summer of Arcade’, ‘Fall Feast,’ etc.) was TMNT: Out of the Shadows. It looked to be a cannot-miss 3D brawler TMNT game, and with that level of hype how could it go wrong? Very much so in fact, and with some of the worst camera controls in gaming I could not put it down fast enough. Another painfully disappointing TMNT game was the aforementioned XBLA remake of Turtles in Time. It played well enough like the original, but the redone visuals did not capture the spirit of the affable 80s/90s cartoon like the original did, and it stripped out the SNES bonus levels and had poorly substituted voiceovers. Stay away! There were a couple of semi-decent 360/PS3 era Turtles games. Nickelodeon TMNT was a perfectly serviceable brawler that did a better job of bringing back the good memories of the arcade classics than Re-Shelled did. Ubisoft released a single player platformer/action game to coincide with the 2007 CG film, TMNT. It too was pretty straightforward, and not earth-shattering, but at least hit some TMNT fan service marks good enough to be a worthwhile entry. Danger of the Ooze is one that slipped through the cracks that I rarely hear talked about likely because it released late in the 360/PS3 lifecycle in 2014. This should be played by any Turtles fan because this is the standout Turtles game this gen from the platforming masters at Wayforward with their take on a pretty fun MetroidVania-style game the TMNT license seemed destined for all this time. Lightning Round Quick Hits

Microsoft did not release 360’s successor, the Xbox One until 2013, so with eight years between the 360 and Xbox One, a boatload of games hit that system and I played far too many of them which is why this is going on far longer than it should have. There remains a hearty amount of AAA, mid-tier, XBLA and other noteworthy games that I want to give their due, so bear with me as I attempt to rapid fire through these… -I got wrapped in too many open world games this gen, and I want to first give props to RockStar Games for managing to finish two of their behemoths in the form of Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption. GTAIV is the only GTA I finished the storyline for, and Niko Belic will be one of my favorite protagonists. The cell phone activities were initially a chore to retain friendship ratings, but eventually I came around to bowling, cab rides, comedy clubs and rounds of pool. RDR was the ultimate Wild West open world game. Neversoft’s 360 launch title, Gun, was in my backlog still and I blitzed through that in the weeks leading up to RDR’s launch because I just knew it would blow it away. Gun was a decent effort from Neverseft, but quickly became obsolete when starting up RDR, which did not disappoint, and delivered a remarkably atmospheric experience for its time in 2010. I loved getting lost on adventures out in the wild, and that original score is masterful and could not be have been better crafted. That final several hours of gameplay based around the family ranch is an incredibly bold choice of gameplay that will always have a special place with me. Kudos to RockStar with their spooky-themed story expansion, Undead Nightmare, which is a hell of a side story to RDR that is well worth your time all these years later!

GTA IV put a lot of attention on its mini-games that were entertaining shoulder content, and Red Dead Redemption introduced a drop-dead gorgeous wild-west open world I would crave getting lost in and exploring for adventures. -Another one of my top 10 favorites on the 360 released on the same day as RDR, and I am talking about sci-fi third person thriller that is Alan Wake. I got completely absorbed into Alan’s quest to find his wife, and Remedy had a five star presentation to keep me on my seat. Some people criticized its style of combat, but it worked for me, and I believe it will go down as the only game where its deadliest weapon in its arsenal is a flare gun! Easily the spookiest T-rated game I have played. Do not skip out on the DLC episodes that put a nice bow on the story, and the XBLA sort-of time loop sequel, American Nightmare

-Two open world games that I shamefully have resting in my backlog to this day are GTAV and Bully. I picked up both on 360, and eventually picked up the Xbox One version of GTAV. You know what open world games I did play through though? The first two Just Cause titles. This satirical take on the James Bond-super agent was right up my alley, and Rico’s unique gadgetry like hookshots, parachutes, and wide variety of instant vehicle drops innovated in new ways to traverse its gigantic open world. The chaos and destruction those games both were capable of raised the bar with how creative one could be to lay waste to their surroundings. -I already commented above how the first Saints Row lived up to its potential from its E3 demonstration I saw a year before its release. The sequels surprisingly kept getting better and better. The first two games were essentially damn good GTA-clones, but with both games having more zany activities and side missions than in GTA. Saints Row the Third upped the outrageous quotient for its plot and side missions, and was groundbreaking for how far it pushed the boundaries with its whacked out style of storytelling.

-It did not feel right to include it with the racing games above, but another recommended open world title from this era is Driver: San Francisco. Ubisoft and Reflections nailed making an open world driving game without races being the focal point. The spirit-car-swapping feature against all odds is cleverly explained, and actually works! -Despite its popularity I could never get into the Assassin’s Creed games which debuted in this generation. A friend borrowed me the first game and at first I was into its setting and gameplay, but that first game was notoriously rough around the edges and I believe I got hung up on a glitch that prevented me from making progress roughly halfway through, and I have inadvertently been done with the series since. I picked up a few other entries over the years and have been wanting to at least try them, especially hearing how the latest ones keep getting better and better. One day! -I finished my first Resident Evil game on the 360 with Resident Evil 5. That game also featured online co-op, but I ventured fourth and played it solo and still had an impeccable time with it. It put more of an emphasis on action to the dismay of critics, but having not played too much of prior entries that did not bother me, and there were still plenty of intense thrills had throughout.

This is easily my favorite arcade stick ever, and the exquisite 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot made its tall asking price worth it! -This generation saw collector’s editions become out of control, with games packed with all kinds of statures, Master Chief helmets, night-vision cameras and other gadgets for well over $100. The only one of these I invested in was 2011’s Mortal Kombat. I originally was not too hyped for that game because I had my fill of the series at that point after the three good entries on PS2/Xbox, and felt the series had nothing else to offer. My brother however is a big MK-fan and told me how he ordered the $200 edition that came with premium arcade-replica fighter stick. I went to his place to drop something off one day when he wasn’t home, and he told me had the game and stick hooked up and to give it a try while I was there. Within minutes of starting the story mode and realizing how they were reimagining the original trilogy and how they switched up the gameplay for that generation, I became immediately entranced with it and could not think of any other way to play it without that stick and could not rush home fast enough to pluck down a $200 order. I made sure to get a lot of use out of that stick, and is was absolutely worth it!

-Sniper: Ghost Warrior is an unorthodox FPS focused entirely on sniping, and for being a low-budget game at the time I had way more fun than I should have with it. Also loved how it did a 180 from games like CoD, where instead of one sniping mission to mix up the campaign gameplay, here there is one run ‘n gun mission for a break from all that sniping throughout the campaign! I am glad this game had a ton of success and City Interactive has released a few sequels that I hope to emerge from my backlog of doom. -I already elucidated on my Borderland 2 experience earlier. The first Borderlands was a surprise out of nowhere hit that I loved my first few days with it and could not get enough plowing through the campaign online with friends. Unfortunately I went on vacation a few days after it released for a week, and when I got back, sure enough, most of my friends were many levels higher than me and already vanquished the game, so I soldiered on the final third of the game on my own. It was a challenge and a half to beat the final gi-normous tentacle-laden boss, but I managed to squeak by it after gradually picking away from it behind a boulder for nearly an hour!

-I had a unique experience with the Portal games. The first one I initially played for about 15 minutes, quickly became frustrated with the teleporting mechanics and had to step away from it. A couple years later, an old co-worker Rick was one of many by that point stating why those games were some of the best games out there. I told him my case, and he offered to come over and bestow his Portal wisdom upon me. Many thanks to Rick, who did not straight-up spoil and told me what to do to get past Portal’s many puzzle rooms, but instead kind of nudged me into gradually easing into a feel for the core mechanics of the game and it helped greatly! I would not have been able to get into it without him. He had a surprise for me when he left, and left me his copy of Portal 2 to borrow and told me not to give it back to him until I finished it. I knew he was moving in a couple months at that point, and that compelled me to put all my attention into the Portal games. I am glad I did because both games are spectacular, especially the sequel which had a noticeably bigger budget to go all out with a AAA experience and narrative that came together to be one of my favorite games of that generation. -Bulletstorm was another innovative FPS with its implementation of a whip, and combining it with melee strikes and gunplay for a refreshing take on FPSs. It kind of came and went though, and I rarely hear people talk about it anymore, except for briefly last year when it got a re-release on Xbox One/PS4, with an extra DLC to have Duke Nukem replace the original protagonist’s voiceovers for the game. I will also associate the original Bulletstorm release for having one of the worst box arts of all time. It is just a no-frills footprint. If you played Bulletstorm before, sure, it will kind of make sense since kicking is a core melee attack, but if you were a potential consumer browsing games and had no clue about Bulletstorm then I would not blame you for not giving that cover more than half a second’s worth of thought.

-The trilogy of BioShock titles were all high ranking in my top 10 game of the year lists for their appropriate years. The first game immersed me into its aquatic utopia gone haywire, and it stood out from standard FPSs of the time with its heavy emphasis on its narrative and hunting down those audio tapes to get every nook and cranny of the story. Its “twist” was something else for its time, and remains one of my favorites to this day. The sequel had a lot of polarization because it was from a different studio, but I felt they mixed it up by playing as a Big Daddy for the whole game and I could not get enough of freezing Splicers and then doing a drill rush attack that shattered them into pieces. BioShock Infinite was an astounding way to wrap the trilogy with its mesmerizing city-in-the-sky setting, and one of my favorite storylines from this gen. Its two storyline DLC episodes that released around a year later are worth checking out if you missed out, especially the second episode that changed the gameplay into more stealth-based by playing as Elizabeth. It felt like a whole new game, and developer Irrational absolutely perfected the change-up! -Spec Ops: The Line will not light the world on fire for its stick-to-fundamentals third person action gameplay, but what appears to start off as just another rah-rah military shooter, eventually morphs into a far deeper and complex plot than what I thought it was going to be. A book eventually came out thoroughly breaking down its exposition because it stormed up that much of a discussion around it.

