[Ladynight]

Hello Everyone,
I am 26 years old and after having 3 kids I have gain a lot of weight. I am ready to get back in shape and become more active. I am hoping to lose atleast 50 pounds but will just be happy that I am losing wieght at all. This will be very hard for me because it is difficult to stay on a diet when you love to eat. I will be using DC first and after that I will be trying EA Sport Active. I am doing it this way first because I am hoping that DC will perpare me for EA Sports Active because i know that is when the real work comes in.

Please tell me your stories of success because it help me realize that there my be hope for me too!!!

Weight in: 225
Weight goal: 175

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<a href="http://www.TickerFactory.com/weight-loss/wCp29st/">
<img border="0" src="http://tickers.TickerFactory.com/ezt/t/wCp29st/weight.png"></a>

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[Araliss]

Since no one has wished you luck. Good luck.. I'm about to start to. Just got DC 1 and 2 and I want to find Sports Active. I do have biggest loser but the controls are maddening! We are near the same weight.. I'm 227 but I'm only 5'4 so I have a lot more to lose..

Don't forget to keep us posted.

Good luck!

[tabbyprincess]

I just started working out Monday. I'm following active 2's 9 week program. After 2 days I am so sore I can barely walk. I'm eating around 1800 calories a day. I'm 5'4'' and 238.

[Araliss]

(12-29-2011 04:32 AM)tabbyprincess Wrote:  I just started working out Monday. I'm following active 2's 9 week program. After 2 days I am so sore I can barely walk. I'm eating around 1800 calories a day. I'm 5'4'' and 238.

Nice, we're around the same starting point. Has anyone found partners on xbox live? I don't have live yet. Been waiting for a reason to get it, right now I'm not sure.. New to Xbox 360 and Kinect but not to video game fitness.. I lost about 60 pounds playing dance dance revolution 3 or 4 years ago.. stopped exercising and slowly gained it all back. Now I'm ready to stop feeling like crap and stop having a hard time going up stairs and get fit again.

[dirtyvu]

(12-29-2011 04:42 AM)Araliss Wrote:  

(12-29-2011 04:32 AM)tabbyprincess Wrote:  I just started working out Monday. I'm following active 2's 9 week program. After 2 days I am so sore I can barely walk. I'm eating around 1800 calories a day. I'm 5'4'' and 238.

Nice, we're around the same starting point. Has anyone found partners on xbox live? I don't have live yet. Been waiting for a reason to get it, right now I'm not sure.. New to Xbox 360 and Kinect but not to video game fitness.. I lost about 60 pounds playing dance dance revolution 3 or 4 years ago.. stopped exercising and slowly gained it all back. Now I'm ready to stop feeling like crap and stop having a hard time going up stairs and get fit again.

with Xbox Live Free, the both of you should be able to set private voice chats with each other and stay in touch. I've had Gold for awhile so I don't remember what Free was quite like. I'm so much in love with party chat that I can't go back to the old system.

I know with Xbox Live Gold, you can have party chats and that does work within any game and allows for many more people. So you mentioned EA Sports Active. That doesn't have online multiplayer. But you guys could start a party chat and play the game at the same time. Do activities at the same time and talk the whole time. So while you're not actually doing the events together, the chat function should help motivate the both of you. Schedule exercise sessions together.

You also brought up The Biggest Loser. That actually does have online multiplayer so the both of you can actually do events together. Combine that with party chat and it should be a blast.

[Clemens]

Good luck to both of you!!

Nice tips, dirtyvu!

[Araliss]

(12-29-2011 06:15 AM)dirtyvu Wrote:  

(12-29-2011 04:42 AM)Araliss Wrote:  

(12-29-2011 04:32 AM)tabbyprincess Wrote:  I just started working out Monday. I'm following active 2's 9 week program. After 2 days I am so sore I can barely walk. I'm eating around 1800 calories a day. I'm 5'4'' and 238.

Nice, we're around the same starting point. Has anyone found partners on xbox live? I don't have live yet. Been waiting for a reason to get it, right now I'm not sure.. New to Xbox 360 and Kinect but not to video game fitness.. I lost about 60 pounds playing dance dance revolution 3 or 4 years ago.. stopped exercising and slowly gained it all back. Now I'm ready to stop feeling like crap and stop having a hard time going up stairs and get fit again.

with Xbox Live Free, the both of you should be able to set private voice chats with each other and stay in touch. I've had Gold for awhile so I don't remember what Free was quite like. I'm so much in love with party chat that I can't go back to the old system.

