I have really been looking forward to the release of Rock Band in the UK for quite some time now; seeing as it was released on the 20th November 2007 in the US, and a leap forward in time for the UK release on the 23rd May 2008.

So you may remember about the price drop. Well when EA first announced the crazy price for Rock Band originally it was somewhere in the region of £180, with software and instruments, which converts to $356 and with the US launch price at roughly $169 (£85 converted) more than doubling the price for no reason at all.

But that was last month, and people thought that the newly proposed price of around £120 would be far better, even thought that is $240 when converted anyway.

So I pop into a few retailers this afternoon to check out the prices, the bundles etc. I look in 3 retailers. They are GAME, HMV and Gamestation. Each and every one was selling the pack of instruments without the game (they were selling those separately), and every time I asked, “Can I get a pack with the game” they would say “Sorry, but you have to buy the game separately”

I suppose this plays into the EA motto of skews but I also did notice that HMV were selling the Drums & Guitar on there own too.

The prices are as follows:

1x Rock Band Set of 3 - Mic, Drums, Guitar - £129.99 ($255)
1x Rock Band Disc - £44.99 ($87)
TOTAL = £173 ($342)

What a bloody rip off, it’s even coming to the point where I can buy the XBOX 360 for cheaper, WITH THE HARD DRIVE.

I did some research and found out that the Rock Band instruments are made in China, then I found out the weight of the box WITH THE GAME costs a mere £15 ($30).

But the most annoying thing about this is that all these “apparent” fees that have been added onto the price of Rock Band are non-existent, the VAT for the UK is 17.5% meaning £129 = £22.58 VAT, so that’s £107, next is the shipping costs, so that’s -£15 = £92, so lets convert that.

£92 into USD iiisssssss…..$182!!!!

Tadaaaa!…and yet it’s still MORE expensive than the US version, which is now retailing on Amazon.com for a mere $149.

Bahh Humbug is all I can say.

PS: I was in a GAME shop and I quoted the prices from the US versions of Rock Band (with the game) and he said and I quote:

Well that’s America; everything’s cheap in America isn’t it

CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE TO SEE THE WHOLE LISTING

Normally on my eBay rampages I see the occasional item that…mayybe catches my eye. But try catching a title like THAT! This is the story of a family who don’t want their debt anymore, and how to get rid of it??? SELL IT ON eBAY OF CORSE! The item description:

Please consider this purchase with care. My debt is about average for most Americans. If you purchase my debt you will be saving me and my family from great amounts of stress and much heartache. I can not allow returns on this item as I’m not so sure its anything I’d want back. Thank you so much for considering allowing us a second chance at a better life and you can be sure this purchase is Very good for your Karma! If you were to have the kind of money that would allow you to purchase my debt without a second thought then you are blessed. As always have a beautiful day!

These are the kind of listings that inspire me to make people get into a fight on XBOX Live games…it’s not me who starts it, it’s the dumb bums who scream down the mic first.

This listing also reminds me of the day Beligum was sold on eBay…HAPPY DAYS.

If the listing is still up on ebay, because I know they deleate them, click here.

The Editing side of MacFever has gone ablaze, so Olly and Jack decided to have an edit off, so there are two episodes of the same thing, to show what editor is better, Mac vs PC editors:Final Cut Express vs. SONY Vegas 8

My video is below for the PC side, also Jack was too pushy with the hosting, so I have to host this file myself, hopefully my badwidth will hold out.

 
BUY’s

Yet another huge sale. AOL has acquired social networking site Bebo for $850 million in cash. Bebo which is third largest social networking sites after myspace and facebook and has members over 40 millions.

AOL’s intention, they told press in a briefing call this morning, is to marry AIM and ICQ with a proper social network. At a high level, AOL is saying they are basing much of their go forward social networking strategy around AIM. Layering in Bebo, they say, lets people communicate both synchronously and asynchronously. The goal is to allow people to both express themselves and extend existing relationships. AIM users have 100 buddies on average. Bebo’s platform allows those users to share and distribute media as well.

A number of potential buyers were interested , including News Corp., Microsoft and Google.News Corp.bought MySpace for $580 million (€375 million) in 2005 and now its worth more than $15 billion (€9.69 billion). News Corp. also owns the Fox television and movie studios in addition to its newspaper and Internet holdings. Bebo has about 100 employees operating in offices in the U.K., San Francisco and Austin, Texas.

The 85mph winds over the last day have been SO POWERFUL! But what didn’t stop the BBC from getting a little out of the door broadcasting, check out the video below.

The BBC have done a lot of funny and puzzling things over the years, but this has to be the best news report location ever, just look at the first half of the video to see how powerful the winds are.Also looking at the first part of this video kind of shows how powerful an 85mph wind is. Check it out after the jump.

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