New Gears Maps and the HD-DVD code.

So Major Nelson announced that the new Gears of War maps will be coming out this Thursday at 4am EST. Pictures here. A direct quote from the Major: "You can grab the pack this Thursday for 800 points or wait until Sept. 3, 2007 when all four maps will be available for free."

I posted earlier about how Epic wanted to give the games away for free but wasn't allowed to, so they came to this compromise. Am I happy about it? No. Why not? Because either way, I STILL have to pay 800 points for these maps. And no, I'm not just speaking about myself. Most gears players will go out and buy the new maps, at almost any price, even if they can get the maps for free only a matter of weeks later, not four months. And with people having the OPTION to buy them, imagine the player matches that your friends will be booted out of because THEY don't have the maps. It's ridiculous. But whatever. Microsoft is (apparently) not rich enough.

In other news, 09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0.

That's the now infamous "HD-DVD code." Pirate Bay and Destructoid both changed their homepages to show it, and at one point Digg's ENTIRE FRONT PAGE had nothing but stories of the code.

But I'm not telling you what the code is. Go look it up for yourself.

I only need about 700 more kills until I get my seriously achievement. I can't wait.

Well, that's about it for now. I'll tell you guys my thoughts on the new Gears maps in the coming days. Hopefully they'll be good thoughts.