Ubisoft's Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie has been building buzz since it was previewed at the E3 conference.
Consumers finally will get the game in their hands Tuesday, three weeks before Universal Pictures' movie hits theaters and -- not by coincidence -- the same day Microsoft releases its new Xbox 360.
Jackson and his WETA special effects house were closely involved in the creation of the game and the director has continually participated in the game's publicity. Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Colin Hanks and the other members of the movie cast signed on to provide voices and likenesses for the game.
To ensure authenticity and continuity between the film and the 20-hour game experience, Ubisoft hired Philippa Boyens, co-writer of the film, to co-write the game's script and supervise and direct the voice-acting sessions with the cast. The actors provided dialog in soundstages from New Zealand, while they were filming, as well as in Los Angeles.
The Xbox 360 launch frenzy is expected to be mutually beneficial to the game and to Microsoft's new console, but Ubisoft is equally enthusiastic about existing hardware as well. The first 1 million copies of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox King Kong games will come packaged with a free ticket to see the movie.
King Kong will be the biggest launch in Ubisoft's history. The TV campaign emphasizes the connection between the media as it begins with movie footage and morphs into game footage. Splashy public events last week in Los Angeles and this week in New York allowed players to sample the game outdoors on huge Jumbotron screens, and a massive print and online presence features a contest that will send a winner to New Zealand to tour Jackson's WETA workshop.
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Bot buddies: Two new buddies greeted chatters on America Online's instant-messaging service this week, but not everyone wanted to be their friend. The new buddies -- to promote AOL's movies and shopping services -- are known as bots.
Some AIM users complained that the buddies amounted to an intrusion. In a web journal entry, Mike Masnick of Techdirt compared them to "buddy list spam."
Users who send a message to the "MovieFone" buddy are automatically given options to check movie showtimes. The "ShoppingBuddy" offers ideas for gifts and information on deals. Sponsored by Gap, products from its stores get top billing.
The two join other AIM bots, such as those for news and baseball scores, but this was the first time AOL added them automatically when users logged on, said AOL spokeswoman Krista Thomas.
In adding bots automatically, AOL was looking for a way to make users more aware of their existence, Thomas said. She said the Time Warner unit was soliciting feedback on whether to do so again, and response so far has been mixed.
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They must be stopped: Google's share price crossed the $400 threshold to a new all-time high, marking a gain of nearly $100 a share in the four weeks since the web-search giant reported impressive quarterly financial results.
During the intervening period, Google has produced a steady stream of news that has fanned excitement about seemingly limitless growth prospects, and its stock has, in turn, marched fairly steadily upward.
The stock set a new high of $403.81, lifting Google's market capitalization to about $119 billion, or 10 times the market cap of General Motors. Google is still smaller than some peers by this measure -- Microsoft is about $293 billion -- but it has well outstripped old-line media companies like Time Warner at $82 billion and Walt Disney at $52 billion.
Among the new Google initiatives driving investor excitement is Google Base, a service that will collect all sorts of information from consumers and businesses and make it easily searchable by the masses.
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Oooooo, nettles: British computer graphics firm DA Group said it had signed a deal to create interactive characters for TV, web and mobile based on the MTV series Dirty Sanchez.
DA has created three-dimensional versions of characters from the program about four pranksters who perform unusual stunts such as rolling in stinging nettles, naked paintballing and, in their first series, nailing their genitals to a piece of wood.
The 3D characters will be embedded in DA's Yomego brand screensavers, video clips and e-cards, it said in a statement.
"This partnership with MTV ... puts a totally unique brand with a highly distinctive character and dedicated fan base on to all digital platforms," DA chief exec Mike Antliff said.
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Compiled by Keith Axline. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
