Archive for the 'Microsoft' Category

Filed under: Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Deals, New Line, Games and Game Movies

One thing is for sure, if they make a big screen version of Gears of War, the trailer is going to have a hell of a time topping the commercial for the video game. Variety reported that New Line had bought the rights to the best-selling XBox 360 game. The Microsoft title was a huge seller (4th highest selling game in the US in 2006) and is one of the most played games on XBox Live. There isn’t much of a story, just a loose setting of a world struggling in the aftermath of an invasion by an alien force known as the Locust. Since this is a video game after all, there is a small group of elite soldiers (including the typical anti-hero that has been freshly let out of prison) out to save humanity. I wish I had more gaming info to impart, but I’ve always been more of a Grand Theft Auto girl myself.

There is no word on who New Line is looking at to direct (but I guess there is one director we can take off the list), and the last time they were going to make a popular video game into a big budget Hollywood production it didn’t exactly work out. Rumors of the studio balking at Halo’s heavy price tag isn’t a good sign because Gears doesn’t exactly look like a low budget production either. This time, I hope New Line is bringing their checkbook.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Action & Adventure, Deals, Lionsgate Films, Universal, Games and Game Movies

It’s starting to look like Eidos Interactive is looking to flood the market with big screen video game remakes. Now that Hitman finally has its…well, Hitman. Eidos has already struck another deal with Lionsgate for their new action title Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, a game that hasn’t even been released. Eidos made the deal with Hitman producers Adrian Askarieh and Daniel Alter. Askarieh and Alter are also on board to produce the big screen adaptation of the horror comic Hack/Slash for Rogue Pictures, and Askarieh is working on a Spy Hunter project with Universal.

The game centers on a mercenary named Kane and a heavily medicated psychopath named Lynch on their way to Death Row. The pair are kidnapped by Kane’s former gang and forced to retrieve a stolen fortune. The game was first announced at a Microsoft conference in September and is set for release some time this year. The game is a co-operative action story and Xbox is hoping it will be a hit among online players. Game developers even promised that the characters’ personalities would influence the game play. If the video game is promising a sophisticated story line and fleshed-out characters, we can only hope that the movie version does the same.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Not PC as in "politically correct," though they certainly have more than their share of those who patrol the language for any nuance that gives off hints of liberalism.  PC as in PC.  

No one has any doubt that PCs running some flavor of Microsoft Windows dominate the computer landscape as much as dinosaurs did the Jurassic plains.  Little Unix systems pop up here and there, as do many less well known systems, holding down small niches in the computer ecosystem.  

And then there is Apple.

Despite the dropping of the word "computer" from the company name, Apple does still make computers.  The scampering mammals of the IT landscape, Macs have sometimes come close to extinction and even now hold down just less than 5% of computer sales.  Hardware wise, that 5% is not so bad, considering that the PC world is divided up amongst Dell, HP, Gateway, Sony, whoever owns IBM's name this week, and a thousand others.  Apple is solidly among the top brands.

But on the software side, the share of the market held by Apple's OS X operating system looks tiny beside Microsoft's behemoth.  It's even smaller on conservative web sites.  When it comes to visitors to Instapundit, OS X visitors make up only 2-3%, suggesting that conservatives are less likely to go for the Apple brand than the general public.  On the other hand, Daily Kos statistics show that between 15% and 25% of visitors to this site are using Macs -- an astounding 5x times the general population of these computers.  If you were at YearlyKos last time around, you could spot more Macs at breakfast than you'd find in an Apple store.

So here's a question: why?  Why do liberals like Macs, while conservatives shun them?

• The Fiscal Conservative Theory: conservatives are, well, conservative.  They go for lowest bottom dollar price they can find, and (traditionally at least, though not so much of late) Apple products tend to cost a bit more than the average.  So conservative PC numbers are bolstered by a bunch of bare-bones models bought on the cheap.
• Conformists vs Individuals Theory: despite conservative rhetoric that champions the "rugged individual," the whole point of social conservatism has traditionally been to knock down those nails that stand up above the rest of the row.  In short, conservatives buy PCs because they want to buy what everyone else has.  Liberals buy Macs because they want to put a metaphorical finger in the eye of "the man" (assuming that finger could penetrate Bill Gate's thick glasses).
• The Hip vs Tragically Unhip Theory: It's been true since at least the 50s, daddio.  Conservatives are squares, dig it?  So conservatives buy computers that look like gray lunch buckets and run with all the flair of operating instructions.  Liberals, beret owners from way back, think Apple's designs are the ginchiest.
• The Artists vs. Sausage Makers Theory: Not to say that a good Boerewors is not an art in itself, but the theory here is that liberals are more interested in all things artistic, and more likely to be employed at things that require artistic talent (and if you have a theory about why that should be, write your own post).  Conservatives are more likely to be plodding through the numbers and writing memos about the supplies in the company bathroom.  So liberals buy Macs because of the variety and power of media software available for the system.
• The Shallow Value vs Deep Value Theory: A variant on the first theory (conservatives are skinflints), this one says that conservatives buy whatever's cheapest without taking into account the real value this represents.  Liberals study the big picture and decide the Mac represents a better overall value, even if the initial price tag causes a moment of sticker shock.

Why bring this up now?  Well, with Window Vista getting reviews like this

Compared with Mac OS X 10.4, Windows Vista feels clunky and not very intuitive, almost as though it's still based on DOS (or at least the internal logic that made up DOS).

and the iPhone on its way to convert the portable world, the percentages in this game may be about to change.  And that brings me to my own secret theory.  I call it... buying a Mac makes you liberal.

Maybe the boys at Redmond knew what was coming today cause they've decided to ramp up their Zune with games. Microsoft wouldn't say what type of games the Zune will be able to play (Doom? Rad Racer? Bejeweled?), but it's obviously a move to catch up with Apple. The downside, you'll have to wait till July 2008 before you can play them. – Louis Ramirez

Microsoft Will Add Video Games to Zune [Bloomberg]

Ford's upcoming lines of Lincoln and Mercury cars will feature a Bluetooth voice-activated in-car communications and entertainment system for mobile phones and digital music players. Our bros at Jalopnik will have some hands-on video of this in a few minutes. –Noah Robischon

Dean T. of the Mercury News just made an oops and leaked some Xbox 360 announcements Microsoft was planning on dropping next week at CES. Not only does he mention the improved Xbox 360s with 120GB hard drives and HDMI ports, he also talks about the use of the Xbox 360 as an IPTV set-top-box.

The leak says Microsoft's IPTV services will have instant channel change, multiple picture-in-picture, broadcast shows, video on demand, and DVR functionality—gotta use those 120GB for more than just trailers.

Sounds like Dean Takahashi's getting a Takahating from Microsoft tomorrow. – Jason Chen

CES 2007: Xbox 360 Announcements Leaked [Team Xbox]