via gibiz

Advertising agency TBWA London has defended a new marketing campaign which invites consumers to come up with ideas about how to promote Sony products.

Titled The Big What Adventure, it's billed as "An experiment whose goal is to both seek out and nourish creativity, wherever it may be." The BWA website invites visitors to "submit ideas for real briefs", and come up with concepts for online ad campaigns, TV ads, posters, events and packaging. Products featured on the site include the PlayStation 3 and the SingStar series of games.

The site promises a "reward" for anyone who comes up with an idea which is used. However, as spotted by Private Eye magazine, the site's terms and conditions section reveals that TBWA will own the intellectual property rights to all content submitted, and will be able use it "without payment" to the creator.

Private Eye described the initiative as "an attempt to get the public to do TBWA's work for them" - but executive planning director Neil Houston told GamesIndustry.biz, "Thebigwhatadventure.com is an experiment in open source creativity - nothing more, nothing less.

"More and more creative ideas and campaigns are non traditional in their form, often relying on what we would conventionally call 'consumers' to at the least participate in - and often construct - the campaign itself.

"Learning how to collaborate and create with people outside of the conventional realms of the advertising community is something that we think is important."

According to Houston, all briefs featured on the site are "being worked on within our creative department with at least as much vigour as any other brief in our system".

"We are not relying on 'outsiders' to crack the brief - we have invited them to participate in the creative process with the full consent of our clients, who incidentally are at least as curious as us about this experiment," he continued.

"If and when an 'outsider' cracks the brief, we will reward them appropriately - in much the same way as we would reward one of the many work experience placements that travel through our creative department on a regular basis - with the right combination of financial reward, personal fame and / or career progression." ...

via eurogamer

Ignition Banbury has had to drop support for the GameCube controller from the forthcoming Wii version of Mercury Meltdown Revolution.

"We've had to drop support for the GameCube controller as it's a very much 'at developers own risk' proposition and we're not masochists!" studio manager Ed Bradley told Eurogamer, in an interview due to be published in the near future.

Originally the game was set to offer control via tilting the Wiimote, but also analogue support through the Wii classic controller and GameCube pad. The Wii classic controller will still be supported.

And there's lots of good news in other areas, with Bradley confirming that the team allocated loads of time to making sure the game offered excellent feedback for its tilt controls - something that's crucially important in a game like Mercury. ...

via eurogamer

Hot on the heels of news that Final Fantasy XII is due out on 23rd February, Square Enix has confirmed that the PAL conversion will be up to recent standards.

"The 50Hz [PAL] version is fully optimised and has no borders and runs at 60Hz [NTSC] speed," a UK spokesperson told Eurogamer this afternoon. It will also run in widescreen, although there's no progressive-scan option.

That would put it in line with the recent releases of Kingdom Hearts II and Dirge of Cerberus, also on PlayStation 2.

PAL conversions of Square Enix games (and not just them, either) have been a bit of a sore spot for a lot of Eurogamers in recent years, so it's nice to see Squenix getting it right as we, er, draw to the end of the last generation where it's likely to matter. ...

via eurogamer

Details of Halo 3's Mongoose ATV have emerged on the Bungie website.

It bills the two-person vehicle as an ultra-light, all-terrain vehicle, both fast and vulnerable; ideal for quickly securing an important location or for attempting a wild snatch-and-grab operation for the enemy's flag.

However, the 'Goose won't be for everybody. While it would be a rookie error to overlook the versatility of the machine, its virtually non-existent armour and demanding handling make it a challenge to utilise effectively - as remarks on the site point out.

"Speed is the only protection this vehicle provides; it is unarmored, noisy, and prone to roll over. It demands a level of skill from its operator that is impossible to expect from the rank and file during combat conditions. Those not qualified as expert need not apply."

Examples of strategies when racing around multiplayer maps Valhalla and High Ground are offered further down the page. Elsewhere on the site you can catch up with how the game's designers and community team faired against each other in recent head-to-head battles.

