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LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - “The Terminator” will be back on video game consoles.

The Halcyon Co., which owns the rights to the “Terminator” movie franchise, is forming its own gaming subsidiary and making a game adaptation of the upcoming film “Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins” its first release.

The game, which will be available on all formats, including next-generation consoles, PC and mobile, is expected to hit the marketplace at the same time as the film, which is slated for release in summer 2009. (Christian Bale is in talks to star in the film, playing freedom-fighter John Connor.)

Peter Levin, the acting CEO of Halcyon Games, said the privately financed parent company opted to form its own game division rather that outsource the “Terminator” license in order “to control our own destiny.”

Like a lot of blockbuster film franchises, “Terminator” has had its share of licensed games, most of which have done well in the marketplace. In May, Halcyon announced its acquisition of the franchise rights to “Terminator” from movie producers Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar.

Development of the “Terminator” game has been under way for several months.

“We don't want the game to be the stepchild to the film,” said Halcyon co-CEO Derek Anderson. “They're of equal importance, and we want both to be of the same quality and be the same compelling experience.”

“Terminator” will not be the only franchise in the Halcyon Games stable. Halcyon created a splash this year when it secured first-look rights to the works for famed science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The Halcyon executives said they are looking at bringing out titles based on the Dick books beginning in 2010. Previous screen adaptations of Dick's work, including “Total Recall,” “Minority Report,” “A Scanner Darkly” and “Blade Runner,” have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

TOKYO - Musicians of the world are getting a new kind of artistic freedom with technology that eliminates the challenging chore of tuning.

Robotics technology developed by German company Tronical Gmbh in partnership with Gibson Guitar Corp. enables Gibson’s newest Les Paul model to tune itself in about two seconds.

For users who purchase the add-on technology, the guitar recognizes pitch. Then, its processor directs motors on its six tuning pegs to tighten or loosen the strings accordingly. Tronical has offered its “Powertune System” online and through retailers in Germany since March, according to the company’s Web site.

The Gibson Les Paul guitar model with Blue Silverburst finish goes on sale globally Dec. 7.

Nashville, Tenn., guitar maker Gibson and Tronical said Powertune is the world’s first self-tuning technology, and Gibson says it is particularly useful for beginners, who tend to find tuning a headache.

Musician Ichiro Tanaka, who tuned and played a sample guitar at Gibson’s Tokyo office Monday, said the technology is handy for professionals too. If they use special tuning for just part of a concert, as he often does, it means they don’t have to lug around an extra guitar with the second tuning ready.

“It’s more than just convenience,” said Tanaka, of Japan. “It’s a feature I really appreciate.”

The Les Paul Silverburst model is to cost about $2,780 in Japan and $2,499 in the U.S., with self-tuning offered for $900 extra.

Powertune is also listed online for 899 euros, about $600, and Tronical says it can be installed on many different models of electric guitars without leaving a mark.

Gibson guitars with the technology come preset with six types of tuning to play different kinds of music. They also can remember a player’s additional original tuning styles, by listening with a microphone to the sounds of the strings.

To set the instrument to a particular tuning, the user pulls a knob, turns it to the desired style, indicated with a blue light, and then pushes the knob back in. An electric signal travels up the strings to the motors on the tuning pegs. The system is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

Gibson hopes to sell 4,000 of the first limited-edition “robot guitars” worldwide, with 10 percent of those sales expected in Japan, said Yasuhiko Iwanade, president of Gibson Guitar Corp. Japan.

“Robots are very popular in Japan. So this is something that matches the developments here these days. It’s a technology that Japanese can understand,” he said.

Gibson has a history of innovating with guitars that fits well with robotics technology, Iwanade said.

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On the Net:

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TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadians were obsessed by the saga of pop star Britney Spears in 2007, according to Yahoo! Canada's list of top 10 online searches, with her name coming in second only to searches for hockey news.

Rounding out the rest of the top 10 searches were TV show American Idol, WWE (World Wrestling and Entertainment), celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, Revenue Canada, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp, Environment Canada, Paris Hilton and NASCAR.