-Shmup fans had several worthy entries to play on the 360. Raiden IV and Deathsmiles were landmark new entries for the genre in their time. On XBLA, there were re-releases of a pair of renowned shmups from Treasure: Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun. A pair of original shooters also stood out among the XBLA crop with the free of charge student developed game, Aegis Wing and also the beloved Sine Mora that captured the pilot play-by-play stylings of Star Fox and successfully merging it into a shmup. There were also a fair amount of Japan-exclusive shmups for the 360, most notably from respected shooter developer, Cave. Many of them are region-free and can be played on American 360s, so please keep that in mind! -I already told some tales above about my favorite comic book games, and embedded below is a video where I and my friend Matt painstakingly dissect a ton of comic book games that hit the 360. Highlights include the shockingly good movie licensed games, X-Men Origins: Wolverine & Captain America. Not-so-good highlights include the movie licensed Watchmen, Fantastic Four and Hellraiser games. Matt also had a lot more hands on time with the acclaimed Batman: Arkham and Spider-Man games on 360, and I have always respected his expertise in the genre so please give his takes a listen below! -The Telltale adventure/choose-your-own path story-driven games originally started off on PC, but became more and more popular with their console releases. I was 100% into the first two seasons of their Walking Dead games like everyone else. Loved the first one more, but my favorite Telltale episodic game is still Back to the Future. The Wolf Among Us was a fascinating twist on a mature dystopian fairy tale world. I was not impressed by their take on Game of Thrones, but I surprisingly enjoyed all eight episodes of Minecraft. I originally got that for my nephew who was huge into Minecraft at the time to play with, but he was not all that into this genre and I found myself getting into it instead. Telltale was pumping out so many of these episodic series that I could not keep up, and still one day want to go back and play through both Batman seasons they released, and their Borderlands series too which I hear is their best work.

Back to the Future remains my favorite Telltale episodic game, but the event-like nature of the first season of Walking Dead was an undeniable zeitgeist while it transpired. -The LEGO co-op games we know today based off nearly every license imaginable became ubiquitous this gen. Only one I put serious time into and was able to finish was LEGO Marvel Superheroes. This one is special to me because it was the first game that I got my nephew Carter really into right when he was old enough to start grasping modern controller-based games. Had to help him out in quite a few parts, but we got threw it, and now several years later his gaming skills have greatly improved, and I will gladly give him a humble brag on his conquest of finishing the tough-as-nails Cuphead.

-I subscribed to the Official Xbox Magazine for several years, until around 2009-ish, and I was surprised that they stuck with including demo discs for another year or two after that since downloading demos quickly made the discs obsolete. OXM did attempt a few exclusive disc goodies though, and one I always came back to was their own take on an episodic game called OXM Universe that lasted for about a couple years. The disc itself awarded up to 1000 “OXM” points based on checking out all the demos and videos on the disc. Those points could be used in the space ship station game, OXM Universe, which was entirely menu-driven to build space station tech and explore a galaxy. It did lead up to a decent conclusion if you stuck with it all the way to the demo disc that came with issue 100 and upon completing all the final tasks you are rewarded with a lengthy video filled with OXM staff past and present thanking everyone. THAT IS MIGHTY COOL OF THEM TO GO TO ALL THAT WORK FOR A DEMO DISC EXTRA!!! -I think one thing we take for granted in today’s console space is the ridiculous amount of weekly sales and specials on digital games across all platforms. It was not always that way. In the early years of the 360 digital marketplace, for a couple years all that was available was one weekly game on sale and one piece of DLC on sale each week and that was it for a couple years. Luckily, Steam was catching fire with their acclaimed Fall and Winter sales with their monster savings, and that eventually rubbed off on 360 and PS3 and by the end of those system’s lifecycles both started offering a surplus of weekly deals and flash sales. -Digital game preservation is something that is brought up more and more lately, and one thing that periodically ruminates in my mind is how the 360 handles patches/updates. For the longest time, most games had limits of 4mb patches until the later years in the system’s life where they started to change into the larger file sizes we associate with them today. However, the 360 has a nasty habit of auto-purging a game’s update on the 360 after several different games get played on the 360. So if you were to revisit an older comfort food game many years down the line long after the 360 online servers got shut down, any updates for that game were likely auto-deleted and cannot be re-downloaded. This could be huge for a lot of games whose patches likely helped patch out game breaking bugs and other issues that can no longer be downloaded whenever the 360 servers go offline. Just food for thought.

-Final random item I want to bring up is something you saw in the header image to this special. Yes, that is a leaning gallery of 360 faceplates! Remember those? They were kind of a thing for the first couple years of the 360 when Microsoft was flexing the customization options of the 360 so anyone can snap on or off a variety of 360 faceplates to make their system stand out in their own way. I never bought a single faceplate, and only procured them if they were pre-order bonuses, or part of some promotional giveaway. The only highlight of this was how I got my Madden NFL 08 faceplate, and that was when I participated in my Gamestop’s yearly Madden tournament where no more than four people showed up for the few years I participated. The year I won, was when I got the Madden NFL 08 faceplate, which sure as hell beats my Madden NFL 07 plastic beverage cup from the previous tourney! It will forever remain in my drawer with my faceplates for Full Auto, Eternal Sonata and Deathsmiles. It is not like there is some uber-popular YouTuber who has a unique fandom for that particular version of Madden who could benefit from it in any certain way. To the drawer the faceplate remains! ”It’s an Ocean” (THE END!!!) OMG, this took me a whole month to gradually pick away at. I did not come close at all to releasing this in time for the 360’s 15th anniversary of its launch. I feel that I could have made this into a mini-eBook and charged six cents for this!!! As you can tell from my many memories I have shared thus far, the 360 is a platform I hold in high regard. I waited three years to upgrade to the Xbox One and PS4 in 2016, so from late 2005 until late 2016, the 360 was one of my primary go to consoles. Which is why I had so many memories, good and bad, to get out of my system. If you want to catch up on one of about a dozen other flashback specials I have crafted like this (which are thankfully significantly shorter) over the years check out the links below. In the meantime, I will close this off with two embedded videos of episodes of my old podcast I recently un-vaulted circled around the 360. They are the final installments of our history of comic book games and RPG games series. Both episodes focus on the games that hit for those genres up until the point the episode was recorded for 360, PS3 and Wii. Many thanks once again if you have stuck with me for these near-18,000 words of garbled memories of mine, I sincerely appreciate it and I will see you all next time if I can somehow muster enough energy after this beast of an entry for yet another anniversary flashback special!

Listen to us break down almost all the RPGs that his this gen released through 2008

And here we dissect all the comic book games released on these platforms through April of 2011 My Other Gaming Flashbacks Dreamcast 20th Anniversary GameBoy 30th Anniversary Genesis 30th Anniversary NES 35th Anniversary PSone 25th Anniversary PS2 20th Anniversary PSP 15th Anniversary and Neo-Geo 30th Anniversary Saturn and Virtual Boy 25th Anniversaries TurboGrafX-16 30th Anniversary and 32-X 25th Anniversary

If you made it this far and have yet to experience the THING that is Rogue Warrior’s end credits theme song, then I dare you to click it above and not have Mickey Rourke’s lyrical lashings remain forever stuck in your head!

Enjoy this montage of the many creative demises of the worst sidekick in the history of videogames! You’re Still Here!? Well Then, Let Me Tell You Another Story About the Shephard….Not That Shepard

It is not my tale to tell of “another story about the Shephard.” Hopefully, EA and BioWare will right that ship as they teased at the recent Game Awards a few weeks ago. I am talking about the other Shepard on Xbox 360, that being Lost: Via Domus’s Jack Shephard. Jack and most (not all) of the cast from the first season of Lost are in that game, but are not playable. Instead, a new offscreen Oceanic survivor is introduced as the playable character, Elliot. The game was an average licensed adventure-lite game affair (find out all about by click or pressing here for my original review), but at the time when it released Lost was in its fourth of six TV seasons, and I was eating up every bit of fan service that game offered. It did have a couple minor things never seen in the TV show like the Dharma magnet, and I loved its ending which got my mind reeling with it possibly tying into new fan theories from the latest episodes of the show at the time. One in particular being my favorite episode of the series, “The Constant.” Not a great game, but loved how it treated the license. That said, this hit a few years before Telltale hit big with its Walking Dead games, and I can only imagine if they were the ones to give their episodic adventure game treatment to Lost instead. Now that is another story about the Shepard I would be all-in for day one!

[deansdorkycas]

Wholesale Gym Equipment, Exercises to Lose Weight Fast

If you're one of the approximately 67% of Americans that are wired into the internet, there‘s’ a good chance that sometime in the last 24 hours you're received at least one spam email promoting the latest and greatest diet pill or weight loss program. 

These diet products promise fast weight loss results, often without any effort or exercise. The never-ending promise of a weight loss pill that actually works keeps us hoping for eventual success.

