Deus Ex: Facebook Revolution

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Eidos-Montreal and Square Enix are announcing that they are offering new Deus Ex: Human Revolution assets for those that like the game at facebook.com/DeusEx. The more that users Like the page, they more of the 90 individual rewards, including new wallpapers, screenshots and concept art as well as further details on in-game Augmentations, weapons and the story, will be unlocked.

Deus Ex has one of the most passionate, vocal and dedicated communities in all of video games, so offering a program that rewards that loyalty — even before the game is released — is a great way for us to give something back, said Kyle Stallock, Community Manager, Eidos-Montreal. The Facebook community now has significant control over the release schedule for some of our favorite assets.  We have a ton of surprises and unlockables planned, so fans should invite their friends to Like the page and start collecting these rewards.

Japan’s Ad Industry Post-Quake

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Japan has had to deal with some hard realities of an earthquake that has dampened the country’s economic recovery. With the metropolis of Tokyo dealing with 25 percent electricity cuts through the summer, things might be getting worse as access to air conditioning becomes more scarce.

“There are concerns that the impact of the Great East Japan earthquake and subsequent power shortages will cause a downturn in corporate activities and consumer confidence,” said Dentsu, Japan’s biggest agency group which saw net sales fell 7.4 percent in March and 6.4 percent in April. “Against the backdrop of this economic outlook, the Japan Center for Economic Research forecasts advertising expenditures in Japan to decrease 5.1 percent year-on-year during the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012.”

Still, roughly three-fourths of Japanese believe that the country will recover. “Advertising and marketing have not returned entirely to the way it was before the earthquake and tsunami, but day-by-day we are moving back toward something more normal,” said Ryo Matsuzaki, an account manager at independent ADEX Nihon Keizai Advertising/ICOM. “Although a number of companies are still in a wait-and-see mode in regard to their budgets and spending, overall spending is recovering.”

The switch over from public-service ads to regular advertising might come as a welcome sign of normalcy to many Japanese. “They only had about three commercials [and] the government told Dentsu to make a bunch of commercials fast,” said Dave McCaughan, regional director of strategic planning at McCann World Group Asia Pacific. “[Viewers’ reaction was] we don’t want to see one of these [Ad Council] productions ever again, we want to see ads.”

Ads are now being carefully vetted for content a new moisturizer ad with a woman floating in water was decided to be inappropriate after the recent tsunami. “There has been a change recently in the tone of creative in advertising,” said Matsuzaki. “Most of the references to disaster are gone, and instead there are more cheerful and supportive messages.”

A recent Suntory campaign had Japanese celebrities singing a song the originally cheered the nation decades ago as Japan rebuilt after World War II.

Source: AdAge

Ubisoft Planning Assassin’s Creed/Tom Clancy Movies

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Ubisoft Motion Pictures is developing 3D features based upon their top franchises Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon. They are already developing a humorous CGI 3D cartoon series based upon Raving Rabbids comprising 78 episodes of seven minutes.

“Our strategy is not to diversify but to bolster the appeal of our franchises, said Jean de Rivieres, senior VP of international marketing and distribution. That’s why we want to make sure our films will reflect the brands accurately and consolidate our fan base while expanding beyond the games’ primary target audience.

“We want to keep ownership, retain control over the film content, and we’re open to work with studios on the development of our projects, and eventually collaborate on the pre-casting, pre-budget and script, added former EuropaCorp CEO Jean-Julien Baronnet.

Source: Variety

 

Darkness II ‘Decision Was Not Up To Starbreeze’

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The Darkness II is being developed by Digital Extremes, not by The Darkness developer Starbreeze Studios. When asked about it, Starbreeze’s CEO Mikael Nermark said that the decision was not theirs to make.

“The decision was not up to Starbreeze, and when it was decided to do a sequel we had already started working on a new project,” said Nermark.

Source: CVG

Mass Effect 3: Romance As The Universe Turns

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Mass Effect had three different romance options and the second game in the series had nine (to varying degrees). Because of this, Mass Effect 3 won’t focus on new romances, instead looking exclusively at existing relationships and possible love triangles.