“It's fascinating to see what rises to the top but it's not necessarily an entirely accurate view of what people are interested in online,” said Jonathan Dube, vice president of the Online News Association and director of digital programming at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Dube said it's not surprising that sports, celebrities, weather and lotteries made the list, but he said he was taken aback by the absence in the overall top 10 of searches related to the speedy appreciation of the Canadian dollar in 2007.

Yahoo! Canada also released lists of the most popular searches in categories such as news, entertainment and lifestyle.

In the news category, five of top 10 searches involved politics, with Conservative-turned-Liberal politician and auto-parts heiress Belinda Stronach at No. 1 after a whirlwind year that included her stepping down as a member of Parliament, battling breast cancer and continued rumors about an affair with former Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player Tie Domi.

Last year's overall top 10 searches included the National Hockey League, FIFA World Cup, American Idol, Rock Star Supernova, WWE, virtual pet Web site Neopets, Revenue Canada, TV soap opera Days of our Lives, Environment Canada and pop star Jessica Simpson.

(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; Editing by Peter Galloway)

According to the latest report from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), processor sales growth was driven in October by strong demand for the chips used in PCs and consumer electronics, pushing worldwide semiconductor sales to $23.1 billion in October — a 5 percent rise in comparison with the same month last year.

Despite rising energy costs and other concerns, consumers continue to spend money on the latest electronics products, noted the trade association's president, George Scalise, who pointed to the strong “Black Friday” sales reported by U.S. retailers for the first shopping day after Thanksgiving.

“At this point, it does not appear that reported declines in consumer confidence or other concerns have affected sales of electronic products,” Scalise noted. “We will be closely watching consumer sales of electronic products through the holiday season.”

Chip Industry's Mantra

October's healthy year-over-year growth came to pass in spite of the negative effects of chip price cuts, which are most dramatic in memory chips. Though RAM shipments have climbed by 55 percent so far this year, RAM pricing has risen only by 5 percent, Scalise noted.

A similar story has been unfolding in the processor segment due in large part to the intense price war between AMD and Intel. The SIA reported that revenue from microprocessors has risen only by 4 percent in the year to date, even though unit shipments are up by 15 percent. “Consumers are reaping huge benefits from continued rapid price attrition in key sectors of the semiconductor market,” Scalise said.

The SIA said chip sales for all of 2007 continue to track the trade association's annual prognostication, which calls for 3.8 percent year-over-year growth. “This year the worldwide microchip industry will produce 900 million transistors for every man, woman, and child on earth,” Scalise claimed.

Continuous advances in microchip technology have made “faster, better, cheaper” the mantra of our industry, Scalise went on to say. “This fundamental value proposition will continue to drive industry sales growth in the years ahead,” he predicted.

Shift to Asia-Pacific

Citing the latest figures from brokerage house JP Morgan, the SIA said PC sales are now poised to grow by 13.5 percent this year. Moreover, the SIA's annual forecast calls for the unit shipments of cellular handsets, multimedia players, and digital TVs to rise at healthy growth rates of 12 percent, 20 percent, and 50 percent, respectively.

Progress in semiconductor technology has been a huge boon to consumers, Scalise noted. “Today a typical PC sells for less than 30 percent of the price of a comparable unit in 1995, but today's model is 100 times more powerful,” Scalise explained. “We can expect to see similar cost and performance improvements in other silicon-intensive consumer products in the years ahead.”

The SIA now projects that worldwide sales will exceed $321 billion in 2010, equivalent to a compound annual growth rate of 7.7 percent. Moreover, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to continue to lead the way by growing from 48.4 percent of the global chip market in 2007 to 51.1 percent in 2010.

“The increasing proliferation of semiconductors into an ever-broader range of consumer products coupled with the emergence of large new consumer markets in Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America will be the principal drivers of industry growth for the next several years,” Scalise concluded.