At the same time, we're continually inundated with news of the most recent diet and how this time it‘s’ really going to work for us. 

The South Beach Diet, the Zone Diet, the Atkins Diet, the Low Carb Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Mediterranean Diet, the LA Weight Loss Diet, the Weight Watchers Diet, the Diabetic Diet, the Low Cholesterol Diet, the Prescription Pill Diet, the 3 Day Diet, the Low Fat Diet, the High Protein Diet, the Maker Diet, the Liquid Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, the Fad Diet, the Blood Type Diet, the GI Diet, the Vegetarian Diet, the Vegan Diet, the Detox Diet, the Dash Diet, the Candida Diet, the Gluten Free Diet, the Hollywood Diet, the Negative Calorie Diet, the 1200 Calorie Diet, the Raw Food Diet, the Phentermine Diet, the High Fiber Diet, the Macrobiotic Diet, the Science Diet, the Lemonade Diet, the Scarsdale Diet, the Diverticulitis Diet and the Fat Flush Diet are all examples of diet plans that promise to help us achieve quick weight loss.

Crash diets, weight loss pills and get-thin-quick gimmicks are more prevalent than ever, yet two-thirds of our population is still overweight. Even more startling is the fact that approximately one-third of the people in our country are clinically obese.

With all of these solutions?available to us, why is it that obesity trends have been alarming enough to prompt the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) to label obesity a national epidemic? Why are we still, as a nation, getting fatter? It‘s’ certainly not because we're not trying.

On the contrary, as a nation, we're trying harder than ever to lose fat through diet and other weight loss products. As reported by CNN on 1-14-05 揂mericans were expected to spend more than $40 billion in 2004 on weight control pills, gym memberships, diet plans, and related foods estimate Marketdata Enterprises, which studies the weight loss industry.? Furthermore, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that 80 percent of overweight individuals and almost 87 percent of obese individuals are trying to lose or maintain their weight.

As reported by mygoals.com, 80 percent of Americans made a New Year‘s’ resolution in 2005. A whopping 26 percent of those resolutions were to improve overall health and fitness, making this the top category for self-improvement. This year was no anomaly, either, according to Amy O'Connor, deputy editor of Prevention magazine: "Fifty-nine million people every year resolve to lose weight."

So, is there a healthy diet product out there that will actually work? More than likely, the answer is yes. Although there is quite a bit of fraudulent weight-loss merchandise on the market today, there is also (somewhere out there) a diet program and weight loss plan that will work for us. The challenge is to find that diet product or diet plan.

-> Repeat Business

The diet and weight loss industry is a huge money-making machine. According to Marketdata Enterprises, the annual revenue for the diet industry was over $30 billion dollars in 1990. A 2005 report by Stanford University documents that the consumer diet industry is now approximately $44 billion and growing. With all this money flowing around, haven's we as a country spent enough to fix the obesity problem once and for all?

How can the diet industry keep making more and more money, year after year? After all, $44 billion dollars is a lot of cash! The answer to that question is simple: repeat business. ?8% of today‘s’ dieters gain the weight back in 5 years. 90% of those individuals end up gaining back more than they lost originally, due to the body‘s’ panic and efforts to stabilize metabolic rates over the long term? (Source: Stanford University; stanford.edu).

How do the diet-promoters get all that repeat business? The diet industry is a very unique enterprise in that, when it fails someone, they rarely blame the product. We are hard-pressed to find another business where, if the product doesn's work, we blame ourselves. All too often, after giving up on yet another diet program, we find ourselves thinking well, I guess it’s just not a good enough dieter.?The tendency is for us to believe that we failed the diet rather than the other way around.  Weight Loss Exercise, Wholesale Gym Equipment & Wholesale Fitness Equipment https://www.fitness-china.com/wholesale-gym-equipment

Apply this same logic to the automotive industry, and it soon becomes clear just how faulty this line of reasoning really is. What would happen if we take our car in to the mechanic for repairs and when we returned to pick it up he told us that although we still had to pay the bill, he was unable to fix the problem? Would we willing pay the bill anyway and just say h well, I guess it‘s’ just a bad car??Of course not! That would be ridiculous! But that‘s’ exactly what we do when it comes to diets.

-> One Size Does Not Fit All

What we need to realize is that there is probably a weight loss product or weight loss plan out there that will work for us, but it may not be the same one our friends or co-workers used. To find the best weight loss program for us, we absolutely must realize that one size does not fit all. What worked for our sibling or spouse may not work for us, and what works for us may not work for them. It‘s’ probably safe to say that any diet supplement has helped somebody, but it‘s’ also true that no weight loss drug or plan has helped everybody. Each person has a unique metabolism and very individual nutritional needs, so no single plan will work for everyone.

-> How To Find The Right Weight Loss Diet

Some fat burner products on the market today do indeed work. Others are a complete rip-off. How do you tell the difference? Where do you go for accurate and reliable weight loss information?

First and foremost, talk with your doctor. Your own personal physician is likely to be honest with you and provide you with the facts. In addition, he or she can help you decide which weight loss supplement may be right for your personal situation. There are also quite a few reputable organizations that provide accurate information on fat loss. Some of the better resources include:

American Cancer Society - www.cancer.org

Get a subscription for Wholesale Gym Equipment Men’s Fitness Magazine

Centers for Disease Control - www.cdc.gov

Diet Scam Watch - www.dietscam.org

Calories Per Hour - www.caloriesperhour.com

Harvard Medical School - www.health.harvard.edu

Mayo Clinic - www.mayoclinic.org

Shape Up America - www.shapeup.org

Calorie Control Council - www.caloriecontrol.org

President‘s’ Council On Physical Fitness - www.fitness.gov

When seeking a healthy weight loss plan, it‘s’ important that no food be strictly forbidden. There should not be any (or many) foods that we avoid completely 100% of the time. Why? Because that sets us up for failure! For example, if fudge is one of our favorites and we force ourselves to NOT eat fudge at the holiday party, then for many of us what we've done is set ourselves up for a binge fudge-festival.

Avoiding our favorite foods entirely is too much self-deprivation for most people, and this sets us up for binge-eating. That's a recipe for disaster! A much better approach is to enjoy foods in moderation. Watch those serving sizes! Enjoy and savor one piece of fudge! It's better to enjoy one piece of fudge and then stop than attempt to deprive ourselves entirely, only to end up eating the whole pan.

A good diet and nutrition program will also help us keep in mind the cost of the foods we eat. We're not talking about dollars and cents here, but the FITNESS cost of the food. When picking up that fudge, keep in mind what it will cost to enjoy it. When picking up a plate at the buffet table, let's take a moment to pause and think to ourselves: "The cost of this fudge will be an extra _____ minutes of exercise.....is that worth it to me?" Maybe. Maybe not. That's for each of us to decide on our own.

Wholesale Gym Equipment and Keep Exercise and Physical Fitness 

  The point is that we should be conscious of our food decisions. No foods are forbidden entirely, but we do need to watch our portion sizes and carefully consider the cost of each food. Any good weight management program will incorporate these concepts and also will be approved by your doctor. One such plan is the Running Start weight loss program offered by Pick Up The Pace. This nutrition program has six 12-week uses.  You can use them all yourself, one after another, or share with a friend.  The program has weekly updates, menus you can personalize, and printouts.  The menu selector counts calories, protein, carbs and fat.  The foods list is among the most comprehensive on the market.

This Running Start Nutrition Counseling software is simple to use and will help keep you accountable. The program retails for only $49.99, which translates to less than 70 per week. The software includes:

Printable 25 page manual titled finally, The Truth About Weight Management?

The printable 31-page manual is full of facts about vitamins & supplements!

Printable 28-page software user guide!

72 weeks of personalized menu creation!

Use all 72 weeks yourself, or share with up to 5 friends!

Choose your dietary preference! This software lets you choose the foods you like!

Not another set?- but a real nutrition education!

-> How To Find The Right Weight Loss Supplement

Perhaps even more so than with weight-loss diets, when searching for weight loss supplements it is critical to rely on the advice of your physician. The careful and supervised use of weight loss diet pills, combined with a sensible diet and regular exercise, can lead to quick weight loss and even easy weight loss (or at least easier than you expected).

Beware, however, the supplement scams on the market. It seems that every time we turn around we are blasted and bombarded with the latest, greatest, new and improved treatment for obesity. The gimmicks just keep coming. The sad truth is that few of these products work. Even fewer will result in real, permanent and lasting fat loss. A very few of the weight loss gimmicks on the market today are not only a consumer rip-off, but they are also quite dangerous.....even deadly.

Wholesale Fitness Equipment Optimize Your Health and Weight Loss

As an example, consider the prescription diet drug Meridia. Does it help you lose weight? For some people, the answer is yes. For others, the answer is no. Can it kill you? The answer to this question seems to be a nervous 'maybe'. "The consumer group Public Citizen had petitioned the Food and Drug Administration for a ban, citing Meridia users who died of heart problems as young as their 20s and 30s. Even before Meridia was approved for sale, the FDA knew it could increase users' blood pressure, the group contended." (Source: cnn.com) This week the FDA again refused to ban Meridia, even though whistleblower David Graham (an FDA drug safety officer) testified to Congress last fall that his agency was allowing five unsafe medicines to stay on the market, including Meridia. 