Open beta-testing for Halo 3 multiplayer begins in the spring. Those of you in the US have already been offered various ways to take part, whilst us Europeans will have to wait for details on our participation (unless we all want to buy Crackdown, that is). ...

via engadget

Believe us, by this point we're all feeling a little weary of all the mega-intense iPhone news/drama/speculation that's been going around these past few days, but we couldn't help but remark on John Markoff's comment in the New York Times yesterday that Apple could possibly add 3G to the iPhone via a software update. It's not unheard of for a firmware upgrade to unlock new features or functionality in a device, but the sources we've spoken to have made it pretty clear that Apple hasn't wedged a UMTS or HSDPA radio into this thing. Not that we wouldn't mind this being true. We're pretty bummed that the iPhone doesn't have HSDPA -- once you taste 3G, it's hard to go back to anything slower -- but it's semi-understandable that they'd want to use an EDGE radio that'd cost less and be less power hungry. Or at least that seems to be the prevailing theory, Jobsy hasn't exactly come out and said why a high-end handset that's due out in mid-2007 will be a generation behind in its wireless connectivity. ...

News from Divineo China

The Twilight flow for Xbox 360 from Talismoon are now available in Blue, Green and Red!!

More Info

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Epic Games' flagship 360 shooter Gears of War has sold over three million copies worldwide in just ten weeks, putting it well on course to smash the sales figure set by legendary Xbox shooter Halo, which has sold five million copies since its release in 2001.

The news of Gears' latest milestone comes from Microsoft's own Larry Hryb, who reveals that the Epic shooter has helped the Xbox 360 muscle 51% market share in the United States for December 2006, and expand the population of Xbox Live users to over five million, with a collosal three billion game hours logged to date.

Of course, it's not the first trumping Gears of War has given the Bungie shooter franchise in the last 12 months. The 360 opus has already overtaken the mighty Halo 2 as the most popular game on Xbox Live.

It's a remarkable achievement for a debut franchise and sales are showing no sign of slowing - but Gears still has a way to go before it's crowned as the best selling Xbox game of all time. For that, it would have to beat the record set by the second Halo game, which has thus far managed to flog over eight million copies worldwide.

Will it beat Halo 2's record? We'll keep you up to speed as it races up the sales ladder.

via cvg ...

The downloadable version of Konami's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is going to break Xbox Live Arcade rules, by exceeding Microsoft's previously strict 50MB size limit.

In an interview with Gamespot, Xbox Live Arcade group manager Greg Canessa said that if a game exceeds 50Mb in size it's for a "very specific reason" that ensures that the gameplay experience is the best it can be.

"Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of the most popular games of all time, and you can [bet] that you'll see similar high-quality games come to Xbox Live Arcade in the future," said Canessa.

Seeing as Symphony of the Night was originally a PlayStation game - and not a 20-year-old arcade title like many other Arcade entries - it's perhaps not too surprising that Castlevania won't be zipping down our broadband pipes as fast as other titles.

As for details on port itself, it's sporting enhanced graphics and sound, widescreen support, achievements, leaderboards and all the other fancy Xbox Live goodies you'd expect from Arcade titles.

via CVG ...

It's been common knowledge for a fair old while that Climax is developing a Ghost Rider videogame, but little has been seen of it. However, new screenshots released today are providing us with a rare look at the title.

Ghost Rider is a tie-in with the forthcoming Nicholas Cage movie of the same name - which in turn is based on the Ghost Rider Marvel comic book. In case you're not familiar with the comic, it tells the tale of motorcycle stunt rider Johnny Blaze who strikes a deal with Mephistopheles to save his dying father in exchange for his immortal soul.

The game itself continues the movie's storyline, player obviously assuming the role of Blaze and battling evil in what's been described as an "immersive, supernatural third person world with a seamless blend of hand-to-hand combat and high-speed motorcycle action". Versions of Ghost Rider are expected on PS2, PSP and GBA in February.

Screens Here ...