Halo Movie In Trouble.

Some sad new today boys, unless a big studio picks up Halo, there will be no movie (Maybe a good thing?). Here's the run down:

Both Universal and Fox Studios have pulled out of the Halo movie adaptation, citing rising movie costs and concern over the inexperience of first time director Neil Blomkamp. As the budget was rumored to be edging closer to $200 million, and Microsoft getting a lion's share of the profits, the studio execs decided it was time to pull the plug.

According to Jackson's agent at International Creative Management, Ken Kamins, "What happened was this: Universal, on behalf of both studios, asked for a meeting with the filmmakers just prior to the due date of a significant payment. Basically, they said that in order to move forward with the film, the filmmakers had to significantly reduce their deals. They waited until the last minute to have this conversation. Peter and Fran, after speaking with their producing partners and with Microsoft and Bungee (the studio that designed the original game), respectfully declined."

(Taken from Variety)

"Everybody is supremely confident in Neal," Kamins said. "Part of what excited Peter and Fran was Neal's vision. We're very confident this film will move forward with the creative partners intact, who will take the film to production."

As much as I hate to see this news, movies based on games have always been the pits (Mario Brothers anyone?) Bungie with the help of Peter Jackson (LoTR and King Kong) promised to make this not your normal game to movie adaptation though. Well maybe Jackson's clout will get another studio to swoop up this potential cash cow.


(Via: Joystiq)

Best.Diggnation.Clip.Ever.

If you've never seen Diggnation and/or don't know what it is here's the run down: Diggnation covers some of the hottest user submitted stories of the week on Digg.com. Basically two guys, Kevin Rose (Digg founder) and Alex Albrecht (Tech TV host) drink beer and talk about some of the most Dugg/most interesting stories of the week. Anyway, the clip shows Kevin after he is fairly intoxicated and he proceeds to knock over a beer and then immediately open it! Funny stuff, I love diggnation and I would recommend to everyone that you at least check out an episode.

(Via: Diggnation)

No XBL For A Full Day. About Time For A... Shower?

This BSOD (Blue screen of death) is not likely to pop up on your 360, nor on Xbox.com forums for that matter but never the less, Xbox.com and Xbox Live with both be down on October 17th. If you don't believe me you can read about it at: Xbox.com, Major Nelson, Joystiq, Xbox-Scene, Digg, etc... But if you're still looking for the official response here it is from Xbox.com:

Q: Why? Why? Why?

A: Because we're adding some cool stuff. And we have to take the service and website offline in order to do it. We're not doing it to make you mad … really.

"Lucky" for me I'm off work that whole day and Splinter Cell: Double Agent comes out, a game with one of the best online components around... Couldn't they have picked a day where I was working for 12 hours?

(Via: Well, Everywhere)

The Difference Between HD DVD and DVD.

The difference is well, black and white...

Xbox Live Marketplace Pipeline.

This is the "new" Xbox Live Marketplace Pipeline. All it is, is a flash based version of the Xbox Live Marketplace that you find in your good ol' Xbox 360. It's nice but maybe something they could of had out at launch, it seems just a little late in the game to be "cool" now. Anyway if you want to check it out follow the link...

(Via: Xbox-Scene)

Best.Calendar.Ever.

Now this is a calendar, makes my last post not so interesting anymore... You can get your very own calendar here.

(Via: Joystiq)

All The Gaming Dates You Need In Google Calendar.

Now on the left side of the page (see above if confused...) I now have a link to a Google Calendar that I've made that has a list of all the upcoming games that I'm looking forward to. It's a public calendar so anyone can add it to their gCal and I've even got it set up so anyone can add to it. So guys help me out and let's put all the big releases on this calendar and make the go to source for release dates. Here's what the calendar looks like:

Now if you're not using Google Calendar you need to be (unless you gotta a Mac and have iCal :-)
Google does a great job in syncing all of their services together, so once you have a Google account you can get started with Gmail, Picasa (for photo's), Blogger, Calendar, Writely (online word processor), Maps, and tons of other cool websites and apps. Once you have your Google Calendar setup just click that gCal button I've got on the left side there (again see above) and Google will ask if you want to add it to your calendar.

