http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/112/1120940p1.html
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said it's likely his company will begin selling in-engine cutscenes as full movies in the near future. Speaking today at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in California, Kotick said StarCraft II's in-game cinematics are so good that the publisher could edit them into one film and distribute it to fans digitally, a move, he said, is likely to happen sometime in the next five years. "If we were to take that hour, or hour an a half, and take it out of the game and we were to go to our audiences, who we have their credit card information a direct relationship, and say to them 'Would you like to have the StarCraft movie?' Kotick continued to say he believes his business model is superior to that of current film studios, saying a StarCraft movie distributed by the publisher would crush any opening weekend box office record ever. "My guess is unlike film studios that are really stuck with a model that goes through theatrical distribution and takes a signification amount of the profit away, if we were to go to an audience and say 'We have this great hour and a half of linear video that we'd like to make available to you at a $20 or $30 price point,' you'd have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever," he said. "Within the next five years, you are likely to see us do that. It might be in a partnership with somebody or alone, but there will be a time where we'll capitalize on the relationship we have with our audience; deliver them something that is really extraordinary and let them consume it directly through us instead of theatrical distribution. "If we were to deliver a film digitally this way, I'd say an extremely high percentage would then go to the theater and watch it again."
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Oh yeah!
No need to worry. End of the world by 2012.
Are we going to be forced to pay extra for in-game cinematics now?
I thought that is already what that "Ultramarines" movie that is going straight-to-DVD was.
http://ultramarinesthemovie.com/
Don't be ridiculous. That isn't selling in-game cinematics, since there is no game involved. What it is is an attempt to cash in on all the Ultrasmurf fanboys who cream their pants at the very mention of the word "Ultramarines". GW is still going to make massive piles of money off this though from the huge numbers of UM fanatics, so I can see where you got the comparison from. It is being written by Dan Abnett though, so it isn't all bad.
Nothing original... EA have already a animation film based on "Dragon Age Origins" in progress...
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-06-07/funimation-bioware-to-work-on-dragon-age-anime-film
In game cinematic can be used but not directly... engine, mesh, textures are high quality one for a film... these that you don't find in game... but on the computer of the EA artist who have create the model... the original piece of art...
Usual desktop computer are not powerfull enough for render a real lighning system using raytracing, subsurface scatering, ambient occlusion, dynamic hair/clothes/softbodies calculation, etc... all thing who make anim film to look almost realistic... like in game trailers...
Cinematics aren't made by desktop computers. They're made by rendering machines/farms and distributed in a static video format.
1:30 film for $20-$30? Seems on the high side for me. Especially when you've already paid $60 for Starcraft II (using the example), not to mention the next two installments.
I think it's a reach to say "you'd have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever".
According to Box Office Mojo, the biggest opening was Dark Knight at $158,411,483, So at $30, you'd need to sell roughly 5.3 million digital movies. Starcraft 2 sold 1 million in 24 hours, 1.5 million in 48 hours. WoW's WotLK sold 2.8 million in 24 hours. Not even close.
Biggest Opening Weekends at the Box Officehttp://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/weekends/
And how much of that went to the distributor? The theaters? The creators?
$30.00 for a downloaded film? I think the Pirates will tear this to shreds in a matter of seconds on principle alone.I see nothing wrong with creating movies from their digital software and selling them online. However, judging from the simply fucking terrible story carved out for Starcraft II and the latest World of Warcraft expansion, and the fact that Activision Blizzard doesn't invest in creativity, I think the 'movies' will be little more than the terrible Anime-tie-ins we see far too often these days, only with prettier presentation and a vastly inflated cost.
Meh, they can sell whatever they want. If people are dumb enough to pay for this it certainly deserves a facepalm, but the rest of us will move on.
Considering the Celestial Horse, I wouldn't be THAT surprised if people buy it. I'd definetly watch it!
I think Mk. Kotick should just start selling his mocked avatars found everywhere on the web. How come he hasn't recognized the amount of profit it could bring in cashing in on the sheer anger he generates on the web.
This is something I am really struggling to find the outrage on.
That said, it would probably improve most Final Fantasy games if Square did this.
If you could skip the gameplay? No doubt! I'd watch that! (Not for $30, but still.)
Wasn't that was the Advent Children was?
I often thought that for Mass Effect 2, they should have someone who really knows the game to play through it and use the footage for a movie and sell it. That to me was more entertaining than StarCraft II's cut scenes.
Say that to the TESIV Horse Armor, why don't you?
I'm looking forward to downloading this movie for free someday. Thanks Activision!
The only box office record he's likely to beat is "most pirated overpriced digital movie released to date."
While SC2's visuals would make an interesting movie, it definitely didn't blow my mind. I found the walking animations particularly bad, and the facial animations weren't anywhere near movie level. Video-game movie level sure, but not professional animation level. Sadly, even at $2 a copy, I'm sure a million people will buy it and that's why the gaming industry makes me sad.
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