I know with Xbox Live Gold, you can have party chats and that does work within any game and allows for many more people. So you mentioned EA Sports Active. That doesn't have online multiplayer. But you guys could start a party chat and play the game at the same time. Do activities at the same time and talk the whole time. So while you're not actually doing the events together, the chat function should help motivate the both of you. Schedule exercise sessions together.

You also brought up The Biggest Loser. That actually does have online multiplayer so the both of you can actually do events together. Combine that with party chat and it should be a blast.

Wow thanks. A lot of great tips. I don't mind paying for gold, I just wanted to make sure that if I did, I wouldn't get on and there was no one there to interact with. My son (he's 25) has xbox also and right now he'd be the only one I'd talk to since he's the only one I know on live. I don't play any of the hardcore stuff like Halo or COD. I have nothing but dance and fitness games.

Could you explain a bit how the online events work in live? Is it like spit screen where you can see what the other is doing? How does that work?

Also is it easy to find people on xbox live to work out with or is it usually done through sites like this one? Sorry for the hundred questions, just trying to understand how it all works.

Clemens, thank you for the well wishes.

[dirtyvu]

(12-29-2011 06:38 PM)Araliss Wrote:  Wow thanks. A lot of great tips. I don't mind paying for gold, I just wanted to make sure that if I did, I wouldn't get on and there was no one there to interact with. My son (he's 25) has xbox also and right now he'd be the only one I'd talk to since he's the only one I know on live. I don't play any of the hardcore stuff like Halo or COD. I have nothing but dance and fitness games.

Could you explain a bit how the online events work in live? Is it like spit screen where you can see what the other is doing? How does that work?

Also is it easy to find people on xbox live to work out with or is it usually done through sites like this one? Sorry for the hundred questions, just trying to understand how it all works.

Clemens, thank you for the well wishes.

If there are multiple people in your family that would like an Xbox Live Gold account, it's best to get the family pack which is $99/year for 4 people. Unfortunately, you can't combine, meaning, for example, you can't do something like think you can get 2 years for 2 people.

It's possible to share accounts but when you share accounts, know that only one person can be logged into that account at a time. So if your son was living across the country on his Xbox and you are on your Xbox, it's not really feasible to share an account because you can't predict when who would be online. Also, by sharing an account, you lose the ability to maintain independent progress. Take a fitness game, for example. Let's say both of you play EA Sports Active 2 on your Xbox. Well, each of you will want to track your own progress, with your weight, height, diet, calendar, etc. If you're sharing the account, you can't have independent progress. Or if you're playing a game, you can't have separate save games. It's only 1 saved game per account.

In terms of online gaming, it really depends on the game. For most of the Kinect games, you are sharing the screen rather than splitscreen. It looks the same as if you were in the room together playing together.

Here's an example from Kinect Adventures:


so for example Araliss could be the person on the left and tabbyprincess could be the person on the right.

if it's a game like Zumba Fitness (I have very good knowledge of this one and me and my friends play it a good amount of time), you create a dance party. And then all your friends jump into that dance party. Then when you're dancing, you can talk and partially see each other (you see a silhouette only so no worries about people seeing you; you could be naked and no one would really see anything).

Once the dance party is going, if you so choose, you can leave the ability for random people on Xbox Live to jump into the dance party. We've had 8+ person parties sometimes. For example, my friend and I started the dance party as 2 people. By the end of the 20 minute session, we had 6 other people find our game and jump into it.

unfortunately, there are not currently a lot of online Kinect games. some obvious ones are Kinect Sports, Kinect Sports Season 2, Kinect Adventures, Zumba Fitness, The Biggest Loser, Winter Stars, Michael Phelps, Push the Limit, Deca Sports Freedom (my friend is begging for me to get this to play with her online), Forza Motorsport 4, and Halo Anniversary. Apologies if I left out any of them.

Some of the games are alternating and some are versus. So for example, if you and tabbyprincess played bowling together in Kinect Sports, you would alternate because that's how bowling works. But if you're doing track and field together, you're both lining up at the starting line and sprinting against each other at the shot of the starting pistol.

The ability to meet random people online to play while you are playing the game depends on the game's popularity and when you are playing it. For example, Kinect Sports is very popular and very easy to find people to play online. So if you want to play volleyball, you select to play an online volleyball match and then wait until it finds a person to play with. then as you meet and talk to people that you like, you add them to your friends list so that you are not depending on random luck to find someone. Or you can use sites like 123kinect. We do have a thread here where people list their gamertags so that people can play together.

