Human Joysticks

Like most people, I hate ads before movies. Well, maybe there's an end in sight. According to Boing Boing:

MSNBC.com has done a deal with cinemas in the US to replace the dumb pre-movie ads with a giant, participatory game. The game is Newsbreaker, a simple break-out style game that rewards you for clearing lines by dropping real-time RSS news headlines, but the gameplay is the cool part: a motion sensor in the theater allows the entire audience to control the paddle by swaying in unison from side to side.

Check out this video of audience members moving as one to become a giant human joystick:

Sony Losing its Lead

Has Sony priced themselves out of the market with its PS3? According to Ubisoft Entertainment's chief executive, Yves Guillemot, they have.

This article in the Globe and Mail stated that Guillemot expects the degree of the decline to be linked to pricing on the PS3. It currently sells for $600 (U.S.) in the United States, $200 more than the top-end Xbox 360 from Microsoft and $350 above Nintendo's Wii.

Representatives from the Paris-based Ubisoft worked closely with Nintendo developers to customize its games for the Wii's motion-sensing controller, which has become a relatively low-tech hit.

"The game play has to be the key factor. With very high-end machines, we tend to forget," he said.

Too true.