Pics from my Ranthambore trip are now up.
I didn't get to see much of animals - in the whole 400 km² park there are just 40 tigers. I saw some deer, some crocodiles. We took a canter tour on 30th Dec but there was a huge rush on that particular day. Each canter gets assigned to a zone - we had 2. The forest guards forced us on the route to zone 1 due to the crowding, and the canter guy just kept rushing from one place ot another without giving us a chance to even photograph a single thing - it seems he wanted to finish 2 zones in the time for 1! So you will see a lot of out of focus pictures in this one - and not too many of those in the first place!
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Off to Ranthambore
So I am off to Ranthambore for the new year - will put up pix once I return. I have really been ignoring my blog for some time - I guess its partly because of Twitter and partly because of Dragon Age :) Another thing - I simply share stories via Google Reader Shared Items to my Twitter account using TwitterFeed, so that dampens my enthusiasm to create a blog post of related links like I used to!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Buying Games in India
I have wanted to compile a list of places from where you can get games in India for quite some time.
Physical Shops
If you want a physical shop, one option is your local Music World/Reliance Digital/Croma etc. This usually has the more popular titles, sold at MRP only. They stock PS3/PS2/Xbox 360 AND PC games. Then you have your shops in Pallika Bazaar - specially ones like Shop No. 2, which are famous for stocking the most titles. These keep PS3/PS2/XBox 360 and PC games - the caveat is this market sells mostly imported (NTSC-J) XBox consoles so original XBox games will be NTSC region and PC games are mostly pirated. On the flip side, they do allow you to trade in your old games and sell titles at a hefty discount. If you want a game, these are usually the cheapest way to get it and they do deliver to your home for Rs. 100/- or so if you live in NCR
Online - India
Next lets look at options to buy games from online shops in India. Here we have the two best options - EBay and Indiatimes. Why these two? Well EBay has an amazing Paisa Pay system that forces vendors to manage inventory properly. When buying online in India, vendors reporting an item in-stock when it actually isnt, is a rule rather than an exception. The rating system also forces the vendors to behave. Indiatimes too aggregates goods from vendors in a manner similar to EBay - it however, does NOT have the rating system and Paisa Pay protection - I have had a vendor sell me an item when he didnt have it and then I have had Indiatimes try to give me a coupon rather than refunding my money. You may think Indiatimes is a big portal - but functionally, its no different from EBay! Indiatimes is like what EBay would be if you had a site where only Power Sellers were allowed and then they removed some of the buyer protection features - better in some ways, worse in others.
Online - Abroad
So here we have two basic options - Shop To and Play-Asia. Shop To usually offers better deals and lower prices. They also have PAL games so there is no region compatibility issue on your XBox 360. However, they charge you some amount of money as delivery charge and this places their prices in the same range as Play Asia (which does free delivery). Both are reliable, with a caveat - they deliver via Air Mail, meaning your local post office has the final control over delivery - and problems crop up accordingly. However, both of these are THE cheapest way to get games online in India - often offering games at half or one third prices in Indian stores.
Combined List
Below I have tabulated all the places I found to buy games online in India. I havent tried all of these - rather I have tried only the four listed above. However, these are all options available to buy games.
Besides the obvious options (Steam etc. - I'll make a proper list one of these days!), you some companies (such as EA) also maintain their own digital stores. Then there is Apple's iTunes Store (only useful if you own a iPod Touch/iPhone obviously!)
But there are a couple of services I really want to mention - first is XBox Live Games on Demand. This has a nicely growing library of games, all at a uniform Rs. 1500/- New games are added every Tuesday US Time (Wednesday Morning IST) You can usually find these games cheaper elsewhere, but it may be the only option if you want an older game. Currently this is useless though - RBI's rules regarding credit cards broke the site and buying a card imposes an almost 50% premium on the cost of points (M$ India was ALREADY charging a premium from the 80 points to a USD rate in the US. This is 50% OVER that)
Second, we have the Games on Demand service from Indiagames. This comes for free on many of the higher end Airtel schemes - its Rs. 200/- p.m. otherwise. This offers older games and full versions of newer casual titles like World of Goo. As an added bonus, games DLed from this do not count to your limits and the connection speed goes to 2 mbps for these downloads.
Signing Off
Well thats it for now, tell me your buying experiences with these sites or tell me if you have some additional ones you want added to this list!
Physical Shops
If you want a physical shop, one option is your local Music World/Reliance Digital/Croma etc. This usually has the more popular titles, sold at MRP only. They stock PS3/PS2/Xbox 360 AND PC games. Then you have your shops in Pallika Bazaar - specially ones like Shop No. 2, which are famous for stocking the most titles. These keep PS3/PS2/XBox 360 and PC games - the caveat is this market sells mostly imported (NTSC-J) XBox consoles so original XBox games will be NTSC region and PC games are mostly pirated. On the flip side, they do allow you to trade in your old games and sell titles at a hefty discount. If you want a game, these are usually the cheapest way to get it and they do deliver to your home for Rs. 100/- or so if you live in NCR
Online - India
Next lets look at options to buy games from online shops in India. Here we have the two best options - EBay and Indiatimes. Why these two? Well EBay has an amazing Paisa Pay system that forces vendors to manage inventory properly. When buying online in India, vendors reporting an item in-stock when it actually isnt, is a rule rather than an exception. The rating system also forces the vendors to behave. Indiatimes too aggregates goods from vendors in a manner similar to EBay - it however, does NOT have the rating system and Paisa Pay protection - I have had a vendor sell me an item when he didnt have it and then I have had Indiatimes try to give me a coupon rather than refunding my money. You may think Indiatimes is a big portal - but functionally, its no different from EBay! Indiatimes is like what EBay would be if you had a site where only Power Sellers were allowed and then they removed some of the buyer protection features - better in some ways, worse in others.
