Andy Wood

File this one under “To good to be true”. Joel has alerted me to a report from the good folks over at JoBlo claiming that Steven Spielberg “is now being set to direct WORLD OF WARCRAFT”.

This would be mind blowing news for any Warcraft fan. As I’ve said before, I believe World of Warcraft has the best chance of any game adapted film to succeed because they’ve already said the filmmaker will be free to create their own story within the Warcraft universe. That’s great. But….

I don’t believe for a minute that Spielberg would take on World of Warcraft (oh god I hope i’m wrong). The guys over at JoBlo are great, they are one of my favorite sites and I visit them almost daily… but lately they’ve been reporting strange stuff and giving odd reports without quoting a source or backing things up. In this case, JoBlo is claiming that they got the story from Variety. Except I just went on Variety and I can’t find the story of Spielberg and Warcraft anywhere.

Please let me be clear about this. I’m not saying the report is a lie. It is possible they have an advanced copy of a print version of Variety.

I also hope this story is true (you have no idea how much I hope this is true). But no… I don’t believe it for a moment. I wish I did.

via The Movie Blog

Update: According to this, the game to movie ‘direction’ will never happen.

Early details on Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.5 which stars Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, James Callis, Tricia Helfer and Michael Rymer. The three-disc package will be available to own from the 19th of September, and priced at around $49.98.

The second ten season two episodes will be presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, along with English Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks and English and Spanish subtitles. According to the sales sheet below, extras will include an extended version of the first episode, “Pegasus”, along with deleted scenes, all of the podcast commentaries, and a producer’s video log.

On the latest episode of Gaming Steve, podcaster Steve Glicker revealed that Command & Conquer 3 would be heading to the Xbox 360, in addition to the PC version. This coincidentally happens during episode when Louis Castle, VP of creative development at Electronic Arts and a designer on Dune II and the original Command & Conquer, was on the show.

“I know for a fact that they’re doing this because these are the same guys, same team doing Command & Conquer 3. And they’re definitely going to release it for the 360. You heard it here. And so what they’re doing is really using Battle For Middle Earth 2 to use it as a springboard to test, to see how it’s going to work for Command & Conquer 3.” — Gaming Steve

We’ve contacted EA about the statement, but have yet to hear back from them, so take this with a grain of salt. As always, we’ll be looking for more, but considering much much EA has been harping their ‘revolutionary’ control interface for Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth II on Xbox 360, this makes perfect sense. via 1UP

A funny thing happens in a format war: At some point, the theoretical spec one-upmanship gives way to tangible reality–what the rival products are delivering, today.

For now, both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD are hampered by the fact that AACS has yet to finalize its managed copy component, the most critical aspect of the spec that remains unfinished. Without a final AACS spec, living-room high-def recorders can’t proceed to market, and neither can devices that are designed to take advantage of legally copying and moving content from one disc to another–or to another device, for that matter. Original estimates put AACS’s final spec as coming out in May; we’re already well into June, and still there are no updates.

Until players can be manufactured to take advantage of everything from media servers to copying content, the first high-def video players from either camp should have limited appeal. I have no doubt that these players, be they Blu-ray or HD DVD, will deliver enticing high-def images. If all they do is play back content, however, they’re missing a core part of the innovation that Blu-ray and HD DVD have the potential to deliver.