Wholesale Fitness Equipment and Keep Health fitness

Yes, ephedra will help some people lose weight. Yes, ephedra is safe for some people in low doses. But there is that little nagging fact that people have DIED and that their deaths have been attributed to ephedra use.....

Yet another example of a dangerous diet drug is steroids. For whatever reason, some people have decided that anabolic steroids are the best way to lose weight. Despite the well-documented and serious side-effects of steroid use, the lure of easy weight loss has caused many to throw caution to the wind. Perhaps the most concerning trend is steroid use among our teenage population: "Teens also listed steroids, growth hormone, amino acids and other potentially unhealthful products among those they'd tried in the previous year." (Source: cnn.com)

There do exist, however, some diet supplements that work and are also quite safe. Again, it is never a good idea to begin any supplementation program without first seeking the advice and approval of your doctor.

Three popular and dependable fat loss products designed to help you lose weight fast are ChromeMate, Lipotropic Plus, and Super L-Carnitine. Chromium helps insulin metabolize fat, turn protein into muscle and convert sugar into energy. ChromeMate, a unique form of niacin-bound chromium, is designed to optimize energy output. It accomplishes this by increasing the amount of glucose available for energy production nearly twenty-fold. 

It also is the "master" nutrient for controlling blood sugar, which in turn curbs sugar cravings. What‘s’ more, a study at Auburn University showed that ChromeMate reduced LDL cholesterol by an average of 14%. In fact, ChromeMate has been awarded a patent for lowering cholesterol.

Without it, fat is unable to penetrate the walls of the mitochondria of the muscle cells. Carnitine is the shuttle that carries fat into your body‘s’ furnaces (muscles) to be burned for energy. Super L-Carnitine increases the rate of fat utilization for fuel.

-> Wholesale Gym Equipment & Wholesale Fitness Equipment, Weight Loss Exercise

In this article, we've been discussing weight-loss diets and weight loss supplements. At this point, it is essential that we add the third and most important component of overall health and fitness: exercise. Exercise is one weight loss method that has never been banned, has never led to an investigation, and has never been listed on a 'whistleblower' fraud report. Exercise is the only path to health and fitness that virtually every doctor in the world agrees upon. Exercise is safe, effective, and brings many more benefits to our lives than diets or drugs ever will alone.  

Exercise is fun, invigorating, motivating and the single most powerful way to improve our life and well-being! Yes, it‘s’ quite possible to lose weight without participating in regular exercise. However, diet and exercise combined will help us burn fat faster than we thought possible! Weight loss achieved by regular exercise and diet will be healthy weight loss because of all the benefits we obtain from regular exercise:

Strengthens muscles Strengthens bone Strengthens ligaments Strengthens tendons Strengthens immune system Improves muscle tone Improves endurance Improves strength Improves self esteem Improves confidence Improves balance Improves physical appearance Improves physical performance Improves glucose tolerance Improves circulation Improves memory Lower risk of heart disease Lower risk of diabetes Lower risk of cancer Lower blood pressure Lower cholesterol Lower risk of stroke Lower risk of osteoporosis Lower risk of osteoarthritis Lower requirements for medication Lower risk of injury Lower body fat Helps with sleep disorders Reduces post-operative complications Reduces frequency of illness Prevent Alzheimer‘s’ disease Prevents muscle loss Increases metabolism Eases symptoms of menopause Healthier pregnancy Fewer problems with childbirth Reduces ovulation problems Prevents heartburn

Reaching your ideal weight via a healthy and active lifestyle has been found to lower health risks and medical problems in 90 percent of overweight patients. In addition to the exercise benefits listed above, fit people are eight times less likely to die from cancer than the unfit, and 53 percent less likely to die from other diseases. 

Fit people are also eight times less likely to die from heart disease. Without a doubt, regular exercise is the most important piece of the puzzle and the best way to achieve rapid weight loss. Exercise is the safest way to achieve permanent fat loss, and when combined with a sound diet and nutrition program the body is turned into a virtual fat-burning furnace!

-> Conclusion

Fast weight loss is possible if we, under the supervision and approval of our doctor, combine a sensible diet with a diet pill or weight loss pill that is safe and effective. When we combine these three fat-burning strategies it is almost guaranteed that we will experience quick weight loss results.

Of course, there is a staggering amount of information about health, exercise and fitness that still needs to be understood before this topic of rapid weight loss are complete. Several excellent e-books on this subject can be found by going to www.letspickupthepace.com and clicking on the Pick Up The Pace Store? and then fitness Education? links.

[wallet1902]

Mobile Money and Self Bank Who is Who

You have probably not heard about Mobile Money or Self Bank. May be you have, and simply shrugged it off as another one of those passing fad. But whether you have not heard about it or did and shrugged it off, does not really matter. What matters is that Mobile Money and Self Bank are here to stay and will affect the way you live your life and carry on financial and commercial transactions in the near, if not very near future. See it here transfer

Now if you thought Mobile Money and Self Bank, are a passing fad, may be, just may be, a quick who is who in the Mobile Money and Self Bank world will quickly jolt your belief. You know, recently I was sharing the WIZZIT BANK of South Africa success story with a friend and when I was done, he looked at me and said that would never work. He proceeded to give me a list of why it would not work. And you are probably making your own list now of why it would not work- fraud, lost phones, money laundering, special interests etc, but wait until you see who is behind all this.

Earlier this year, there was a Mobile Money, and Self bank summit and here are some of the presenters and the minds shaping the emerging cashless, mobile money, mcommerce global economic order.

In his presentation at the conference titled "Regulating Mobile Money: A Payment System Perspective" Massimo Cirasino, Head, Payment Systems Development Group, and The World Bank Co-Chairman, CPSS/WB Task Force on General Principles for International Remittance Services, has this to say, "Mobile Money is very likely "to provide more options to more people" in line with Guideline 11 of the CPSS Guidance on National Payment System Development. However, in order to be effective, mobile payment initiatives should become an integral part of the country's strategy to reform the retail..." There you have it, the world's apex banker says, Mobile money is a better option and should be adopted as an integral part of national reforms. I can hear him loud and clear, how about you?

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), speaking in a presentation titled "The Mobile Virtual Banking Operator (MVBO) redefining what it means to be 'banked'" You can see that Mobile money is bringing a new definition to banking. The paper goes on to say, "The global cash management ecosystem already exists. The mobile phone industry has built a sophisticated payments and billing infrastructure to support its core business. It's a huge asset!!" RBS recognizes the tremendous integration traffic and transactions streams that exist in the MNOs infrastructure and is willing to tap into it. They go on to say, that "Mobile banking -underpinned by a payments network -is a hugely attractive customer proposition. Fast, convenient, secure, lower cost than most existing mechanisms..."

NTT DoCoMo,Inc of Japan, also speaking at the conference noted, "'Nanaco' provided by Seven-Eleven Japan, Co. is a prepaid e-money service by Seven-Eleven" it launched in April 2007. "Ever since Nanaco started, it has increased numbers rapidly up to 5 mil subscribers in 6 months. Over 10% of the subscribers are "Nanaco mobile" users*".

Todd Achilles, speaking for Affinity Mobile, a Dallas based mobile network operator, founded in 2004, said Affinity Mobile's focus will be on the "prepaid and underbanked, delivering value, not technology" to both Developed and Developing economies.

Wizzit Bank of Athens, South Africa, is one of the early adopters and has recorded some significant success. Here is what Wizzit has to say. "There are 4 billion people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Most have no bank account, yet they represent a $5 trillion market". Their mission in their own words is "We will bank the un-banked in the world utilizing mobile payments technology". It's all about integration!

[getothefashion]

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[deniscollins]

F.D.A. Targets Vaping, Alarmed by Teenage Use

Federal law prohibits selling e-cigarettes to anyone under 18, but the F.D.A. reports that more than two million middle and high school students were regular users of e-cigarettes last year. If you were an executive with Juul, which controls 72% of the market and valued at $16 billion, and the FDA gave you 60 days to come up with a viable plan to keep the devices away from minors or face a ban against your product, what would be your plan for regulating your industry? Why? What are the ethics underlying your plan?

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday declared that teenage use of electronic cigarettes has reached “an epidemic proportion,” and it put makers of the most popular devices on notice that they have just 60 days to prove they can keep their devices away from minors.

The order was part of a sweeping government action that targeted both makers and sellers of e-cigarettes. If Juul Labs and four other major manufacturers fail to halt sales to minors, the agency said, it could remove their flavored products from the market. It also raised the possibility of civil or criminal charges if companies are allowing bulk sales through their websites.

The agency said it was sending warning letters to 1,100 retailers — including 7-Eleven stores, Walgreens, Circle K convenience shops and Shell gas stations — and issued another 131 fines, ranging from $279 to $11,182, for selling e-cigarettes to minors.

Federal law prohibits selling e-cigarettes to anyone under 18. In a briefing with reporters, the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, said that more than two million middle and high school students were regular users of e-cigarettes last year.

The government’s tactics underscore a dilemma in the public health community: In addressing one public health problem — cigarette smoking, which kills 480,000 people in the United States each year — e-cigarettes are creating another — hooking teenagers who have never smoked on nicotine.

E-cigarette users inhale far fewer toxic chemicals than do smokers of traditional cigarettes. But they can take in higher levels of nicotine, which is addictive.

“The developing adolescent brain is particularly vulnerable to addiction,” the F.D.A. said in its statement announcing the actions.

