james-camerons-avatar-the-game posts

A few months ago, publisher Ubisoft said that their heavily hyped game adaptation of James Cameron's mega-popular sci-fi film Avatar was a sales disappointment. The game itself received only average reviews even with Cameron's direct involvement in the game's development.

Now it appears that Ubisoft is singing a different tune. IndustryGamers reports that the Avatar game has now solid a very respectible 2.7 million units across all of its platforms, according to Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia. It's been speculated that the movie's recent release on DVD and Blu-Ray combined with price cuts for the game itself has caused a spike in the game's sales.

No one expected that James Cameron could win the equivalent of the Megamillions lottery when Avatar was released in theaters last month, but the 3D sci-fi epic has now generated more revenue (before inflation) than any other movie in history besides Cameron's own Titanic. So, you would think all that success would help sales of James Cameron's Avatar: The Game, right?

Wrong. According to the game's developer and publisher Ubisoft, the game (which released a few weeks before the film) did not meet its expectations. In today's financial report Ubisoft stated, " . . . .not all of the Company's games have reaped the full benefits of the measures implemented, with James Cameron's Avatar: The Game . . . reporting lower-than-expected sales." The game itself, which supposedly had Cameron as an active consultant, only got average reviews from critics. One wonders if Ubisoft will be so quick to sign onto making a game based on any Avatar movie sequel.

Overall, Ubisoft didn't have as good of a quarter than it though it would in terms of revenues. Today it revealed that it was now expecting revenues for the just completed third quarter to be 495 million euros versus previous estimates of 540 million euros. For its full fiscal year it is predicting it will have revenues of 860 million euros versus predictions of 1.08 billion euros.

Releasing a demo for a game is a piece of art in itself. You don't want to give away too much of the full game yet you want to give out just enough to both satisfy a gamer as well as leave him or her wanting more. Perhaps that's why a lot of high profile PC developers don't bother with releasing demos for their games these days.

Thankfully PC gamers got a lot of free samples to games both big and small in 2009. We decided to pick our top 10 favorite demos for the past year. Picking our favorite demos can be even harder than picking full games. Since all demos are by definition free to play you can't complain about the price. However some demos feature more content than others and some demos are so addictive you can't stop playing them. We think you will find that all of our demo picks have something of value.

Click on the image above to continue reading Big Download's Top 10 Favorite PC Game Demos of 2009

Want to save some money six days before Christmas? Perhaps these deals will help:

• Direct2Drive has put Civilization IV: The Complete Edition on sale for just $15.95 and Batman: Arkham Asylum on sale for just $24.95 until 1 pm Eastern time on Saturday. They have also put the indie game Osmos on sale for just $4.95. Also you can get the Special Edition of James Cameron's Avatar: The Game and either get Beyond Good and Evil or Call of Juarez for free until December 25.
• Impulse managed to sneak in some sales via their desktop icon. Among the price cuts are X-Com for just $1.99, Lightweight Ninja for just 99 cents, and Civilization IV for $9.99.
• GoG.com's weekend sale has a price cut on all of their Might and Magic games. You can buy each one individually for 30 percent off their normal price or all of them in a bundle for 50 percent off their normal price.

The first week of December sees several retail and downloadable PC games and expansions make their way to store shelves and download services:

Dirt 2 - While the console versions of Codemasters' rally racer were released last September, the PC version that comes out this week has the distinction of being the first PC game released in the US that has DirectX11-supported graphics out of the box.

In the quest to find a truly great movie-based PC game comes the forthcoming release of James Cameron's Avatar: The Game (yep, that is the full official title) from developer-publisher Ubisoft. The game, which tells a parallel story related to the upcoming (and, it has to be said, truly epic looking) sci-fi movie is due to be released on December 1.

PC game download sites like Steam, Impulse and Direct2Drive are offering their customers an in-game pre-order bonus that is apparently not in the retail version of the PC port. They consist of two weapons unlocks; the Dual Wasp for the RDA faction and the Fighting Staff for the Na'vi faction. In addition, both Impulse and Direct2Drive are selling a downloadable special edition of the game for $54.95 that adds six exclusive weapons and two extra character skins to the game. Again this special edition is not being sold in stores.

It's "earnings season" on the stock market which means most of the game industry's publically traded companies are revealing their latest financial results. Earlier today Ubisoft announced that they had generated revenues of 83 million euros for their second quarter that ending September 30. Those revenues were down 52.8 percent compared to the same time period a year ago but were within Ubisoft's previously announced guidence.

Despite a slow first and second quarter for the company, Ubisoft hopes to make up for its with its third and fourth quarter games releases. PC gamers will get James Cameron's Avatar The Game in the current third quarter which is expected to bring in 540 million euros in revenues, up 6 percent from the same period a year ago. The fourth quarter (January-March 2010) will see the PC port of Assassin's Creed 2 released along with Splinter Cell Conviction and R.U.S.E.

The man who has admitted that games based on movies mostly suck has promised that won't be the case with his movie-based game project. Now James Cameron's Avatar: The Game has a final release date to put up or shut up. Developer-publisher Ubisoft has announced the game will be released in the US on December 1, a couple of weeks before the highly anticipated sci-fi film Avatar shows up in theaters on December 16

Cameron, who has made films that have highly influenced game designers over the years (The Terminator and Aliens especially) made a promise at Ubisoft's E3 press conference last June that the Avatar game would not suck. Will the game, which is being made with 3D technology in mind, live up to that promise? Good question.

3D seems to be the new buzz word in gaming as well as in movies. At QuakeCon last month we reported that Nvidia showed off demos of Resident Evil 5 and Batman Arkham Asylum on a 60 foot screen in 3D. At PAX 2009, Ubisoft showed off a demo of their upcoming movie-based action game James Cameron's Avatar The Game (and yes that's the full title) via a 103-inch flat TV screen in 3D.

For those of you not familiar with the Avatar movie, the sci-fi film takes place in the future where humans are using genetically-created "avatars" of an alien race called the Na'vi to explore their planet Pandora. The game has an original story that takes place in parallel to the movie's storyline as you play another human who is exploring the extremely hostile alien world

Check out more info after the jump: