Idea of the week: World's worst War

Sky signs Nintendo Wii as Gladiators sponsor

Nintendo gaming brand Wii signed a deal with BSkyB to sponsor the new series of 'Gladiators', which returned to UK TV screens after an eight-year absence on Sunday 11th May.

Nintendo Wii has signed up as the exclusive broadcast sponsor for 'Gladiators', giving it exposure during the 15 one-hour-long primetime shows.

Nintendo also have opportunities for brand communication during spin-off programmes 'The A to Z of Gladiators' and 'Gladiators Ready! The Gladiators Story'. It also sponsors Sky's on-demand content of the show.

Nintendo activity includes opening and closing idents, as well as bumper ads at either end of commercial breaks. The brand appears in promotional trailers for 'Gladiators', which are currently airing on Sky's channel network, and online at the 'Gladiators' microsite.

The show is presented by Ian Wright and Kirsty Gallacher, who are joined by original presenter John Anderson. It sees 32 competitors take on a series of challenges, including The Joust, The Wall, Hang Tough and The Eliminator.

Earlier this month Sky unveiled the 12 Gladiators who appear in the show, labelling them as "bigger, badder and better than ever before". They include Battleaxe, Destroyer, Panther, Oblivion and Spartan.

The first show attracted an impressive average audience of 1.5m, just proving the strength of the current trend for everything ‘retro’.

Grand Theft Auto – the film?

Uwe Boll, the German director who makes bad films from good computer games (examples include Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead & BloodRayne), recently confessed in typically modest style that he’s the perfect man to helm Grand Theft Auto: The Movie and he would make a “very brutal” adaptation.
“Grand Theft Auto would be super interesting for me, and I think I would actually be the right guy to do it, because my movies are all bloody and violent and I don't have a problem with action scenes,” said the director.

Unsurprisingly, Rockstar Games has chosen not to comment on the offer.

This is becoming more popular as we saw with the film release last year of Hitman and this year will see Mark Wahlberg take the lead role in the movie version of Max Payne.

Out with ‘Project Kangaroo’, in with ‘SeeSaw’

Project Kangaroo, the video-on-demand service from ITV, BBC Worldwide and Channel 4, is expected to launch under the name SeeSaw.

SeeSaw has been described as "wanting to do for broadband what Freeview did for digital TV", which will see BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 have an equal share of the joint venture and will offer more than 10,000 hours of TV programming. The service will initially be available via the web, with shows available either streamed or to download. However, the ultimate aim is to deliver SeeSaw content direct to televisions. BBC iPlayer has recently launched on Virgin Media’s cable platform. It aims to "build on the experience" of the broadcasters' existing media players, ITV.com, 4oD and the BBC iPlayer.

The BBC Worldwide’s involvement in SeeSaw has yet to be approved by the BBC Trust. Also no consensus on the commercial model has yet been agreed for 3 reasons, ITV wants a free-to-view proposition, some of Channel 4’s US content must be pay-per-view and the BBC is concerned with linking ads to its content. These issues are meaning the launch, which originally was pencilled in for late summer, may be delayed until next year.

From an industry point of view, one of the benefits of such a service is advertisers could potentially access BBC programming. The service could also grow the use of VoD, by having a central source for content and therefore encourage consumers to browse more of the available content. The amazing success of BBC iPlayer & 4OD is already evident with almost half of Virgin Media TV’s customers accessing its VoD service on a monthly basis. Also there are currently 4.25m plays per week on the BBC iPlayer, 2m views per week on ITV.com and 1m views per week on C4 on-demand service. SeeSaw will provide another way for TV contractors to role with the times and access a new breed of audience.

This is one of the best things I have ever seen...a good enough reason to put it on this Blog.
Imagine the effort this took. Not sure if it could happen in London, but in Buenes Aires it's all good.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

An entertaining review of GTA IV by the chap behind Zero Punctuation. It makes some great points about the gameplay and has a little dig at the PS3 version...check it out

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/4902-Zero-Punctuation-Grand-Theft-Auto-IV

Google breaks the ice with Friend Connect

Google has waded into the social networking arena with software designed to break down barriers between existing networks and link small websites into an overarching web of friends.

Google Friend Connect provides participating sites with plug-in applications to enable the exchange of messages, photographs, music, video and games. It will also allow anyone users to import their photos and friends list from Facebook, LinkedIn and a range of smaller social networks.

The software is based on the Google-led Open Social platform, which means that independent software developers will be able to write new programs to extend the scope of the system. It will be available to websites at no cost.

Last week both Facebook and MySpace said they would allow members of their networks to export information and applications from their profile to other websites.
Their announcements illustrate the attempts of the dominant social networks to extend their powerful web presence into new, more profitable areas.

Friend Connect is currently in a limited trial phase and will be available more widely in the next few months.