In particular, the agency has been watching the wildly popular Juul, which offers especially potent nicotine hits. Juul Labs launched the sleek device, which looks like a flash drive, in 2015. It comes with “pods” in eight flavors, among them mango, menthol and creme. In a short time, Juul has become the dominant seller of e-cigarettes and a fad among students. According to Nielsen data, Juul controls 72 percent of the market, and is valued by investors at $16 billion.

In an emailed statement, a Juul spokeswoman said: “Juul Labs will work proactively with F.D.A. in response to its request. We are committed to preventing underage use of our product, and we want to be part of the solution in keeping e-cigarettes out of the hands of young people.”

Dr. Gottlieb said the F.D.A. would look closely at whether Juul and the other manufacturers were allowing bulk purchases of products through their own websites — a practice where the buyer could then sell to minors.

If such “straw sales” are happening, it should be readily apparent to the manufacturers, he said. “If the companies don’t know, or if they don’t want to know, we’ll now be helping to identify it for them.”

The other four products facing the 60-day deadline are RJR Vapor Co.’s Vuse, Imperial Brands’ blu and devices made by Logic. They said they were working with the F.D.A. as well.

RJR, Imperial and Altria are all major tobacco companies. As smoking rates have declined, the industry sees e-cigarettes as an important piece of its survival, a fact that makes some in public health mistrustful.

“They say they’ve changed from the days of Joe Camel,” Dr. Gottlieb said. “But look at what’s happening right now, on our watch and on their watch. They must demonstrate that they’re truly committed to keeping these new products out of the hands of kids.”

Dr. Gottlieb has said many times he believes that e-cigarettes and similar products known as electronic nicotine delivery systems may be effective options for adults who want to stop smoking but still crave nicotine. But he said teenage vaping has become so concerning that regulators may have to curb the availability of the devices to keep them out of the hands of youths.

“Inevitably what we are going to have to contemplate are actions that may narrow the off-ramp for adults who see e-cigarettes as a viable alternative to combustible tobacco in order to close the on ramp for kids,” Dr. Gottlieb said. “It’s an unfortunate trade-off.”

Dr. Gottlieb’s aggressive approach against private industry is unusual for an official in the business-friendly Trump administration which has sought to roll back numerous environmental and health regulations. But critics said that his decision last summer to extend a deadline for e-cigarette manufacturers to demonstrate that their products comply with public health concerns helped perpetuate the current problem.

“It’s nice they want to do something but realistically, what are they going to accomplish this way when they could be so much more effective by following the regulatory plan that had been ready to put into place and that the commissioner postponed?” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, a nonprofit health policy group.

She also pointed to the popularity of vaping among young adults. Researchers generally believe that the adolescent brain continues to develop through age 26. “It’s a big epidemic among people ages 18 to 30, too,” she said.

And while the F.D.A.’s announcement struck many as tough, legal experts said the agency could face a protracted legal fight if it follows through on its threats to ban flavors and curtail marketing.

Marc J. Scheineson, a health care lawyer and a former associate F.D.A. commissioner, said that the agency was relying on public opinion and its own bully pulpit to push the targeted manufacturers into “voluntary compliance.”

Some antismoking groups, while encouraged by the F.D.A.’s actions, expressed caution: “Asking the tobacco industry to come up with solutions is the proverbial case of asking the fox to guard the hen house,” said Robin Koval, the president and chief executive of Truth Initiative. “After decades, there is no evidence that the tobacco industry is able to regulate itself.”

In April, the F.D.A. announced it was investigating Juul’s marketing practices to determine if the company deliberately targeted youths. The agency requested reams of documents from the company, including focus group reports and toxicology studies. Juul has submitted thousands of pages of records to the agency, but neither the F.D.A. nor Juul have made them public. Dr. Gottlieb said the agency’s tobacco division is still poring through them.

While the actions against the industry are alarming to the e-cigarette companies, they are also problematic for the F.D.A.

In July 2017, as part of a broad plan to reduce tobacco deaths in the United States, the F.D.A. extended the deadline for e-cigarette makers to comply with new tough federal guidelines, which, among other things, require companies to prove the e-cigarettes are beneficial to public health. In granting the five-year extension till 2022, Dr. Gottlieb said he would also force manufacturers to cut nicotine levels in traditional cigarettes, to render them nonaddictive. For that to work, he said, smokers needed more and better cigarette substitutes.

But in an interview, Dr. Gottlieb said the immense popularity of vaping among teens and the growing addiction among young people was not something he foresaw last summer, and the agency must rethink its policy — perhaps moving the deadline closer and requiring companies to gain F.D.A. approval to stay on the shelves.

Risa Robinson, a professor of mechanical engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology, began studying e-cigarettes six years ago for the F.D.A. The early products did not have enough nicotine to cause concern, she said. But later products, like Juul, had more nicotine and, she said, can become even stronger depending on how deeply a user puffs.

“I’m highly concerned now,” Dr. Robinson said. Beyond nicotine, the addition of heat to the e-liquid flavors generates chemicals that have not yet been studied in depth, she added.

The attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, who recently began an investigation into the marketing and sale of e-cigarettes to minors, praised the F.D.A.’s action.

“We’ve worked too hard over the past 50 years to reduce smoking rates among young people to let these companies profit off of getting them hooked on nicotine,” Ms. Healey said. “This move by the F.D.A. is a good first step to shut down companies targeting minors.”

A Juul spokeswoman, Victoria Davis, said recently that the company had already stepped up its own patrol of retailers who advertise to youths or who don’t enforce age requirements, as well as social media posts. But it’s not always easy.

From Jan. 1 through July 28, Ms. Davis said, Juul asked Instagram to remove over 5,500 posts, and the social media company complied on 4,562. Facebook Marketplace was less agreeable. The company agreed to remove 45 of 144 posts. Amazon took down 13 of 33.

Dr. Gottlieb said he was not impressed by the measures Juul and the other companies have taken.

“It didn’t have the intended impact or I wouldn’t be viewing the statistics I’m now seeing,” he said.

[johnboothus]

Whether Counting Cash or Cachet Its Time to Take Flavored Spirits Seriously

As someone who’d spent most of his adult life working behind the bar, Chris Moran knew exactly what he was getting into when he launched his chili-pepper-infused Ghost Tequila in 2016. “As a bartender, you’re taught that you should take quality spirits and craft something yourself,” he says. “I was biased against flavored spirits.”

On the other hand, Moran’s time behind the bar taught him the importance of consistency. He knew that if he could put a competitively priced, high-quality spicy tequila in front of bartenders, most would favor that over chopping up jalapeños and infusing their own, with mixed results the only guarantee. It didn’t harm matters that by the time he went to market, tequila was already trending, and had an established cocktail batting for it — who among us doesn’t love a spicy Marg?

Moran’s experience is the perfect example of how general biases against flavored spirits can cloud judgement of their true value. Despite what most discerning drinkers would like to believe, flavored spirits have shown remarkable staying power over the years, even if individual flavors themselves eventually become fads.

While the days of bubblegum or whipped cream vodka are (mercifully) behind us, volume sales of flavored spirits as a whole grew by double digits last year. Far from vodka leading that charge, flavored whiskey, tequila, and gin saw the largest gains. Looking forward, market analysts aren’t just predicting that this trend will continue, they forecast drinkers will also spend more per bottle on flavored liquors over the next five years. Put simply: If you aren’t already, it’s time to take flavored spirits seriously.

Volume and Value Sales

By all accounts, 2020 proved to be a bumper year for flavored spirits. According to IWSR data, volume sales of flavored gin grew 12 percent, flavored tequila volumes rose 26 percent, and flavored American whiskey volumes increased a whopping 79 percent. In each instance, growth of the subcategories significantly outperformed their non-flavored “traditional” alternatives.

Interestingly, that trend may have been driven by other types of alcohol. “Based on IWSR’s consumer research, flavor is the number one driver of choice in RTDs.” writes Brandy Rand, COO of the Americas at IWSR Drinks Market Analysis. “[A]nd given the range and pace of flavor innovation in this category, it’s natural that demand will cross-over into spirits,” Rand concludes.

While the majority of flavored spirits purchases in the U.S. are currently taking place at the “standard-and-below” price tier (less than $22.50 per 750-milliliter bottle), it’s the “premium-and-above” category ($22.50-plus) that IWSR predicts will grow most over the next five years. Meanwhile, in news that will no doubt delight Ghost Tequila’s Moran, agave-based flavored spirits are expected to enjoy the largest gains in that time. (Moran saw his own sales “almost double” last year.)

Of course, growth is more indicative of trends than overall success. But on the dollar sales front, flavored spirits have performed just as admirably in 2021.

Let’s dial into some individual brands: For the first 12 weeks of this year, Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey posted the second-highest total dollar sales, behind only Tito’s Vodka, according to off-premise Nielsen data. (For what it’s worth, Fireball also claimed second place for YoY dollar growth, behind Hennessy V.S.) During that same period, Crown Royal Peach outperformed Casamigos Blanco, while Screwball Peanut Butter Whiskey raked in more than Johnnie Walker Red.

For anyone who’s reading this and thinking: “Fireball Cinnamon and Screwball are just anomalies, and they aren’t real whiskey brands,” the top three names in American whiskey are all also firmly established in the flavor field. (Also, Sazerac — the same company that produces Pappy Van Winkle — owns Fireball.)