For a game like Zumba Fitness, from my personal experience (I live on the West Coast in California), the only reliable dance people at night (9PM) are my friends. Otherwise, it's a ghost town since it's midnight for the East Coast. Of course, if I was willing to dance at 2AM Pacific time, I would have access to many Europeans who are just starting to dance but I can't be exercising that late at night or early in the morning. If I was a stay at home mom, I could find people fairly easily during the day around 10:30AM (I was sick one day and stayed home and found people to exercise with easily).

So a typical Xbox day is such... You load up Kinect Sports. You want to play table tennis. You choose to find an Xbox Live match. It searches for someone to play against. You choose to chat or not chat with the person. You play the game. You find them to be very nice and cordial. You send them a friend invite. They add you. You can then send text messages to each other, voice messages, etc. Schedule private matches. etc. etc.

Now Xbox Live has a new feature called Beacons. This is where you select a game that you really want to play. It basically advertises to people on your friends list what you really want to play. If your beacon matches up with their beacon, you get a unique message that so-and-so person wants to play that game, regardless of what game they are currently playing.

But even if no one has the same beacon as you, by setting the beacon, if someone looks at your profile, they can know what games you really want to play.

You can set up to 3 beacons currently.

It's hard to understand how cool the beacons feature is unless you had Xbox Live before. In the old days, you had to be inside the game you want to play in order for people to know you want to play that game. You can understand the severe time constraint that is for the both of you. If I want to play Zumba Fitness, I had to load Zumba Fitness and hope one of my ZF friends saw me load the game to play with me. Or I had to leave text messages to coordinate times to dance together. It's like going to an empty gym room and hoping some gym members walk by and see you inside it and joins the room with you to dance together.

Now, I can set a beacon to play Zumba. Then go about my normal Xbox day and play whatever I want (Disneyland Adventures, Gears of War 3, etc.). Then if one of my friends logs in and sees that I want to play Zumba, they can then send me an invite to actually play the game. So no one has to wait around anymore.

You can even set a message to your beacon. For example, if you want to do Zumba at 9PM on Friday, you can put that on your beacon so when your friends see your beacon, it says that so it gives them time to work their schedule to meet yours.

The other benefit was that in the old days, the only other feature you had was the "compare games" feature. So you look on your friends game list and see that they have Zumba. But let's say you don't really know this friend (found off of Xbox Live). You send them a game invite to play Zumba, only to find out they rented Zumba, played it for a bit, and then returned it. So although it shows up on their games list, they don't have the game any more to play. So you would get a message from them that they no longer own the game (even though it's still in their games list). The games list only list games (automatically) that the person has played. There is no ability to create a games list manually of the games you only own. So this is another reason beacons are useful.

If you can't schedule time to play with so-and-so friend, Kinect Sports season 2 has the ability to send challenges. In addition to the online multiplayer, it has a feature called challenges. This is where you select a minigame or event and you challenge someone over it. For example, if I challenge my friend in Smart Darts and I score 56 seconds, my friend has to beat that time to win or else I win. This doesn't have to happen in real time which is a boon. Let's say you and your friend cannot schedule time to play against each other online (family commitments, work, etc.). Now you can play against each other at different times of the day. It's like the leaderboards but it's more interactive and specific.

seriously, the Xbox is the most social system around. that's worth the price of admission. any system that let's you just hang out with your friends and play games is a good thing. the party chat feature alone is worth the cost of Xbox Live Gold. Sometimes I'll boot up the Xbox just to talk to people. No gaming involved. It's weird to see people just sit at the dash and talk but it happens all the time.

I'm not a competitive person. I don't go online to play to get the most kills. I just want to chill with my friends while playing a game. If I wanted to play by myself or play in a virtual room filled by a bunch of strangers, I would stick to my legacy systems or play on the other systems. With the party chat feature, you never have to tolerate that anymore. You control who you want to listen to, who can listen to you, you can mute on an individual basis or on a global scale. No more dealing with 12 year old kids acting like 12 year old kids. Just listen and chat with your friends.

Gold isn't a bullet point kind of thing. It's a lifestyle. I could be trying out a demo and then while I'm playing it, I tell my friends in the party to go check out this cool new game and the whole group goes and downloads it. My friend tells me he just watched a cool vid in youtube and we go to youtube to watch it together. We can have a party and someone drops in, and everyone says hi. It's like being back in college where it's so easy to meet new people and just chill. No barriers. Just have fun.