San Francisco - Facebook has confirmed findings of a CA security researcher that the social-networking site's Beacon ad service is more intrusive and stealthy than previously acknowledged, an admission that contradicts statements made previously by Facebook executives and representatives.

Facebook's controversial Beacon ad system tracks users' off-Facebook activities even if those users are logged off from the social-networking site and have previously declined having their activities on specific external sites broadcast to their Facebook friends, a company spokesman said via e-mail over the weekend.

Although according to the spokesman Facebook does nothing with the data transmitted back to its servers in these cases and deletes it, the admission will probably fan the flames of the controversy engulfing Beacon, which has been criticized by privacy advocates.

The Facebook spokesman did not initially reply to a request for further explanation on how the Beacon action gets triggered if a user is logged off from Facebook, when the social-networking site's ability to track its users' activities should be inactive.

It's also unclear whether Facebook plans to modify Beacon so it doesn't track and report on the off-Facebook activities of logged-off users.

Beacon is a major part of the Facebook Ads platform that Facebook introduced with much fanfare several weeks ago. Beacon tracks certain activities of Facebook users on more than 40 participating Web sites, including those of Blockbuster and Fandango, and reports those activities to the users' set of Facebook friends, unless told not to do so.

Off-Facebook activities that can be broadcast to one's Facebook friends include purchasing a product, signing up for a service and including an item on a wish list.

The program has been blasted by groups such as MoveOn.org and by individual users who have unwittingly broadcast information about recent purchases and other Web activities to their Facebook friends. This has led to some embarrassing situations, such as blowing the surprise of holiday presents.

On Thursday night, Facebook tweaked Beacon to make its workings more explicit to Facebook users and to make it easier to nix broadcast messages and opt out of having activities tracked on specific Web sites. Facebook didn't go all the way to providing a general opt-out option for the entire Beacon program, as some had hoped.

Then on Friday, just hours after Facebook had scored some points with its modifications to Beacon, Stefan Berteau, senior research engineer at CA's Threat Research Group, wrote in a note about Beacon's until-then unknown ability to monitor logged-off users' activities and send the data back to Facebook.

Users aren't informed that data on their activities at these sites is flowing back to Facebook, nor given the option to block that information from being transmitted, according to Berteau.

If users have ever checked the option for Facebook to “remember me” — which saves users from having to log on to the site upon every return to it — Facebook can tie their activities on third-party Beacon sites directly to them, even if they're logged off and have opted out of the broadcast. If they have never chosen this option, the information still flows back to Facebook, although without it being tied to their Facebook ID, according to Berteau.

Facebook's admission over the weekend contradicts previous statements from the company regarding this issue. For example, in e-mail correspondence with Facebook's privacy department, Berteau was told, among other things, that “as long as you are logged out of Facebook, no actions you have taken on other websites can be sent to Facebook.”

A similar statement was made by a high-ranking Facebook official in an interview with The New York Times published Thursday.

“If I buy tickets on Fandango, and decline to publish the purchase to my friends on Facebook, does Facebook still receive the information about my purchase?,” a Times reporter asked Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook's vice president of product marketing and operations at Facebook

“Absolutely not. One of the things we are still trying to do is dispel a lot of misinformation that is being propagated unnecessarily,” Palihapitiya replied.

REFERENCES:
CA: Facebook's Beacon more intrusive than previously thought, Nov. 30, 2007
Privacy concerns prompt U-turn at Facebook, Nov. 30, 2007

PARIS (AFP) - The planned merger of the video game producers behind hit products “World of Warcraft” and “Call of Duty” will create a world leader in the sector and could trigger more consolidation, analysts said on Monday.

French group Vivendi announced on Sunday that it was combining its video games arm, Vivendi Games, with US rival Activision to form Activision Blizzard, “the world's largest pure-play online and console game publisher.”

Vivendi is to put 1.8 billion dollars (1.2 billion euros) into the new company and will retain a majority 52-percent stake initially which will gradually increase to 68 percent.