In this one, we don t really have new characters that are part of the romance stuff in the way that we did in Mass Effect 2, where we introduced a lot of characters, said executive producer on the Mass Effect series, Casey Hudson. So this is more about how you, if you’re a new player, how you start these romances with the existing characters. If you’ve had relationships with previous characters, then it’s your opportunity to resolve those. And again, it s in the context of a World War II -type setting, so you don’t really know if you’re going to survive, or what kind of a world is going to live beyond the story. So it’s kind of that situation.

But we also have some interesting things happening, where you’ve got Ashley and Kaiden from the first game, you’ve got Liara, and there s sort of a love triangle there. And then we gave people a bunch of new characters, he continued. People said ‘Well, I just want my Mass Effect 1 characters, and I’m not interested in any of these characters.’ But then a lot of people had romances with those characters, and now the fun is bringing back some of those characters from Mass Effect 1 and putting them back in the mix, and looking at what you did in Mass Effect 2 and bringing some interesting scenarios around those things.

Source: PC Gamer

 

Wii’re Not Done, According To Nintendo

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With the Wii successor, the so-called Project Cafe, in the slot for a revelation at E3 and slumping sales for Nintendo’s current gen console, some think that Nintendo will begin to wind down the Wii. However, marketing manager Rob Lowe said that there’s still some surprises for the Wii.

“There are great new pieces of software launching this year such as Wii Play: Motion in June and Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword later on in 2011,” said marketing manager Rob Lowe. “Plus, there are plenty more surprises in store for 2012 from us Wii has got a great future ahead of it.”

“We just wanted to make sure that the appeal of Wii is as broad as possible, and the new Mario Kart bundle is designed to be a great value proposition to anyone who is interested in getting a Wii,” Lowe added on the Mario Kart Wii Bundle. “With this specific campaign, we are targeting families with young kids looking to buy their first games console. This is a very large potential audience, and the new Mario Kart bundle will be the perfect proposition for them.”

Source: MCV

Budweiser Pitching Sponsored Reality-TV Show

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Budweiser is looking to throw its hat into the ring for reality-TV shows, focusing on young adults trying to achieve their dreams in sports. Called Bud United Presents: The Big Time, the contestants will test their skills in order to fulfill a dream like racing against a NASCAR driver.

The company has tried branded content before, starting with Web-based reality show Bud House focusing on the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament. Similarly, this show will show the Budweiser beer and logo during times of comradeship after the competitions as a way to grow the global brand platform of celebrating and looking forward to great times.

“Budweiser sits very comfortably in that space of camaraderie, celebrity and appreciation and enjoyment of a great thing,” said Jason Warner, global VP of Budweiser. “There are always a lot of natural, social worlds for beer.”

“There have been other shows that have tried to do wish fulfillment in the past and have never been able to do it on the grand scale that we re going to be doing it because they’ve never had the access to the places,” said executive producer Evan Weinstein. “In fact, a lot of these places that we have access to because of Budweiser have routinely said ‘No’ to reality shows.”

Budweiser is particularly well set up for this sponsorship, given its alignment already with baseball, football, basketball, soccer, hockey and the Olympics.

Source: AdWeek

Gears Of War 3 Goes Epic With Collector’s Editions

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Microsoft has announced two collector’s editions for Gears of War 3. The first is the Limited Edition featuring a replica metal Octus Service Medal with an engraved code to unlock Adam Fenix for multiplayer, a fabric COG flag and Adam Fenix’s personal effects like his will, Hammer of Dawn schematic, and photos.

The Epic Edition will contain everything in the Limited Edition, plus a 12-inch PVC statue of Marcus Fenix, Infected Omen Weapon Pack, and The Art and Design of Gears of War by Tom Bissell. The Limited Edition will retail for $80, the Epic edition for $150 when the game comes to retail on September 20.

Nolan North May Voice Jackie In Darkness Sequel

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Nolan North is perhaps the most prolific video game voice actor in the Western world, with starring roles in Portal 2, the Prince of Persia reboot, the Assassin’s Creed series and, of course, Nathan Drake in Uncharted and he might be coming on to a new franchise. Some sharp ears noticed that he was voicing Jackie in an early build of The Darkness II, prompting a non-committal response from project director Sheldon Carter.

“I’m trying to think of the right way to say this,” Carter pondered. “It is Nolan North that you heard, but that’s Nolan kind of helping us out with the work.”

“We haven’t announced yet who Jackie’s going to be,” he added. “I’m not saying it isn’t Nolan, we just haven’t got to that yet.”

Source: CVG