All it takes is finding one great friend online (either someone you know in real life or by random luck or through a site like 123kinect). from there, you have a launching pad to meet a bunch of other great gamers.

and the cool thing about Kinect is a lot of casual people play it so you aren't having the headbanging teens who scream expletives at you and are uber competitive. though with the party chat feature, you never have to hear them.

besides the game, there's the social stuff. you can do video chat with people who have Windows Live Messenger or with other Kinect people. Soon, they're adding Skype for Kinect. You can do facebook (pretty awesome to see all your friends stuff on the big screen), twitter, Youtube, Netflix, etc.

Unfortunately, they took away Netflix viewing parties in the latest version which got a lot of people angry and disappointed (me among them). In the old version of Netflix, you had viewing parties. My friends and I used to have movie night or do viewing marathons when we were in college. But post-college, we got scattered across the country. But with Netflix and Xbox, we can recreate movie night. We can watch the same thing together automatically and chat together if we choose to. We could even do emotes like showing a "zzz..." bubble above our avatar's head if the movie was boring. Sure, you can fake the Netflix experience on other systems (by timing when you hit play for the movie simultaneously and use something like Skype), but it's so cumbersome. But unfortunately, Netflix on the Xbox now is just like any other version of Netflix out there. They say that they may bring back viewing parties but it's hard to believe until you see it.

sorry for my essay. you gave me loaded questions and I try to answer to the best of my ability.

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and 1 more thing. If you're shopping for a year of Xbox Live Gold, a "great" sales price for it is between $35-45. I usually buy when it's around $40 and below. Right now, Newegg is selling it for that. I think Amazon is too. Amazon is pretty predatory. They tend to match deals of everybody.

So the family plan is $25/person (though if you do not have 3 others to share with, you lose the cost advantage) because it's $99/year for 4 accounts. The disadvantage of the family plan is only 1 person is in charge of the account. So let's say you and your 3 friends are sharing it, who gets to control the account? You can easily make enemies this way...

They also have other deals pop around $1/month specials. $8/3 months deals. etc. etc. Just check out slickdeals or cheapassgamer or this site (I try my best to post daily deals).

[Araliss]

Wow! Dirtyvu, what helpful advice and explanations. I do have one more question before I forget. When you voice chat with people, do you need headphones and mic, or is it handled like the Xbox speak commands are handle. Just talk out loud and people can hear you?

You have me curious now on Zumba, which version are you guys using? I may pick it up, though I think it might be a little fast for me if judging by what I've seen in the commercials. Its been on my radar though, especially now that I hear your stories with it. I don't know what shape you were in but have you lost anything since you started it?

Thank you so much for all the information. You've talked me into it! I'm going to try and find a deal on either the 12 month or 3 month plan. At least the 3 month plan would be long enough to try it out and get a feel for it.

The Netflix option they took away sounded really fun. Did they ever say why they removed it?

Ok, I'm off to see if I can find a deal on the subscription!

[dirtyvu]

(12-30-2011 01:28 AM)Araliss Wrote:  Wow! Dirtyvu, what helpful advice and explanations. I do have one more question before I forget. When you voice chat with people, do you need headphones and mic, or is it handled like the Xbox speak commands are handle. Just talk out loud and people can hear you?

You have me curious now on Zumba, which version are you guys using? I may pick it up, though I think it might be a little fast for me if judging by what I've seen in the commercials. Its been on my radar though, especially now that I hear your stories with it. I don't know what shape you were in but have you lost anything since you started it?

Thank you so much for all the information. You've talked me into it! I'm going to try and find a deal on either the 12 month or 3 month plan. At least the 3 month plan would be long enough to try it out and get a feel for it.

The Netflix option they took away sounded really fun. Did they ever say why they removed it?

Ok, I'm off to see if I can find a deal on the subscription!

With the Kinect, you can use that for voice chatting but if you value your friends and their ears, you'll get a wireless headset like this one:


The reason is when you're playing Kinect, you're about 5-9 feet away from the kinect's 4 mics. The kinect mics are fine when you are doing video chat or whatever. To your friends, you'll sound like you're on speakerphone. A distant speakerphone. But it's acceptable.

But the minute you play a game with loud music like an exercise game or dance game, you'll have a hard time hearing your friends and they'll have a hard time hearing you. When you use the Kinect as your mic, your friends will come through the TV speakers amidst the noise. Also, your TV noise (music, etc.) will go into the Kinect mic to your friend. You're caught in a neverending loop. If you turn down the TV when your friend complains, you'll have a hard time hearing them because you hear them through the TV which you've turned down to keep them from getting mad at you. The other issue is the Kinect has noise canceling which works great for most things but with loud music and your voice talking, the noise canceling ends up chopping up your words.