Jack Daniel’s offers Tennessee Honey and Tennessee Apple, alongside its own cinnamon-spin Tennessee Fire. Jim Beam has no fewer than seven flavored whiskeys, the most recent of which, Orange, hit the market this June. Evan Williams’ flavored collection also stretches seven deep.

“I love to talk about ‘pure’ whiskey innovation, but one of the areas that continues to be of interest to us is flavored whiskey,” Susan Wahl, vice president of American whiskeys at Evan Williams’ parent company, Heaven Hill, told me last fall. Wahl also lamented that the company had been “a little late to the game” in launching Evan Williams Apple (in April 2019). But by the time of our conversation, the flavor had already had a “big impact” on the flavored whiskey portion of Heaven Hill’s business, she said.

Craft and Premium Flavored Spirits Offerings

Armed with all this knowledge, it should surprise no one that whiskey now enjoys the largest share of flavored spirits sales. For second-placed vodka, flavored expressions account for roughly one of every five bottles of vodka sold, according to data from the Distilled Spirits Council.

Still, flavored whiskey and flavored vodka don’t seem very cool as subcategories, do they? Maybe not for some, but the 70-proof, Casamigos-conquering Crown Royal Peach has emerged as one of this year’s most coveted and collectible bottles. Some retailers even reported that they get more calls for it than Pappy Van Winkle or Blanton’s.

Craft distillers making high-quality fruited vodkas have deposited further cachet in the flavor bank — as have annual, limited-edition releases from renowned gin producers like Sipsmith. These flavored spirits may not move the financial needle in the same way that Fireball does, but they certainly make it harder for “real” drinkers to turn up their noses.

Of the several hundred bottles I’ve sampled this year as VinePair’s lead spirits reviewer, the Mango and Pineapple flavored mezcals I recently tried from Gracias a Dios certainly didn’t fall in the bottom half when it came to quality. In fact, I’d say they were pretty bloody tasty, and ideal for cocktail creation.

This brings us nicely back to Moran and Ghost Tequila. For another article I worked on earlier this year, I explored what — if anything — tequila producers could do to make the category a real contender for the throne as America’s most valuable spirit. I gave little thought to flavored expressions at the time, but if the analysts are correct, this was an oversight. And it certainly tracks with Moran’s more recent experiences.

“The problem now is that anytime you walk into a bar or liquor store to sell your product, they’re going to look at you with a new tequila and say, ‘I’ve got 120 other blancos, repos, and añejos already. What makes this one different?’” he says.

“That’s one of our main advantages. When I walk into a bar, I say: ‘This is Ghost Tequila, this is what it tastes like, and guess what the use is? The hottest thing you’re doing behind the bar,’” Moran continues, pun apparently unintentional. “It makes it a much easier sell and I don’t need space for a blanco, reposado, añejo, and maybe an extra añejo. It’s just one bottle, and it really fits both the consumer’s need and makes their life easier.’”

Are you ready to take flavored spirits seriously yet?

The article Whether Counting Cash or Cachet, It’s Time to Take Flavored Spirits Seriously appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/take-flavored-spirits-seriously/

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[cindysmakeupfactory]

Larry Nassar Victims As Well As Michigan State Reach $500M Claim Negotiation.

A great deal of people are tempted by associate advertising and marketing due to the fact that it could be financially fulfilling, even if you simply remain at residence. As soon as you established your Amazon.com affiliate (affiliate) ID and also you make a decision, for example, that you wish to remain in the outdoor camping particular niche, you can create special website links to any of their camping products (tents, rucksacks, camp beds, garments etc). The very early affiliate advertising programs were at risk to fraud since clicks could be generated by software application, as could perceptions. I've been very conflicted concerning affiliate advertising for a long period of time. It's a best online program for newbies or for definitely any individual thinking about earning a terrific revenue online.|I am lazy and also not the brightest bulb in the light but even an individual like me can make severe money with a good associate business program. He has tons of experience with affiliate marketing, both from being an associate and driving the earnings of various other firms, along with through an affiliate program attempting to recruit affiliates. However, you could still earn money as an associate also if you do not have tons of traffic.|Affiliate marketers are constantly looking for methods to raise and also boost both sales as well as compensations. A big percentage of affiliates generate income running websites as a leisure activity along with their full-time job as well as lots of have been able to include considerable 2nd income streams by doing so. Because I like the idea and require to find out more exactly how to startup, I've started to search for various other affiliate advertising and marketing chances.|If you are an associate marketing professional who intends to make a comfortable living from referring your leads to other individuals's services or product for suitable compensations, then you have to think about building your own subscriber list. As an example, the business's blog site runs short articles with titles like "Ways to Build a Multi-Million Dollar Ecommerce Organisation With $0 Marketing Spending plan." Neither Shopify neither the FTC has commented straight on this matter, as well as without a clearer take a look at business, the opportunity of governing involvement can't be entirely discounted.|Associate advertising is a kind of performance-based advertising and marketing in which a company rewards several affiliates for each and every site visitor or customer brought by the associate's ownmarketing efforts. Some firms have actually been known not to pay, although there are means to display and pick high quality affiliate programs. Myth # 3: Associate advertising and marketing is passive income. I find Affiliate Directories more useful, with their classification of programs, payment information and also a lot more importantly review and so on, all available in one area.|Affiliate advertising and marketing is an amazing tool for any company to use as well as take benefit of. There are several classifications of associate advertising suggestions for newbies, yet often people have the tendency to avoid the most standard information for rookies. Below are 3 various means to use associate advertising and marketing on your web site as well as some additional helpful pointers when partnering with an affiliate advertising firm.|Running a traditional physical kind of business with an online visibility, is certainly one great method making at least component of your living online. Connecting constraints: Inning accordance with Google: If the primary function of your content is to drive people off of YouTube and also into one more site, it will likely violate our spam plans". Anywhere we turn on-line, we are all swamped with so much details and so lots of people desiring our interest whatsoever times.|Starting an affiliate service online involves focusing on 3 vital yet straightforward locations in order for your launch to be successful. Doing this helps bring in customers and also increases your chances of getting them to visit the site and not only view its web content, however perhaps avail of the services and products used. They usually end up being trainees of web marketing by default, but as their compensation checks expand, they find brand-new means to promote more solutions as well as items.|Associate marketing school is a wonderful tool available that very few people know about. The top quality as well as significance of the product itself defeats just what affiliate program powers the sales process. 2) Pay Per Each Effectiveness: In this kind of method, the vendor pays the associate only when his recommendation converts into a motion that is each time the consumer is really bye the something in the vendor's.|Our global associate advertising network encourages advertisers as well as authors of all dimensions to expand their services online. Concerning participating in the ebay.com Partner Network along with various other associate programs. After selecting as much as 2-3 products, discover its needs whether its a hot item or otherwise and also if individuals are browsing online for this. 1. As opposed to Profit Engine bonus of a couple of people, by using Affiliate Marketing a seller could have a sales force of thousands or more.|Associate advertising and marketing is one branch of the web earnings tree. Easy SEO (often): Videos show up in 55% of keyword searches on Google 82% of these videos are from YouTube. I discover they will certainly advertise my products over others much more conveniently. The hardest aspect of affiliate advertising is recognizing the best ways to begin and also what are the most effective products and also companies to work with; to make sure that's exactly just what I'm going to educate you how you can do.|You may have listened to or been involved in a recurring revenue company opportunity somehow. An affiliate marketing expert has to pre-sell the products. So if you really want to promote numerous affiliate programs in your site, see to it that they jive with the style as well as topic of the remainder of the web content on your specific niche. There are plenty of trustworthy and reputable firms that use affiliate advertising programs with online residual revenue possibilities.|If you've been to the Clickbank website as well as have researched an e-book you would love to advertise, you could have seen nearly all of the publisher programs have an affiliate aid page. Misconception: The more associate programs I have, the far better. The Firm's exchanges located in Europe and the United States profession equities, futures, choices, fixed-income, and exchange-traded products. In affiliate advertising, you're either a Supplier, a person that has products to market, or and Associate, somebody that intends to advertise another person's things.|You could discover that joint ventures as well as associate advertising and marketing are utilized nearly mutually in the advertising sector if you have actually begun researching the globe of JV marketing. 2. Most conventional retail companies are needed to maintain considerable supplies of the items that they offer. 4. On-line programs or software application that could currently be utilized to examine statistics, present fads and also client demands at no charge whatsoever.|Associate advertising and marketing is a program that provides fantastic loan making opportunities to all included. For a new site owner or blogger, Google AdSense is the easiest means making loan online. If you follow the tested methods I have actually utilized to develop my affiliate marketing organisation, you'll spend the large majority of your time WRITING.|In today's wireless globe, it's much easier than ever before to release an Internet-based organisation. It seems so easy initially to establish your Clickbank associate advertisement web links and also banners on your website or blog, however unless your normal readers or visitors desire specifically just what you are offering, it is tough to obtain any earnings on your own.|Nowadays, the Internet has actually gotten an incredible globally popularity, thanks particularly to the hundreds of profitable possibilities that the online world supplies. Promote that item on your internet site, Blog or any kind of Social Media (NOTE: Facebook doesn't enable you to post your associate web link directly. Many extremely associates make 6 numbers just promoting the services and products of others. Among the fastest means making cash online with simply a marginal investment is running your personal associate service.|Do not believe him if someone informs you that you can not make loan any longer on associate advertising and marketing. For the merchant's side, a great deal of loan can be conserved if advertising initiative is concentrated on affiliate marketing instead of on taking care of advertising and marketing companies. Blogging is not the most effective choice for those who are in search of instant as well as quick earnings, it could offer a lot of economic freedom over time with tough word.|New Delhi India, Apr Easy Blogs R United States is enthusiastic about helping on-line marketing professionals as well as other bloggers learn, save time and money, and also most of all, succeed. Some example of being a reseller include signing up with an affiliate program, taking part in pay per head program and starting a white label business.|You possibly understand exactly what associate advertising and marketing is about, why company owner utilize it as well as how it has helped a great deal of on-line service. Where many people stumble, nonetheless, is in thinking that success in associate advertising is quick and also simple. Initially, understand the difference between individual associate programs and also associate networks. No unsolicited advertising of affiliate programs.|Throughout the coming weeks, I am mosting likely to thoroughly cover the details of earning money online through affiliate programs. Discussing the new deals penned by his firm Grant Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of Esports Entertainment Group stated: The addition of these ten eSports groups to our affiliate program, in addition to the 26 announced over the past month, is yet another major landmark for the Firm.|Just recently some affiliate programs decided to cancel their association with certain states as a result of a proposed state sales tax obligation on affiliate commissions. There are no investing certifications and also this program is open to all consumers regardless of how they pay. Because Amazon.com is so massive it continuously includes new products on a day-to-day basis, as an Amazon associate you have thousands of products to pick from.|Affiliate Advertising and marketing is one of the Legit online jobs offered today. An affiliate advertising training program will additionally teach you effective techniques of marketing such as search engine optimization, ad words, designing an eye-catching website and more. Our solutions could give you with picture banners, along with message links, which you could then offer to those associated with your associate advertising and marketing program.|They have no expertise concerning the items they promote. They begin their service with affiliate programs due to 2 crucial reasons: it's simple to set up as well as it is completely totally free to run and also set. If so, that is fine, as long as the affiliate programs are related to, or belong to the very same niche.|The pay per lead (PPL) framework for settlement in associate programs can be an effective method to lure affiliates to represent a product or offer. Affiliate advertising and marketing administration requires both software program as well as time. And also they are using much of the same tactics, such as lobbying politicians as well as funding positive research to develop a photo of their items as nourishing. Inning accordance with KissMetrics, a client knowledge and also internet analytics firm, "Email has almost three times as lots of customer accounts as Facebook and Twitter integrated." In fact, it reaches 2.9 billion individuals. Those strategies will surely drag site visitor to our internet site as well as transform our web associate company right into a top home based business in regards with earnings. Online merchants find associate marketing highly advantageous because of the fact that it provides little to no risk both for the seller and the 'associate.' The means it works is that the associate gains a sort of compensation or repaired amount based upon the number of sales the associate offers the seller, either with on-line links on the affiliates internet site - or through e-mail, blogs, rss feeds as well as several various other kinds of on-line communication. We provide free access per affiliate to the data the operators asked for, in addition to summaries of what they are seeking so although it's discouraging to see affiliates that do not obtain it, it's inevitably their company model and their decision regarding whether or not they intend to engage with compliance or not. In order to succeed in associate marketing you'll have to choose a product group to concentrate on, discover your audience, build an internet site or blog site audiences could rely on, develop LOTS of web content, and promote your material as well as your product, as well as with the right experimentation, you could be well on your means to receiving those payment checks from satisfied brand names made by referring pleased consumers. The suggestion behind it is that you advertise other individuals's products, frequently with an affiliate network, gaining a compensation if individuals actually wind up getting thanks to your advertising and marketing. With an on the internet affiliate advertising company the vendor ships whatever to your customers for you, so you are not needed to stock any stock at all, which represents a big cost conserving for your organisation. Online marketing membership websites with a month-to-month subscription likewise do well for constructing an easy income. While looking for organisation chances online if you come across an associate program worth offering after that all you would need to do to begin is to sign up as an associate, which is usually complimentary in most cases. Rich Affiliate University supplies a vast array of Marketing Educating tutorials as well as videos that will certainly aid any type of marketer build an effective online business. When it comes to affiliate marketing and enhance your income 10 layer, envision if there was some wonderful resource that could approve your every dream! As the globe significantly decided to spend their time and money online, marketing professionals began creating methods to leverage this interaction channel, as well as chances for website proprietors to companion began. ● Smart Contracts- Besides avoiding author scams, platforms like RefToken prevent clients from cannot pay their affiliates by creating contracts that enforce themselves. The program is meant to be an easy way for brand advocates as well as influencers that enjoy as well as understand Snek Biking products to refer like-minded cyclists to the website as well as get rewarded in the process. In other words, affiliate marketing is the procedure whereby an affiliate markets a merchant and promotes's merchandise online for a percent. At the core of Google Sniper are the two most typical parts of success to any kind of affiliate marketing venture. You can make money with both associate advertising and marketing as well as mlm, or you could focus on which best fits your personality. Associate programs, which supply you a variety of marketing tools as well as where continual assistance is given, ready. Great deals of associates won't allow you take on marketing that they're doing, and also it's not as clear or truthful as connecting using blog sites etc, however it shows it could be done. Anybody can do it. (to some degree) Anyone could do associate marketing as well as supplement their income to some extent.