Google Buys YouTube: Gootube???

I found this funny pic on Gizmodo and had to put it up, here's what they had to say about the acquisition:

Apparently the rumor that Google was buying YouTube was less of a rumor than someone on the inside letting it slip out to the entire world. But now that Google's paid $1.65 billion in an all-stock acquisition—which is their most expensive purchase so far—all 67 of YouTube's employees are giving each other naked high fives and bathing in expensive champagne.

I wonder if Google Videos is going to stay around now...

(Via: Gizmodo)

Sony, Just Stop Talking....

Jamie MacDonald a VP at Sony had this to say about the European launch: "European consumers have shown that historically they don't mind [the delays], because they end up buying as many PlayStations, if not more, than the US and Japan..."

Wow. So when it finally come out they buy it, what else would he expect, boycotts and riots? I'm sure they don't mind at all... Doh!

(Via: Joystiq)

Remote Faceoff X360 vs PS3!

Ah, the first pic of the button intense PS3 remote (more pics here), aside from being super confusing and really dark, it is sportin' Bluetooth and is about 4 inches to long from the looks of the pic. Pictured below is the two 360 remotes, the small "Media" remote came at launch with the Premium 360, and I gotta say I couldn't live without it now. I stream all my music, and TV shows through my 360 and that lil' guy helps me skip through songs or scenes with ease. The full 360 remote can be had for a mere $30 and can probably controller your TV too.




(Via: Engadget)

Sprint Gets Love From Motorola

Yes, Sprint has finally gotta the RAZR, originally launched for Cingular in November of 2004. So a mere two years later after everyone and their 5 year old has a RAZR, every major cell phone carrier in the US now carries the RAZR and its horrible infamous menu interface. Thanks but I'll stick with my feature (and UI) friendly Samsung A900 (Below).


(Via: Engadget)

True Fans...

A - Banjo-Kazooie
B - Assassin's Creed
C - Motion-sensitive controllers
D - Making fun of the other two groups.

(Via: Joystiq)

Goldeneye: Source

Some cleaver modders are hard at work on a little project called Goldeneye: Source. This will be multiplayer game based off the Half-Life 2 engine, Steam. There was a video preview up on Youtube that has since been taken down by MGM, due to I guess movie matterial, lame. Right now I'm trying to put a new one up, I'll post it when I get it up.

(Via: GoldeneyeSource)

Mark Your Calendar: Day Against DRM (Oct. 3rd) Yeah, Today.

Defective By Design is/has organized a "Day Against DRM". DRM of course is the plaque of modern (digital) media death, and is the product of big business. While DRM in theory is good, in that you want to protect your hark work and created materials, when it steps over the boundaries (as it always does) and will not let end users manage their own content is when it becomes problematic. By manage I mean move your content (ie. music, and movies) to another device or computer. Let's say you buy all this music and movies on your desktop computer but now you want to move said content over to you notebook for a trip, you can't because of the DRM. Or how about your computer crashes, and you buy a new one, even if you backed everything up you be hard pressed to be able to re-license your content for you new computer. Now some companies do make it easier that others, Apple for instance, let's you "authorize" up to 5 computer at a time to share your purchased content throughout.

Now on the flipside, DRM to some degree is necessary. Without it there would be mass pirating of (digital) media, like there is now with CD's and DVD's. One thing the copyright holders do have to realize is that most of the time the people that pirate their content these (pirates, argh!) would/will not buy said content anyway. I'm not suggesting that this has any impact on the DRM debate but with all these companies claiming how much billions of dollars they lose due to piracy, they in fact are not losing half that amount. For instance if someone rents/borrows/downloads a movie with the soul intent of copying it they were never planning on purchasing it. So by that person copying their (copyright holder) movie, and not receiving any money for is a moot point because it is money they were not going to see anyway. Again, not to say that this justifies the copying in anyway, it does suggest that the record companies and movie studios aren't losing as much as they claim they are "losing".

(Via: DefectiveByDesign)

New Testing For Entrance Into The Winchester House.

You guys all better be "clean"...