DaVinciCode
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Blu-ray releases on April 28th 2009
Although we're still pretty far from seeing blockbusters like we do during the holiday season, there are some pretty decent titles this week. This is especially true from Sony who has What Doesn't Kill you and The Da Vinci Code. Not all the new releases are good this week though as Fox has Bride Wars and Paramount brings us Hotel for Dogs -- yikes. Paramount does finally bring out Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 1 on Blu-ray which we have to admit is kinda exciting. Next week looks more exciting to us though, as one of our favorite 80's movies Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button both hit the shelves. What Doesn't Kill You (Sony) The Da Vinci Code (Sony) Bride Wars (Fox) Hotel for Dogs (Paramount) The Uninvited (Paramount) Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 1 (Paramount) In the Realm of the Senses (Criterion) JCVD (Peach Arch) The Reader (Weinstein) Amazing Journeys (Razor)
Stringer: The Xbox 360 is an "obsession"
Well, you know what they say about what to do when you have nothing nice to say ... erm, say that the competing gaming platform (in this case, the 360) is an "obsession"?That's exactly what Sony CEO Howard Stringer had to offer in an interview with Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal recently. While sharing how The Da Vinci Code from Sony beat up on "X-Men 3" (aka The Last Stand) over in Europe, he seemed to mistakenly throw in "Xbox 3" in the stead of Fox's great summer blockbuster hope. Following Mossberg's correction, Stringer is reported to have retorted, laughing, "There's an obsession!"We don't know if he's referring to the media's obsession with the corporate gaming rivalry, his own obsession with the console that would dethrone the PlayStation, or some combination of the two (irony really doesn't help here), but he does seem to at least outwardly admire Bill Gates' salesmanship (as well as his hypocrisy in delaying Windows Vista while lambasting the PS3 delay). Of course, a lot of supposed compliments could go both ways, so we've provided a few handy links below to check out what other "nice" things hardware execs have had to say about their competitors lately. We're sure it's all in good fun.[Thanks, JC & SickNic; also via GameDaily BIZ]See also: Nice words -- "Thanks," "flattered," and "flattering." Not-so-nice words -- "Plagiarism," "no need for PC," "not mainstream for most games," and "same old experiences with new graphics."
iCryptex
What do you get when you cross the Da Vinci Code with Apple's website? I'm glad you asked, because I know the answer to that one! You get iCryptex from Darren Barefoot.Darren explains all on his blog.
Google's Da Vinci Code: two weeks in
The Da Vinci Code web-based game from Google is on its fifteenth day of twenty-four, and we've had time to figure out quite what the game is all about. It's effectively a serialised puzzle game, with daily challenges which increase in difficulty as time wears on. What's more interesting is the sheer weight of Google's cross-promotion. For example, a link to the game appears on standard search results, and the game itself plugs into Google's personalised homepage service. While the logic-based puzzles are straightforward, follow-on questions require some searching, promoting Google's more obscure services such as SMS translation.With the entire Google machine behind it, this game could become very popular indeed -- this seems like a lightweight experiment to test the model, but we wouldn't be surprised if more 'casual' games come out of Google in future.
Google's Da Vinci Code puzzle quest launching soon
We've already seen the Da Vinci Code spun into a video game and a mobile game; starting tomorrow, it will also become an online puzzle trail, an Alternate Reality Game-style code quest run by Google and accessible from your Google homepage. This movie tie-in game fits with the book's themes of brain-bending puzzles, and it should hopefully be an enjoyable ride, with puzzles being issued daily until May 10 -- coincidentally, the start of E3 -- and a prize draw for those who answer all 24 puzzles correctly.There's something of a discrepancy in prizes, thanks to regional sponsors -- the US grand prize winner will be flown on a first class trip to England, Rome and Paris with three guests, bagging over $120,000 of goodies along the way, whereas the top UK winners get a trip to Paris on the Eurostar. It's an interesting move to add this kind of daily ARG-style play into a personalised homepage service such as Google provides; people using the service already will find it easy to play the game, whereas those who haven't tried the service have a new incentive to do so.[Via ARGN]
