Late Night Consoling

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Fear Effect game property owned by Eidos will be dusted off for both a video game sequel and a Hollywood film adaptation. In 2004, Uwe Boll acquired the movie rights to Fear Effect for production by his studio Boll KG, but it appears that the good doctor is no longer slated to sit in the director's chair for this one. Mindfire Entertainment has optioned the rights, with action director Stanley Tong set to direct. Tong is best known for directing several Jackie Chan films--Supercop, Supercop 2, Rumble in the Bronx, and Jackie Chan's First Strike--and not quite as well known for helming 1997's Mr. Magoo with Leslie Nielsen. Mindfire CEO and producer Mark Altman describes Fear Effect as "'Mission: Impossible' meets 'Silent Hill.'" The movie will follow the same plot as the original Fear Effect (PS1) from 2000, though it will be set in the near future rather than an alternate world.

Little is known about the upcoming sequel, which will be the third game in the series; it is likely to be aimed at Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A previous attempt at a third game, Fear Effect: Inferno, was cancelled by Eidos in 2003. Kronos Digital Entertainment closed its doors after failing to find a new publisher for Inferno, so it is unlikely that the upcoming title will be in the hands of the original developers. The defunct studio developed both Fear Effect and Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix (PS1), Its first project was contributing various visual effects to Sierra/Dynamix's Phantasmagoria (PC), which it followed up with 1997's isometric shooter Meat Puppet (PC) (I, uh, actually played that).

With Nintendo's upcoming Wii the only remaining next-gen console not to have an official price point, we'll no doubt be hearing endless speculation from analysts and publishers leading up to Nintendo's announcement. That speculation has begun anew in the wake of E3. Prevailing thought, along with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's promise that the machine would not break the $300 price point, has pegged the machine at a commonly agreed upon upper limit of $250. According to Forbes, Justin Post of Merril Lynch expects the machine to go for $200. Outspoken marketing VP Scott Steinberg of Sega, which has two announced Wii games in production, believes that the console will come in under $200, however.

Activision recently announced that it has acquired the lucrative video game rights to the Bond license. The rights were previously exclusive to Electronic Arts, but the publisher abandoned the license due to a stated shift towards in-house properties. According to GamesIndustry.biz, Activision will be paying a hefty $70M up front for those rights. Prominent industry analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities estimates that based on the known information, Activision expects average annual sales of $80M-$100M from game sales over the course of the seven year deal. That figure may have to be a bit higher by the time Activision actually starts releasing titles to hit the average, however. Shacknews learned from licensor MGM that there will be no Bond games based on the upcoming Casino Royale film.

Activision sent out what appears to be a stealth announcement of a special edition of Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 2 for Xbox 360 (the press release is dated May 12, but judging from other sites' reporting as well as my own inbox, it wasn't sent out until this week). The new release contains the original game, a voucher for the recently released Skirmish Map Pack via Xbox Live, a DVD with "making of" footage as well as historic interviews and commentary.

A suggested retail price was not given. Call of Duty 2: Game of the Year should be on store shelves now.

Two different sites offer their opinions of how Nintendo's upcoming Wii controller works. XGaming has a "Bold Nintendo Wii Prediction" describing a combination two technologies rather than one new one, whereas Anandtech believes it operates by way of an infrared field from the system's sensor bar.

GameSpot chats with Thumb Wars writer and director Steve Oedekerk (w: Patch Adams, Bruce Almighty, d: Ace Venture: When Nature Calls, Kung Pow: Enter the Fist) about his upcoming animated film Barnyard, which is getting a game adaptation by Blue Tongue and THQ.

E3 previews are still winding down. If you're interested, check that out at Game Informer, GameSpot, Eurogamer, IGN, GameSpy, and surely others. And hey, if you missed ours, here it is.