With annual sales of 3.8 billion dollars, the group will trump rival Electronic Arts, the current world leader, which has revenues of about 3.5 billion dollars.

The finance director of Activision, Thomas Tippl, told analysts Monday that the group's sales would increase to 4.3 billion dollars by 2009 and that cost savings from the merger would be 50-100 million dollars.

The creation of Activision Blizzard “is an unprecedented move in the video games industry,” said Laurent Michaud, an analyst at the digital technology consultancy IDATE.

The merger was driven by a need for the size needed in the industry to sell games in local markets across the world and finance costly research and development.

“This deal gives Vivendi the critical size for the games division, creating a leading player,” said analysts at French investment bank Sociate Generale in a note to clients.

Michaud added: “To make investments profitable, they need to be present on a maximum number of continents, to be on shop shelves the whole year and on all platforms (PC, mobile telephone, handheld games machines, home systems).”

Michaud said the combination amounted to a “strong sign of consolidation.”

French group Ubisoft is frequently seen as a takeover target despite its desire to stay independent.

Electronic Arts, which took a stake in Ubisoft in December 2004, owns 15 percent of the group's capital and controls 25 percent of its voting rights.

US groups THQ and Take-Two Interactive, two other leading games makers, are also seen as potential targets.

British producer SCI Entertainment, behind hit game Lara Croft, is looking for an investor and could become the centre of a takeover battle.

Time Warner, which already owns 10 percent of SCI, is the favourite to buy the group, a sign of the growing attraction of the games market for traditional media companies.

“Synergies between video games and other media (such as cinema, Internet or animated film) are going to get bigger,” said Michaud.

Activision, based in Santa Monica, California, was set up in 1979 and has games such as “Call of Duty,” the Tony Hawk skateboard series, “Guitar Hero,” “Spider-Man,” “James Bond,” “Shrek,” “X-Men” and “Transformers”.

Vivendi Games, which has 4,000 employees, is already an international market leader through its “World of Warcraft,” an online multi-player subscription game, developed by its Blizzard Entertainment subsidiary, which has an estimated 9.3 million players.

The market for video games is expected to reach 33.7 billion euros this year, ahead of revenues from cinema or music, according to IDATE figures.

The investment in the United States by Vivendi comes five years after the French group got into hot water after spending 30 billion dollars on US assets that brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy.

Brash former Vivendi chief Jean-Marie Messier was forced out of the company after taking it from a simple utilities operator to a media empire.

The group has since restructured, divesting billions of dollars of assets to reduce its debt.

TOKYO - A new electric guitar from Gibson comes with robotics technology that allows the instrument to tune itself in a matter of seconds.

The technology, developed in partnership with German company Tronical, allows the guitar to recognize pitch and use its processor and six motors on its tuning pegs to tighten the strings accordingly.

Gibson Guitar Corp. claims it’s the world’s first guitar with such self-tuning robotics technology, and that it’s particularly useful for beginners, who tend to find tuning the instrument properly a headache.

The Gibson Les Paul guitar model with Blue Silverburst finish goes on sale globally Dec. 7 for 308,700 yen (US$2,780; euro1,880) in Japan, and US$2,499 in the U.S. The self-tuning feature added an extra 100,000 yen (US$900; euro600) to the price tag.

The guitar comes preset with six types of tuning for the guitar’s strings, which are used to play different kinds of music. But it can also remember a totally original tuning by recognizing the sound of the strings it picks up on its microphone.

The way it works is simple.

You pull a knob on the guitar, turn it to the kind of tuning you want, which shows up as a blue light on the knob, such as “E” or “D.” You then push the button back in.

The electric signals travel up the strings to the tuning pegs, which begin turning by themselves with a whirl of a motor. It’s powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

U.S. guitar-maker Gibson plans to sell 4,000 of the first batch of limited edition “robot guitars” worldwide. Ten percent of the sales are expected to be in Japan, said Yasuhiko Iwanade, president of Gibson Guitar Corp. Japan.

