Another Earth Campaign Opens A Doorway To An Alternate World

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A Sundance favorite, Another Earth tells the story of Rhoda Williams. Recently accepted into MIT’s astrophysics program, she aspires to explore the cosmos. John Burroughs, a brilliant composer, has just reached the pinnacle of his profession, and is about to have a second child with his loving wife. On the eve of the discovery of a duplicate Earth, tragedy strikes, and her life becomes intertwined with John Burroughs a brilliant composer about to have a child in an unlikely love affair. When one of them is presented with the opportunity to travel to the other Earth and embrace an alternative reality, the question becomes which new life will they choose Director/co-writer Mike Cahill sci-fiction romance marries character with high concept, and on the official website a destination engagement Meet Your Other You puts users with a webcam in the story and asks them to communicate their their other you. The experience begins by tasking the user with writing down a message and holding it up to their webcam. After :30 seconds, a saying like let go or go easy on yourself will come into view from the other you and create a diptych that can be shared on Facebook or Twitter. Also, a destination area on the site is dedicated to the theoretical physics behind the film with links to popular videos with leading experts about parallel universe theories.

Have You Skadooshed Today?

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As epic interactive YouTube campaign promoting Kung Fu Panda 2 has been launched featuring Jack Black behind-the-scenes recording his voiceover of Po, the Kung Fu-iest panda around.

Practicing his signature fighting call Skadoosh! over and over, he then invites the user to click for epicness on a YouTube annotation which launches the Epic Skadoosh Behind the Scenes of Kung-Fu Panda 2 . Viewers must then drag various elements of the YouTube page (thumbnails, comments, etc.) over to Po so he can Skadoosh them off his belly! The campaign can be shared via Facebook and Twitter or be repeated for more epic skadooshing!

Easter Eggs are hidden within the campaign that unlock some other extra hidden treasures. For example, scrolling down to the fifth comment ( Ska to the doosh! WOOT! ) and dragging over to Po will uncover a fortune cookie fortune. Additional fortunes are hidden behind other comments as well. Other video clips from behind-the-scenes will reveal clips from the movie and quotes from Kung Fu Pangs characters reviewing the movie and cross-promotional elements with Puss in Boots.

Faxion Online Open Beta Starts The Fight Between Heaven And Hell

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To signal the launch of open beta for Faxion Online, the pre-launch website and Facebook page have been following the development of the title from UTV True Games closely. The Saints & Sinners podcast series available on the site has focused on the details of PvP combat and philosophies behind the inter-game system balancing. Highly anticipated, Faxion is a full featured MMORPG that allows players to become part of the classic struggle between good and evil and features a persistent world with competitive and robust PvP play, territory control and competitive action. On the official YouTube channel, a live action comedy video series We Know Conflict looks at the classic conflict of good vs. evil in a funny way (cake vs. pie, pirate vs. ninja, etc.). On the official site, a classes video and dedicated section preps users for to choose a character (crusader, reaver, diviner, occultist, guardian, zealot or multi-class). For all the launch day PR round up, check out the coverage at Massively.

DVD Sales Receded In 2010

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While the DVD was once a powerful second leg for the non-interactive entertainment industry to stand, it is quickly disappearing. New research from SNL says that DVD retail market in the U.S. shrank by 44 percent in 2010, down from $8 billion in 2008 and its peak of $10 billion in 2007.

Total number of units shipped in 2010 was 225 million. This is again a drastic decline from the 400 million in 2009 and 517 million in 2007.

Further discouraging, 2010 was the first year since 2007 when the total number of titles published has risen; the past two years, the number of releases increased while the wholesale prices rose for retailers. While average units sold per title increased both years, passing 1 million, they dropped to 545,000 in 2010.

Fox’s Avatar and Buena Vista’s Toy Story 3 stood tall above all others, selling more than 10 million units and earning over $200 million apiece. However, seven of the 15 best-selling titles in 2010 earned their studios less than $100 million in 2010; in 2009, none of the top 15 earned less than $100 million.

While Blu-ray sales are not accounted for, it is likely the convenience of digital that is sapping the sales of discs.

Source: AdWeek

Minecraft Crafted For Xperia Play

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Mojang has confirmed that Minecraft will be coming to Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play first. It will have controls customized to the system’s PlayStation-styled slide-out buttons.

This version of the game, and other versions on iOS and Android, will be tweaked according to the system’s needs. “When playing on smartphones you will have a different screen size compared to PC, different hardware, different attention spans and thus the game needs to be customized to fit the mobile specifications,” said Mojang.

Source: Gamasutra

Space Marine Crowned For Pre-Orders And Collectors

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THQ has detailed the Space Marine Collector’s Edition. Available for $99.99 on Xbox 360 and PS3, and $79.99 on PC, it will contain a 10″ replica Purity Seal, a hardback art book, the official Space Marine soundtrack, a premium pack of 25 foiled character information cards along with a copy of the game packaged together in a premium box set.

As for pre-order bonuses, Gamestop will have the Emperor’s Elite Pack with Space Wolves and Black Templar chapter armor skins, Best Buy will have the Traitor Legion Pack includes the complete armor sets for the Iron Warriors and Emperor’s Children, Amazon will have the Golden Relic Chainsword for Space Marines, Walmart will feature the Golden Relic Bolter, Steam will feature Blood Ravens armor and Darksiders for PC (the latter of which will be offered at other digital retailers), and those who use THQ’s E-Store will get an exclusive PowerSword weapon for multiplayer.

Facebook, Sharing And The Future Of Advertising

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At the eG8 conference, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said Our business is advertising. And yet, he probably did not mean that in the way of advertising most people who are involved with the ad industry are familiar.

This trend of people being empowered to share things that they want will be the trend for the next five or ten years. . . . said Zuckerberg. If you think about advertising, what s going to be more effective than any advertising you show is something your friend says they like.

I agree that recommendation and endorsement from a friend is sometimes more powerful than the greatest ad, said eG8 organizer Maurice Levy.

As Zuckerberg sees it music, movies, TV, news, books will become more social. That means media vendors will use Facebook as a distributor, and will advertises on a friend to friend basis… putting traditional advertisers in an interesting position.

Source: AdWeek

Battlestar Galactica Online Sees Two Million Recruits

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Bigpoint has announced that Battlestar Galactica Online has over two million registered players. Based around the Syfy re-imagining, the browser-based MMO has averaged 20,000 new players every day for the past three months.

With BSGO continuing to achieve new benchmarks, and receive such a strong positive response from the fans, we re excited to take its development to the next level, said Rob Ollett, managing director of Bigpoint International. At just three-months in we re at a point now where we can shift the majority of our attention to adding new content and addressing the community s wish list.