[hollybrookesbcu]

Promotion

Elle has researched into the promotion for our brand.  She created the instagram page, which we will use to promote our brand. Our survey showed us that our target market finds their fashion inspiration from social media, and they also find out about new brands through social media, therefore, we felt that this is a very important means of promotion for our brand. On our instagram account, we will post updates, new arrivals, events and stories.   

We decided that it would be good to promote our brand through a festival or event that closely relates to out target market.  We decided to partner with NASS Festival.  Customers can visit the website and receive a code on their phone, for 10% off their first purchase from our brand, at NASS Festival.  We will also hand our free stickers at the event, for skateboarders to stick to their skateboards.  People involved in the event will wear and promote our products.  Promoting at this kind of event will mean that people who are our target audience will become familiar with our brand. Other skaters that have not been to the event will see the stickers and will want to shop at our brand. This will help to attract new customers and build up a new customer base. 

Here is some information that Elle found about pop-up shops.

Pop-up retail, also known as pop-up store or flash retailing, is a trend of opening short-term sales spaces that last for days to weeks before closing down, often to catch onto a fad or scheduled event.

Advantages:

It can become another brand contact point with your audience.

It can increase overall brand awareness.

Thanks to an unexpected placement, it will make the contact memorable.

Due to the non-standard format and design, it will evoke vivid emotions.

It will increase interest, thanks to a limited assortment offer and duration. The opening and closing dates are known in advance so that a certain buzz of exclusivity is created.

You can test bricks-and-mortar sales without too much investment. You can pull off a short-term pop-up for as little as £1,082.

Many large stores are closing due to being considered unprofitable against high rent and tax rates. Pop-ups are a chance to continue a physical presence in such cases.

The majority of consumers want to see and touch a product before they buy it, even if they’re purchasing online. Temporary stores are good for that purpose.

It is an excellent way to build a network of loyal, engaged shoppers by offering face-to-face service and immersive in-person shopping experiences.

Despite the stronger online presence, consumers spent most of their money in stores whether they are permanent or temporary.

It can drive more sales during busy seasons such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas time and any other peak sales periods.

It can validate demand for new products before starting mass sales.

Pop-up shops are a great way to give new life to ageing inventory — especially seasonal merchandise with a short shelf life.

A store creates memorable brand experiences. For many business owners, a pop- up store sets out as an opportunity to immerse customers in the world of their brand. In the real world, you can engage all five senses to create an experiential store; whereas online, you can only use one. By creating a real-life experience, you also have the potential to generate a real social media moment. And, with the flexibility of temporary retail space, you can put on a show without having to worry about how it will be sustained in the long term.

You can build stronger relationships with your customers. Without the anonymity of the internet, your retail store is a chance to get to know your customers. These meaningful interactions won’t just help you to understand your demographic and get feedback on your brand; but will also make you a part of the community. By building these relationships, you will also drive loyalty for your brand. In fact, this is a new trend known as ‘emotional loyalty’: industry analytics firm Gallup found that customers who had emotional loyalty to a brand visited that store 32% more often.

Your store can be a marketing tool. Your storefront can be an advert for your brand. Securing a space on one of the world’s busiest high streets is a smart way of getting your business in front of thousands, for the fraction of the price of a big billboard. Therefore, it’s no wonder why brands like IKEA and Virgil Abloh, Netflix and MATCHESFASHION.com have used temporary retail space as a marketing tool to drive awareness for their latest launch.

Disadvantages:

The location must be perfect. A place for a pop-up has to be in an important, well-known, and accessible street or building with lots of passers-by and pedestrians. Even temporary placement in the most exciting areas will be costly.

In addition, many commercial landlords and agents don’t support the idea, preferring more regular, longer-term arrangements.

You also should, at the very least, have funds to cover; possibly needed licences, insurance, security measures, work of additional staff, POS instalment, and any other additional expenses such as audio system, security cameras, cleaning services, etc. Temporary or not, compliance with health and safety regulations is non-negotiable.

The pop-up nature of your retail outlet may put some customers off. People cannot easily get in touch with you or return an item once the pop-up has gone.

Similarly, the lack of space available will limit your ability to carry a wide range and a large amount of stock. Make sure you have continuation strategies prepared.