“Robots are very popular in Japan. So this is something that matches the developments here these days. It’s a technology that Japanese can understand,” he said.

It may offer the robotics feature in other models in the future, officials said.

Gibson, based in Nashville, Tennessee, boats a history of innovating the guitar, and robotics fit right in with that legacy, Iwanade said.

Japanese musician Ichiro Tanaka tuned and played the guitar in a demonstration at Gibson’s Tokyo office Monday. He said it’s handy for professional musicians who may use special tuning for one song in a concert because he won’t have to lug around an extra guitar.

“It’s more than just convenience. It’s a feature I really appreciate,” said Tanaka.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - More than half of European homes went online this year as the number using a hi-speed broadband connection to connect to the Internet rose sharply, the EU statistical agency Eurostat said Monday.

One in two people use an Internet search engine while 15 percent of individuals use the net to make phone calls and 13 percent use peer-to-peer file sharing software to swap movies and music, according to the survey based on national figures for the first three months of 2007.

Some 54 percent of households in the EU’s 27 nations had access to the Internet, compared to 49 percent in the first quarter of 2006.

Broadband use rose more sharply, up to 42 percent from 30 percent for the same quarter a year ago.

The Eurostat survey gave no margin of error.

The most online EU nation is the Netherlands, where more than four out of five homes have Internet access, and it also leads the way with the highest rate of broadband connections.

Lagging far behind is new EU member Bulgaria where only one in five households has Internet access. Greece, however, has the lowest broadband rate, at just 7 percent, squeaking past Romania at 8 percent.

Some countries are far more Internet savvy than others. The French lead the way in making voice-over-Internet phone calls, followed by Estonians — no surprise as the tiny Baltic nation spawned online call company Skype.

Nearly a quarter of Dutch and Luxembourgers use the net to download music and movies but only 6 percent of Czechs and Irish do so.

Internet use — and both the price and technology available to customers — varies widely across Europe. The European Commission blames governments for not doing enough to open up the market, by forcing former state telecoms monopolies to face competition that would lower prices and get more people online.

ST. CHARLES - No criminal charges will be filed against people who sent cruel Internet messages to a 13-year-old girl before she committed suicide, the St. Charles County prosecutor said Monday.

The parents of Megan Meier of Dardenne Prairie, who hanged herself last year, said her suicide came minutes after she received mean messages through the social networking site MySpace.

County Prosecutor Jack Banas said at a news conference there was no applicable statue to file charges in the case. Banas said he looked at laws related to stalking, harassment and child endangerment, but found no repeated incidents of threats to someone’s life or health, and no organized conspiracy.

A police report said that a mother from the neighborhood and her 18-year-old employee fabricated a profile for a teenage boy online who pretended to be interested in Megan before he began bullying her. The police report indicates others gained access to the profile, and it is not clear who was sending Meier messages just before her death.

Banas said based on additional interviews, the fake MySpace page was not created by the mother of one of Megan’s friends. He said the page was created by the 18-year-old employee, though the mother and her 13-year-old daughter knew about the page. He said he was unable to speak directly with the 18-year-old, whom he said has been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment.

After the case became public, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt asked lawmakers to review state law to see if changes were necessary to better deal with cases that involve Internet bullying. Some municipalities have also considered or passed statutes to strengthen laws that deal with Internet harassement.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO.O) Chief Executive Ben Feder said on Monday consolidation in the $40 billion video-game industry “ultimately is inevitable,” as growth continues.

Feder, whose comment came one day after Vivendi (VIV.PA) said it would take control of Activision Inc. (ATVI.O) in a deal valued at around $9.9 billion, noted that the cost to develop a video game is very close to the outlay for production and marketing of a Hollywood film.

“I do believe that consolidation ultimately is inevitable,” he said at a UBS investment conference. “Video-game development is not getting any cheaper. Its a capital-intensive business, and I don't see that going away. That will drive some of the smaller competitors out.”

(Reporting by Franklin Paul, editing by Maureen Bavdek)