Frontlines: Fuel of War closed beta

Big props to Tonka for submitting this article.

Frontlines: Warfare a Community Website
Frontlines: Fuel of War Official Website

Product placement: GT-R in GT5 Prologue

Who said in-game product placement is all bad?

At the current Tokyo Games Show 2007, Sony has announced that the upcoming Grant Turismo 5 Prologue shall feature the Nissan's latest GT-R offering.

Equipped with the car-bra as seen in recent spy shots of the vehicle in real life (irl for those technically inclined), the GT-R will be appearing in the demo and full version of the Grand Turismo 5 Prologue which is currently slated for an October 20 release (retail version of Prologue for December). 

It is believed the feature of the vehicle in GT5 Prologue has been purposely timed with the expected revealing of the production version of the Nissan GT-R at next month's Tokyo Motor Show.

Halo 3

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last year, you'll know that Halo 3 is undoubtedly one of the biggest and most highly anticipated game releases in as many years if not, ever.

Labelled as one of the highest pre-selling games of all time at more than 1 million copies, it still has a bit of work to catch up on Halo 2's 1.5 million pre-sales (in the US alone).

In the year leading up to the release of Halo 3, Microsoft and Bungie have been working together to make sure Halo 3 is both an awesome game but that also everyone knows that its going to be a great title.

The marketing strategy of Halo 3 has been aggressive to say the least, there has been so much material involved in their strategy that there is even a Wikipedia article dedicated to Halo 3's Marketing. Believe it or not, marketing for Halo 3 started nearly a year ago, and its actually heading to a hault, you can read more about the structure of their strategy – here.

• Halo 3 Mountain Dew
• Halo 3 Slushies
• Halo 3 NASCAR
• Preorder your Halo 3 at 7-Eleven

Marketing and brand awareness is all very well, but if it's promoting a sub-par product, the negative effect of public review and opinion will unravel this comprehensive and elaborate strategy. Well, you'll be glad to hear (or read) that Microsoft and Bungie seemed to have covered that area in an otherwise unprecedented extent with what some might classify as 'a psychological evaluation' of the game, this article from Wired.com has given us a bit on insight to the extent of Halo 3's game testing goes.

If you had read this article without knowing Halo 3 is actually a video game, you'd be forgiven to think that the marketing strategy employed by Microsoft and Bungie was for a film. Do you remember how much cross-product adaptation was used for Shrek 3? Kellogs, Mars (Snickers and Green M&Ms) and McDonald's to name a few, you were pretty much safe to assume that if it was green and found in your supermarket it had something to do with Shrek.

It's further proof that the lines that separate the blockbuster film industry and the under-estimated video game industry are being blurred if not completely stepped over and jigged on.

Halo 3 will be released on September 25.

UPDATE: Make Love, Not Warcraft – Wins Emmy

UPDATE:  A few months ago we reported that the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Wacraft" had been nominated for an Emmy award, going up against the heavyweights such as – The Simpsons, and Robot Chicken.

Fans of this episode and the show in general will be pleased to hear that it won the award at the 59th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards.

The 11th season of South Park resumes airing in the United States from October 3rd.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Demo is here!

You may remember a few months ago, a piece we had done on the ET:QW beta, basically 60,000 beta keys were given out which left a lot of people without the sweet sweet taste that is Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

Well, good news – the beta has been released and you can grab it from 3FL and even play on the servers we have set up!

If you're a bit nervous or you have no idea how to play, take 5 and have a bit of a read here. Otherwise if you want to give it a bash – check the 3FL ET:QW servers on the 3FL Server Spy.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Demo on 3FL

Grab a copy and tell us your thoughts! 

Lord of the Rings Online: Free 7 day trial