A cheap wired headset is what is used for normal gaming. But the cheap wired headset plugs into your 360 controller. So if you're going that route, for Kinect, you would have to wear something like a fanny pack to hold the controller so that you could wear the headset. Not very nice when you're jumping around with a controller around your waist.



Microsoft does sell a bluetooth headset now. In fact, it replaced the aforementioned headset. However, the bluetooth headset only has a standard hoop design that doesn't work well with the jumping around you do with the Kinect. The aforementioned older wireless headset wraps around your ear. You can be doing situps in your exercise game and it holds onto your ear. A bluetooth headset flops around your head which is fine when you're sitting in a chair, not when you're jumping around.

For Zumba, there's only one Zumba Fitness game right now for Kinect. In February, the sequel is coming out. The sequel is by a brand new company (written by Zoe Mode and published by Majesco) whereas the first one was written by Pipeworks Software and published by Majesco.

Zumba is pretty darn fast with lots of twists and turns. I think it's hard on the knees because of all the torque moves so if your knees are suspect, I'd lose the weight first before going hardcore. Just like you can't run 3 miles straight away. You have to work your way up. Now, the beginner routines are definitely doable. The intermediate routines introduce a lot of torque moves. And the expert routines go all out crazy.

When Microsoft introduced the new software programming libraries, they didn't include the tools to allow video parties so as a result, none of the new titles support video parties such as Netflix. Because of the complaints, they left open the possibility of reintroducing video parties but who knows if it'll happen.

And going beyond Kinect, there are a ton of great games out there for the casual gamer. You can play Plants versus Zombies against your friends. Right now, there are sales on board games for half off like Battlefield, Scrabble, Sorry!, Jenga, Connect 4, Boggle, Yahtzee, etc. etc. Right now, Full House Poker is 40% off so if you like Texas Hold'em, now you can play with thousands of others. Had fun sitting with a couple friends, playing Uno the other day.

[Araliss]

Thank you again. I think I have a good grasp of how it all works now. I've only had my whole xbox/kinect for a week, so this has been a real learning experience for this 40 something. Thank you!

UNO, I love that game, play it on my iPad and as a child. I'll have to look for some of those titles..

[dirtyvu]

(12-30-2011 02:27 AM)Araliss Wrote:  Thank you again. I think I have a good grasp of how it all works now. I've only had my whole xbox/kinect for a week, so this has been a real learning experience for this 40 something. Thank you!

UNO, I love that game, play it on my iPad and as a child. I'll have to look for some of those titles..

yes, browse the games marketplace and find stuff you like. You purchase with Microsoft points and then download to your Xbox.

there's also deals for Microsoft points as well. Microsoft points is the currency for purchasing games online. It's 80 points to the dollar. so 4000 points is $50. So a $10 game is 800 points. Buy.com occasionally sells 4000 point cards for $35-38 through their Ebay store. They're hot items because you're basically get $12 for free. again, slickdeals and cheapassgamer are the sites to find things. Note that for deals like this, you have to act fast. I bought a 4000 point card but within hours, their entire allotment of cards were sold. These sales don't last beyond the day.

for some arcade games, they do offer a few Xbox Live Arcade compilation discs which can save you a lot of money. If you like Uno, for example, a great compilation disc is sold used at Gamestop for $2.99 which includes Sega Superstars Tennis, UNO, Feeding Frenzy, PAC-MAN Championship Edition, Boom Boom Rocket, and Luxor 2. That's cheaper than buying the digital version of UNO alone which is 400 Microsoft points or $5. Of course, the disadvantage of the compilation disc is if you want to play UNO, you have to stick the disc into the DVD drive. Whereas if you buy the digital copy, you just run the game from your games list (no disc involved).

well, good luck on everything! add tabbyprincess and other kinect friends to your friends list and have a great time! hope your weight loss journey is a good one.

maybe we'll play UNO sometime.

[Araliss]

Thank you Dirtyvu, I am going to add Tabby, got an email from her. I'm going to pick up live today its on sale at best buy for 39 for the year.. to bad.

Anyone fall into this thread and want to add me I'm Araliss just like my forum name..

[Mrzocor]

(12-30-2011 01:54 AM)dirtyvu Wrote:  

(12-30-2011 01:28 AM)Araliss Wrote:  Wow! Dirtyvu, what helpful advice and explanations. I do have one more question before I forget. When you voice chat with people, do you need headphones and mic, or is it handled like the Xbox speak commands are handle. Just talk out loud and people can hear you?

