Microsoft and Bungie have announced that Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson will produce Halo, The Movie. Jackson’s most recent project, King Kong, is currenlty in post production. Jackson is a good fit and a great get for the Halo movie. His cinematic brilliance speaks for itself but he’s also a huge video game fan, as an August interview with Game Informer made clear. His movie King Kong will release with a video game tie-in that is not simply an afterthought, but a game that stands on its own. Jackson was intimately involved with Ubisoft in the production of the video game as well. (I wrote a piece on the King Kong game in August and how it overcomes the problem of HUDs)
Amusing Aside – Let this be a lesson for techies everywhere: Leave the English to we professionals. The Bungie.net posting announcing the landing of Peter Jackson was written by Joesph Staten, listed on the Bungie site as Writer/Director of Cinematics. Staten tells the world that "Needless to say I and the rest of Bungie are positively incontinent" over the Jackson deal. I assume Staten means that he’s excited about Jackson being the executive producer of the film. If so, either the use of the word "incontinent" to express excitement is a new form of slang that I’m unaware of, or, more likely, he doesn’t know the definition of the word. The general usage of the word "incontinet" refers to a loss of control over excratory functions. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m guessing Staten didn’t mean to say that he was so excited he shit his pants.
Master Chief In Dead Or Alive?
In other Halo news, Game Informer had the scoop on Bungie’s product placement in Dead Or Alive 4 for Xbox 360. Bungie acknowledges that they and DOA’s Team Ninja have talked about including a Halo character in the next-gen DOA title.
Halo 3 Delayed
Finally, it looks like Halo 3 will not be released to counter Sony’s introduction of their next-gen console, PS3, as Bill Gates has suggested. Microsoft’s entertainment and devices president Robbie Bach said in an interview that Halo 3 may not be ready to offset Sony’s launch but that "Halo is something we’ll ship when it’s ready."
Part of the problem may very well be that Microsoft delivered their development kits to game designers so late that a lot of developers are playing catch-up in order to meet the launch date. The Xbox 360 launch may not be all that, either. Expected in late November, my industry sources tell me that Microsoft will release only 800,000 units, meaning there will not be enough to go around. Couple that with the fact that the late release of the development kits means game developers haven’t had enough time to take full advantage of what Xbox 360 has to offer, and it will probably be wise to wait a while before splurging on the expensive console. Second generation Xbox 360 games will probably take better advantage of the console’s power.