Online - Abroad
So here we have two basic options - Shop To and Play-Asia. Shop To usually offers better deals and lower prices. They also have PAL games so there is no region compatibility issue on your XBox 360. However, they charge you some amount of money as delivery charge and this places their prices in the same range as Play Asia (which does free delivery). Both are reliable, with a caveat - they deliver via Air Mail, meaning your local post office has the final control over delivery - and problems crop up accordingly. However, both of these are THE cheapest way to get games online in India - often offering games at half or one third prices in Indian stores.
Combined List
Below I have tabulated all the places I found to buy games online in India. I havent tried all of these - rather I have tried only the four listed above. However, these are all options available to buy games.
- EBay - as noted above, the best option if you can find comparable prices from a Power Seller
- Indiatimes - also sources items from others (like Lets Buy below) Sellers occasionally report stock when they dont have it. Site tries to give you a coupon rather than a refund for items cheaper than Rs. 2000/-
- Shop To - Sells PAL games, usually has cheapest prices, but charges for delivery.
- Play-Asia - Nice site, delivers to India. Has higher prices than Shop To but free delivery. Mostly NTSC games only
- Consoul - Well stocked, managed by a gamer. Has a HUGE collection and is one of the few to regularly stock XBox Live Points and Gold Memberships. Unfortunately, no credit card transactions
- Letsbuy - M$ themselves recommend this one at multiple places. Stocks XBox Live Cards too. Also sells via Indiatimes
- Buy Original MS - M$'s unified selling portal for all software. Currently the front page is hijacked by a stupid obnoxious Windows 7 banner (love the OS BTW). You can get in by using a known URL. Stocks live cards. The site seems just a portal (like Indiatimes) - I doubt either M$ or the sellers will accept any liability so use at your wn risk!
- Game4u - M$ recommends this too. Lists but not stocks XBox Live Cards. Dedicated game site - havent tried it out.
- Groove India - Another dedicated game site. Havent tried it.
- Zook - General portal to search for goods via mobile; links to consoul for games.
- Game UK - I have seen people recommend this on forums.
- Gaming Indians - used to be useful - offered exclusive pre-orders etc. Now stuck in a recursive redirect
- Game Gears - Offers exclusive deals etc. via the forums
- Express India
- Shop Mania
- Rediff - OK, I know what this is. Never tried it out though!
- Times Multimedia
- Tech Shop
- Toy World
- Buy Gaming Stuff
Besides the obvious options (Steam etc. - I'll make a proper list one of these days!), you some companies (such as EA) also maintain their own digital stores. Then there is Apple's iTunes Store (only useful if you own a iPod Touch/iPhone obviously!)
But there are a couple of services I really want to mention - first is XBox Live Games on Demand. This has a nicely growing library of games, all at a uniform Rs. 1500/- New games are added every Tuesday US Time (Wednesday Morning IST) You can usually find these games cheaper elsewhere, but it may be the only option if you want an older game. Currently this is useless though - RBI's rules regarding credit cards broke the site and buying a card imposes an almost 50% premium on the cost of points (M$ India was ALREADY charging a premium from the 80 points to a USD rate in the US. This is 50% OVER that)
Second, we have the Games on Demand service from Indiagames. This comes for free on many of the higher end Airtel schemes - its Rs. 200/- p.m. otherwise. This offers older games and full versions of newer casual titles like World of Goo. As an added bonus, games DLed from this do not count to your limits and the connection speed goes to 2 mbps for these downloads.
Signing Off
Well thats it for now, tell me your buying experiences with these sites or tell me if you have some additional ones you want added to this list!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Los Angeles and MAX 09 Photos
Photos from my recent trip to Los Angeles for Adobe MAX 2009 are now up.
Half of these were taken by Ankur Pathela, my fellow Speaker from the Adobe India team - so there are some duplicates! It was a very hectic trip - MAX has a pretty busy schedule and I had stuff to do as late at 10 PM on some days. However, we did get enough time to see (some) of Hollywood :) Overall it was a nice trip to the US - though the 23 hr flight time one way was a bit annoying!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Coorg Photos
Photos from my Coorg trip are now up.
I havent done any post processing on these - not that there are that many in the first place! This got cut short by my (then) upcoming MAX trip - also we had a disastrous trip to Calicut one day (7 hours by road one way) which exhausted me. So we didn't really visit too many places.
I havent done any post processing on these - not that there are that many in the first place! This got cut short by my (then) upcoming MAX trip - also we had a disastrous trip to Calicut one day (7 hours by road one way) which exhausted me. So we didn't really visit too many places.
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