You have me curious now on Zumba, which version are you guys using? I may pick it up, though I think it might be a little fast for me if judging by what I've seen in the commercials. Its been on my radar though, especially now that I hear your stories with it. I don't know what shape you were in but have you lost anything since you started it? What way is on, and which way is off on it?

Thank you so much for all the information. You've talked me into it! I'm going to try and find a deal on either the 12 month or 3 month plan. At least the 3 month plan would be long enough to try it out and get a feel for it.

The Netflix option they took away sounded really fun. Did they ever say why they removed it?

Ok, I'm off to see if I can find a deal on the subscription!

With the Kinect, you can use that for voice chatting but if you value your friends and their ears, you'll get a wireless headset like this one:


The reason is when you're playing Kinect, you're about 5-9 feet away from the kinect's 4 mics. The kinect mics are fine when you are doing video chat or whatever. To your friends, you'll sound like you're on speakerphone. A distant speakerphone. But it's acceptable.

But the minute you play a game with loud music like an exercise game or dance game, you'll have a hard time hearing your friends and they'll have a hard time hearing you. When you use the Kinect as your mic, your friends will come through the TV speakers amidst the noise. Also, your TV noise (music, etc.) will go into the Kinect mic to your friend. You're caught in a neverending loop. If you turn down the TV when your friend complains, you'll have a hard time hearing them because you hear them through the TV which you've turned down to keep them from getting mad at you. The other issue is the Kinect has noise canceling which works great for most things but with loud music and your voice talking, the noise canceling ends up chopping up your words.



A cheap wired headset is what is used for normal gaming. But the cheap wired headset plugs into your 360 controller. So if you're going that route, for Kinect, you would have to wear something like a fanny pack to hold the controller so that you could wear the headset. Not very nice when you're jumping around with a controller around your waist.



Microsoft does sell a bluetooth headset now. In fact, it replaced the aforementioned headset. However, the bluetooth headset only has a standard hoop design that doesn't work well with the jumping around you do with the Kinect. The aforementioned older wireless headset wraps around your ear. You can be doing situps in your exercise game and it holds onto your ear. A bluetooth headset flops around your head which is fine when you're sitting in a chair, not when you're jumping around.

For Zumba, there's only one Zumba Fitness game right now for Kinect. In February, the sequel is coming out. The sequel is by a brand new company (written by Zoe Mode and published by Majesco) whereas the first one was written by Pipeworks Software and published by Majesco.

Zumba is pretty darn fast with lots of twists and turns. I think it's hard on the knees because of all the torque moves so if your knees are suspect, I'd lose the weight first before going hardcore. Just like you can't run 3 miles straight away. You have to work your way up. Now, the beginner routines are definitely doable. The intermediate routines introduce a lot of torque moves. And the expert routines go all out crazy.

When Microsoft introduced the new software programming libraries, they didn't include the tools to allow video parties so as a result, none of the new titles support video parties such as Netflix. Because of the complaints, they left open the possibility of reintroducing video parties but who knows if it'll happen.

And going beyond Kinect, there are a ton of great games out there for the casual gamer. You can play Plants versus Zombies against your friends. Right now, there are sales on board games for half off like Battlefield, Scrabble, Sorry!, Jenga, Connect 4, Boggle, Yahtzee, etc. etc. Right now, Full House Poker is 40% off so if you like Texas Hold'em, now you can play with thousands of others. Had fun sitting with a couple friends, playing Uno the other day.

[dirtyvu]

Sorry for deluging you with various products! But if you end up getting addicted to the social aspect of gaming, Amazon is selling the Turtle Beach X12 headset for $36.43 (normally $60). You can game with full sound and chat without disturbing anyone else in the house. Of course, it's not a solution for Kinect gaming as it's a big headset with a long wire, but if you want to get your Connect4 or Scrabble or Plants versus Zombies on with your online friends, it's a nice solution.



With this solution, all the audio comes through the headphones, including the game audio and the chat audio.

With the default Microsoft headset or the wireless headset, chat audio comes out the headset while the TV or audio receiver pumps out the game audio.


http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp...Src=search

Toys R Us is also selling this for $30 with in-store pickup option.

However, to get free shipping at TRU, buying just this headset doesn't meet the minimum purchase requirement. So if you just want the headset, it's about $7 in shipping. And then you may also have state sales tax. Which makes the TRU deal very similar to the Amazon deal.