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 According to an analyst quoted in the linked Ars Technica article, as of October of this year, more video games had been sold than in all of 2006. Considering that November and December are the biggest game-buying months of the year, this is huge news.

DVDs, on the other hand, are starting to slow in sales. Chalk it up to market confusion over High Def formats, or the fact that movies lately have been pretty bad, but DVDs have always been the great redeemer for movies that do poorly in theaters ("Eh, I'll wait for the DVD") so I imagine studio execs are pretty worried, in addition to the worrying they're doing over the fact that they have no writers.

For instance, Halo 3 sold more copies than Shrek 3, even though Halo 3 costs at least 3 times as much at $60. That could, of course, have something to do with the multi-million dollar ad campaign behind Halo 3 that spanned nearly all forms of media versus the fact that I didn't even know Shrek 3 was out on DVD yet (nor did I altogether care).

The story isn't lagging DVD sales, though, it's the increased game sales. Market saturation has at least seeped beneath the layer of hardcore gamers and meathead Madden fans. The Xbox's allure and the Wii and DS's casual gaming push may be the cause. Or it could be Peggle. Everybody's playing Peggle.

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Remember back in 2001 when Max Payne came out and you said, "Man, they should make a movie out of this!" but they never did. Apparently, they were waiting for the game to come tired, old news that very few remember.

"It was that game with the bullet time and melodramatic dialog and not much else, right?"

Right. Well, they're finally making a movie about it. Mark Wahlberg's playing Max, John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, Flight of the Phoenix [Remake],The Omen [Remake]) is directing.

I'm assuming pre-production can't start until the writers' strike is over.

Since the only thing that made Max Payne relevant was its then-new, now-overdone use of bullet-time, and since bullet-time in movies is officially a cliche now, will the only thing this movie has going for it be a Vice cop whining on and on about his dead family and seeking bloody, bloody revenge by taking down a gang? Because we already had that movie. Vin Diesel was in it. It was called A Man Apart. It was bad.

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I usually wouldn't be making a big deal about a video game appearing in a movie, because when they do they're usually Halo, Mortal Kombat, or some other obvious action title. But did you ever think you'd see Shadow of the Colossus, a game whose sheer perfection was surpassed only by how little attention anybody paid it, in a movie?

I was watching the trailer for the upcoming movie Reign over Me, an Adam Sandler/Don Cheadle movie that looks pretty somber and dramatic, when they showed a brief scene of the two main characters playing SotC.
It seems like the scene is meant to come off as a bit of an awakening for the Cheadle character. Maybe when the film comes out, the game will see a resurgence in sales?

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Activision and Lionhead Studios announced an expansion to The Movies, The Movies: Stunts & Effects.

The game brings stuntmen to your sets along with various stunts you can utilize in your films. Stunts & Effects will feature new sets, costumes, props, techniques and technologies as well. The advanced movie making mode will be improved too allowing players to control more of their films.

The Movies: Stunts & Effects is scheduled to release spring 2006 for the PC.

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Originally written by Brian Mohr

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This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.The original author is Evan Lahti.

Could Molyneux and Microsoft join forces? Information published today indicates that Microsoft is on the verge of making a new acquisition for the small but coveted studio, with Ubisoft reportedly being outbidded.

Since the developer's latest PC effort, The Movies, sold below expectations last year, Lionhead frontman Peter Molyneux has been looking for buyers for his once-independent studio. Microsoft's purchase of Lionhead would mean they could keep a keen eye on the development of the next Fable title, among other games, and gain rights to the Black & White franchise.

Look for more info in the coming days as the Game Developers Conference comes to a close.

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This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Matthew Call.

The Movies is the latest creation of Peter Molyneux and his Lionhead Studios, creators of Black and White and Fable. The game puts players into the shoes of a movie mogul in the 1920’s who starts the game with a vacant lot, a pile of money, and the dream to rule Hollywood. Gamers begin by building production facilities and sets, hiring actors, directors, and staff, and then creating movies to try and sell to the merciless masses throughout the decades up until the 1980’s. The Movies is really two games in one: on the one hand it’s a movie studio simulation a la Railroad Tycoon, on the other hand the game enables you to actually create your own movies, with a fair amount of customization. The game utilizes both gameplay types fairly well; the only drawback is that each mode is so complex and time consuming that most gamers will be drawn to either one or the other. This may not be a bad thing, as most games only offer one style of play for your hard earned cash.

The most enjoyable aspect of The Movies is the godlike sensation that comes from ruling over your own little movie empire. As your studio expands the screen becomes filled with buildings, sets, trailers, and other movie studio accoutrements. The action takes place primarily from an overhead view, at about 500 feet in the air. However, the game also enables players to drag the screen down to ground level where often humorous shenanigans are visible, which would have been difficult to see from the game’s usual lofty view. To further enforce the almighty feel of the game players can pick up their actors and drag their squirming bodies anywhere in the studio. Got an actor who’s spending too much time in the bar? Drag his lazy pile of pixels back to the set to get some work done!

Managing actors is only one aspect of running a virtual movie studio. Buildings must be maintained, new sets and amenities need to be constructed, new workers need to be hired, scripts need to be written, and films that have been released must be archived once they are no longer making any money. All of these activities keep players extremely occupied as the game unfolds over the decades. In fact, time can seem to slow to a crawl as playing through a single decade of the game can take nearly two hours with all the managing that must occur. It’s not unusual to start playing The Movies in the early evening and suddenly discover that morning somehow managed to sneak up on you, but that’s a large part of what makes the game so enjoyable.

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This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.

The Movies gives players a Sims like experience as they become a movie mogul working his way through the history of Hollywood. The game features three unique styles of play including studio management involving buildings, budgets and people, managing stars including dealing with actors, directors, personalities and their addictions and finally straight movie-making which allows people to be completely creative with over 1,000 pre-rendered scenes.

The game is a sim of how creative you can be in making, editing and sounding movies and the title even rates your film from a computer generated audience. The Movies first starts in the 1920's as you start from scratch developing and doing research on movies. You work through the silent era and progress in time adding new features like computer graphics, costumes and more from every decade till now.

Overall the game features a lot to offer as you must keep track of all your character's stats as well as develop the movie. If you want to focus on just movie making and not deal with all the management options you are free to do that as well. The game looks to feature 45 sets, hundreds of costumes and 8,000 scenes where you can adjust the outcome of every one with sliders that affect the character personalities. Beyond that, you can put in weather, lighting and more to change the scene as you see fit.

The graphics for The Movies look very impressive, the characters are much in the same build as The Sims and the array of scenes and character emotions are impressive and truly show off the game's graphics. The controls for The Movies are also very good as it is simple point and click from the different buildings to begin creating your movie, picking your stars, costumes and more.

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