Mounting the pop-up store requires as much work as creating a regular storefront or even more as it has to be unique and eye-catching. A team of designers, merchandisers, and logistic specialists is needed to develop and decorate the space, transport and display the products properly, advertise it, etc.

§  You can only appear in one place at a time. One drawback of a pop-up shop is that you can only pop up in one specific place at a time. While this may not be the route for a brand looking for rapid global expansion, focusing your efforts on just one place at a time can allow you to foster meaningful relationships and really develop brand awareness in a new area. And, if the area doesn’t quite work for you, you can move on to the next neighbourhood quickly and easily with flexible leasing.

§  It can be difficult to find the right space. Do you go for a store on an iconic high street or a neighbourhood shop? Do you want a white box or something a little more unique? When scouting out your location for a pop-up space, the selection can feel overwhelming.

§  It’s thought to be a big upfront cost. Something that prevents many brands from making a move into physical retail is the misconception that it’s a costly process. Previously, lengthy legal processes and long-term high-risk commitments were the norm. However, now, things are different. Through flexible leasing, independent businesses are able to book temporary retail space for just a few weeks – eliminating the time-consuming contracts and empowering them to open their very own store.

How much does a pop-up shop cost UK?

The typical pop-up retail unit available in the UK is 1,186 ft2 (110 m2) and costs just 29p per ft2 (£3.10 per m2) per day to rent.

Open a pop-up shop: 6 things you should know

Pop-up shops are temporary retail spaces. This short-term approach to running a business may be a good way to let you test a business idea or try your skills as a business owner. If you are already in business, a pop-up shop may help you to build your brand and increase sales. The following tips outline how you can successfully set up a pop-up shop.

1. Research your market: Make sure you're fully aware of the marketplace that you plan to operate your pop-up shop in. Research significant trends, drivers and potential competitors. See market research and market reports.

2. Find the right premises: Location is a key element to pop-up shop success. Take time to find quality premises in a good location and negotiate the right deal for a short-term let. See renting business premises.

3. Get the finance right: Every new business needs money when starting up and pop-up shops require good levels of stock to start-up. Create realistic financial forecasts and research finance options that are right for your business needs. See business financing options - an overview.

4. Market your pop-up: The short-term nature of a pop-up shop means your marketing should be innovative and targeted to provide the greatest impact. Access local networks to create a buzz for your pop-up and use social media to generate interest and engage with potential customers. See create your marketing strategy.

5. Protect your business: A pop-up shop may find difficulties in stock storage and business security. Theft of stock could cripple a short-term business. Assess your risks and make security plans to ensure your business remains safe. See business insurance: the basics.

6. Employ short term staff: Employment law still applies to short term businesses so you must know about the steps you need to take when employing people in your pop-up shop. See recruiting staff.

Browns

Farfetch-owned Browns Fashion opened an experimental pop-up in Berlin in November. The pop-up opened in an abandoned supermarket and was used as a space to test new retail concepts and partnerships across fashion, music and art. Browns Berlin is potentially the first of many ‘roaming retail’ spaces that the brand calls ‘Browns Nomad’ – built on the idea that temporary spaces allow brands to really connect with the neighbourhoods and communities they operate within.

Depop Live

E-commerce fashion app Depop invited 50 of its best sellers to set up shop in its temporary space on Broadway in New York. The two-day event was a physical version of the online marketplace. The event was targeted at its Gen Z community of fashion entrepreneurs, with two days of immersive experiences including music, art installations, panels and workshops. There was even a talk on transparency, sustainability and activism with a panel that included designers and sustainability experts.

Glossier

Cosmetics retailer Glossier opened a pop-up on Floral Street in Covent Garden that was a must-see for fans of the brand. Inspired by British architecture and interiors, the store was decorated in colourful floral wallpaper and carpets which were hand drawn by the in-house creative team. Each room followed a different colour scheme and in true Glossier style they included positive affirmations like ‘you look good’ on the mirrors. There were also lots of fun playful elements such as secret doors taking you from one room to another, adding some theatre to the experience.

[dipulb3]

Corporate America's earnings recession is over

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/corporate-americas-earnings-recession-is-over/

Corporate America's earnings recession is over

What’s happening: By the end of last week, 96% of companies in the benchmark index had posted results, according to FactSet. Per analyst John Butters’ latest estimate, S&P 500 earnings grew 3.9% last quarter. That would mark the first year-on-year increase since the end of 2019.

In a note to clients Wednesday, Nick Raich, CEO of The Earnings Scout, put it bluntly: “The earnings recession is over!”

At the beginning of December — amid chatter about a potential double-dip recession — Wall Street expected fourth quarter earnings to drop by 11%, Raich noted.

But a booming housing market and healthy levels of business investment helped improve the picture.

See here: Lowe’s (LOW) recently reported sales growth of 28% last quarter, beating estimates, as more Americans took on home improvement projects. Home Depot (HD) saw sales jump 25% compared to the previous year. (Both companies’ fourth quarters run from November through January.)

Some firms that have done well during the height of the pandemic could see demand fall off later this year should life return to normal. But on the whole, companies are optimistic about the future.

“Outlooks for 2021 were positive enough to drive a sizable increase in estimates,” said LPL Financial strategist Jeffrey Buchbinder. That “may be a sign of better earnings ahead.”

According to FactSet, analysts are projecting double-digit earnings growth for all four quarters of 2021.

Big picture: Faith in the corporate earnings recovery is one of the main reasons the Wall Street thinks stocks can keep performing strongly, even as a rise in government bond yields puts pressure on riskier assets.

“We’re now [two] full quarters into a period of strong upside earnings surprises,” Nicholas Colas, cofounder of DataTrek Research, told clients this week. “The bet now is that momentum will continue.”

There are a few factors that could work in companies’ favor. Another hefty stimulus package is expected in the United States later this month, while a weaker dollar will help multinational firms, boosting the value of international sales and profits.

But Buchbinder points to two possible problems.

“First, earnings tend to fall short of the consensus estimate in most years, though this year may be different given the unique circumstances,” he said. “Second, Covid-19 still carries risks. We’d like to see further progress toward ending the pandemic first, but we see upside if all goes according to plan.”

OPEC and allies have a big decision on their hands

A plunge in crude prices last spring forced oil producers to announce unprecedented cuts to output. Now, oil prices are booming again — putting OPEC and allies like Russia in a tough spot as they weigh their next steps.

Investor insight: US oil prices are back above $60 per barrel after crashing below $0 for the first time last April. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, were last trading at $64.06 per barrel.

The rebound is spurred by hopes that the pandemic will soon be brought under control, causing a spike in fuel demand as people resume commutes and start flying again. Meanwhile, production remains limited, capping supply.

OPEC and its allies, known as OPEC+, are scheduled to meet Thursday to debate whether it’s time to start pumping more barrels. With prices rising, there’s incentive for them to do so.

But acting too quickly could cause prices to flag again, especially if the virus outlook worsens. Plenty of concerns remain about the speed of vaccination campaigns and the ability to control new Covid-19 variants.

Some analysts think that given this delicate dynamic, producers will hold off on increasing output for the time being.

“Optimism is growing that the group of oil producers could roll over output cuts at today’s meeting rather than easing back on production cuts as was initially expected,” Oanda market analyst Sophie Griffiths said in a research note Thursday.

But Bjornar Tonhaugen, head of oil markets at Rystad Energy, believes “all options are on the table” as OPEC+ tries to reach an agreement.

How to buy social media’s hottest stocks

Want to invest in the stocks generating buzz on Reddit, Twitter and TikTok?

You could spend hours trawling these platforms. But one Wall Street investment firm wants to make it even easier.

The latest: VanEck, a money manager that runs exchange-traded funds tied to big themes such as casinos and sports betting, is rolling out the VanEck Vectors Social Sentiment ETF on Thursday, my Appradab Business colleague Paul R. La Monica reports.

The ETF is based on an index created by a Canadian investment company called Buzz Indexes, which uses artificial intelligence technology to screen for 75 large-cap US stocks with positive investor sentiment.

There’s a catch: The company adds and removes stocks in the index at the end of each quarter, but any investments must have a market value of at least $5 billion.

That means GameStop (GME) isn’t included — at least not yet. At the end of December, GameStop was worth just $1.3 billion. But it could be eligible now that the retailer’s valuation is north of $8.6 billion.

Bigger than GameStop: VanEck says it’s not just hopping on a fad. The fund will base most of its investment decisions not on Reddit’s infamous WallStreetBets community, but more mainstream chatter about blue-chip stocks from users on Twitter and the investing site StockTwits.

“The timing of the fund’s launch was coincidental with the rise of the individual investor,” said Edward Lopez, head of ETF product for VanEck. “But it has highlighted a trend that has been growing for a number of years.”

Up next

BJ’s Wholesale (BJ), Burlington Stores (BURL), Kroger (KR) and Michaels (MIK) report earnings before US markets open. Broadcom (AVGO), Costco (COST), Gap (GPS), Slack (WORK) and SmileDirectClub (SDC) follow after the close.

Also today:

First-time requests for US unemployment benefits from last week arrive at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expect 750,000 claims, a slight rise from the previous week.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks at the Wall Street Journal Jobs Summit at 12:05 p.m. ET.

Coming tomorrow: The US jobs report for February is expected to show 182,000 jobs gains last month, an improvement from January.