Gamertell

During Comic Con 2008, many games and comics were featured. And who wouldn’t want to attend a special preview of today’s most talented directors and animators create independent film masterpieces. The Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival consisted of movies that fell into seven categories: action/adventure, animation, comics-oriented, documentary, humor/parody, horror and science fiction/fantasy. On July 27, 2008, the top films in each category were announced and awarded.

This year’s Comic-Con International: Independent Film Festival are…

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Bloomberg News is reporting that Dubai International Capital has purchased an undisclosed yet “substantial” stake in Sony. Apparently it was known early this month (November 2007) that Dubai as looking to invest $500 million in a Japanese company, though it cannot be confirmed that money was all spent on Sony, which is based in Tokyo (as in Japan).

Dubai is, according to Bloomberg, a $13 billion fund manager that has invested in European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. and HSBC Holdings Plc. If $500 million was paid, Bloomberg estimates it would have bought 1 percent of Sony based on the current stock price. Seems like a chump cut but, if 500 million is only 1 percent, that would make Sony worth $50 billion. Heck, I’d even enjoy only 1/2 percent of that.

So far there is no word on how this will effect the videogame side of Sony. It doesn’t bode well especially since the game division is losing money with the pricey PS3. After the deal was announced, Sony’s stock rose 4.6 percent to close at 5,500 yen (US$49.95) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Unless there are more big money buys into Sony out there, I expect investors to jump on the Sony bandwagon and analysts to start give stronger recommendations for its stock. Let’s hope that translates into less expensive and better games - and systems - for us gamers.

Read [Bloomberg News] Also Read [GameDaily] Also Read [The Inquirer] Also Read [ZDNet]

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The international game competition Game&Game World Championship (GNGWC) kicked off second season with the preliminary round in Europe earlier this month (August 2007). The international event has gamers from Korea, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and the US competing in preliminary rounds in each country and then against each other in the finals on December 1, 2007, in Seoul, Korea.

The six first place winners from each preliminary event (one for each PC game in the competition) will be sent to Korea to compete in the finals while runners-up winners will receive a digital camera, MP3 player or a DVD player. Some regional runners-up winners for specific games will…

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