T-Mobile attracted a huge 18,000 visitors to the event last night in Trafalgar Square, who were informed of the happening through an integrated twitter, viral seeding, PR and Mobile campaign. Subscribers and visitors to the lifesforsharing YouTube channel were also informed, as were members of existing Facebook fan groups.
Here are my best images taken from the front. There is no denying that this was a highly polished media affair, but it was carried off with enough honesty to create what I think was a truly positive feeling. Even Vernon Kaye was brilliant, and I usually hate him.
As always the trailer looks gorgeous, but I can’t help but feel that since Disney bought Pixar some of the magic has been lost.
This looks like a really fun kids film, but I see none of the clever humour or subtle tones of their past successes. Wall-E was a particular favourite of mine in 2008.
What really strikes me though is those balloons. Just like the PS2 / PS3 demonstrations of rendering power (video here) using rubber ducks, I can easily believe that some animator just said “we can make thousands of helium balloons look really cool, really easily”, and a plotline was born.
Technology should be applied to showcase great content, not to drive the content’s existence in the first place.
Come on Pixar, release a new trailer and blow my mind!
***EDIT***
Just found this image, which to be fair sums up Pixar pretty well I thought:
There is also a YouTube “press release” of their announcement here:
And an example of how the in-game ads might look here:
And finally, an article from CasualGaming.biz who broke the story last Friday:
Google unveils its game plan
Oct 8th 2008 at 13:54 by Michael French:
Web giant Google has finally unveiled its long-awaited bid to enter the in-game advertising sector, revealing it is putting a big focus of the strategy on casual games.
In a post on the blog for the firm’s web advertising team Adsense, Google reps said that it is targeting web games in the first instance:
“Do you develop or publish web-based games? If so, you’re contributing to a growing trend – according to comScore, over 25% of Internet users play online games every week, which is over 200 million users worldwide. As a beta user of AdSense for Games, you can display video ads, image ads, or text ads within your online games to earn revenue,” the sales pitch reads.
“You’ll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over. Members of our AdWords team will sell your in-game ad placements directly to top brand advertisers, and you’ll also see contextually targeted text and image ads based on content and demographic information. In addition, you’ll be able to control the ads you see on your pages using our filtering options.”
Google has opened a beta for the service, which is open to publishers with predominantly (over 80 per cent) traffic from the UK or US.
Demonstration videos for the service make reference to a wide variety of games – although both open with footage from Playfish’s Facebook Word Challenge game.
“We’ve built ad technology for games played within a user’s browser, and now we’re looking to expand our publisher network,” the company said.
Google has partnered with Mochi Media and its MochiAds network to add inventory to its available advertising slots.
Jameson Hsu, CEO of Mochi Media commented: “Google AdSense for Games will be able to offer a wide reach for its advertisers, and Mochi Media can better monetize international traffic for our developers and publishers.”
The news comes just hours after the company revealed its YouTube video service would start offering online sales of games as well via links from its relevant videos to online stores such as Amazon and iTunes.
![pixarvsdreamworks[1]](http://digitalcortex.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/pixarvsdreamworks1.jpg "pixarvsdreamworks[1]")
