Over the last few months, Sony has imple­mented a new mar­ket­ing strat­egy using smarmy and con­de­cend­ing VP Ken But­ler to tout the virtues of the PS3. Playsta­tion does movies, music, games, pho­tos and after this Tuesday’s release of God Of War 3, they now offer ven­gence. How can you not buy this sys­tem? Sony’s new mar­ket­ing strat­egy also involves find­ing the tough­est guy in the yard and punch­ing them in the face to show they mean busi­ness. The newest com­mer­cial walks right up to Nin­tendo and pretty much up and punches them square in the face. It pokes fun at the Wii con­trol style while show­ing the con­sumer how inno­v­a­tive and intu­itive the new PS Move is.

I like Sony’s mar­ket­ing strat­egy in this par­tic­u­lar instance sim­ply because I am a fan of sar­casm and above all, I can appre­ci­ate a well placed jab at the com­peti­ton. After view­ing this com­mer­cial are you more inclined to buy the PS Move? Time to see how Nin­tendo responds. Odds are Nin­tendo will ignore the ads and let sales do the talk­ing. 2010’s Hol­i­day Sea­son will be very inter­est­ing to say the least.

Com­mer­cial Credit: Ars Tech­nica & Kotaku

A few days ago I posted a new trailer for UFC Undis­puted which focused on BJ Penn, but also showed improved game play mechan­ics. We saw that THQ went back to the lab and rebuilt UFC Undis­puted into some­thing new and fresh for 2010. While on paper it looks like THQ has the supe­rior title,  EA Sports is ready to prove that even though they are late to the fight, they have some­thing bet­ter to offer. From what I see on the trailer, the char­ac­ter mod­els look accu­rate and move real­is­ti­cally, but looks are a non-factor if the game play is shit. EA seems to have bor­rowed a few things from the Fight Night fran­chise. I really hope the game proves wor­thy of com­pet­ing with the UFC offer­ing, sim­ply because com­pe­ti­tion leads to inno­va­tion. You decide if it’s a wor­thy challenger.

Trailer Credit:Joys­tiq

Last year, UFC Undis­puted 2009 erased the mem­o­ries of many a sub­par MMA game with fluid motion and inno­v­a­tive game­play. This year, THQ takes it one step fur­ther with UFC Undis­puted 2010 by adding an improved career mode, improved con­trols and new sub­mis­sions (inverted ones too), as well as over 100 UFC fight­ers. THQ is ready to step in the cage against the EA Sports MMA offer­ing. In the end, it all boils down to one sim­ple phrase — “So you wanna be a fighter”. Here, let BJ Penn show you how.

UFC Undis­puted will be avail­able May 25, 2010 on PS3 & XBOX 360, as well  as on the PSP for the first time.

The Preda­tor films have been a guilty plea­sure of mine for a long time, from the bat­tles with Schwarzeneg­ger and Glover, to the two films bat­tling the Aliens. The Preda­tors them­selves have always had a unique pre­sen­ta­tion to movie fans because they really are anti-heroes and there are times you actu­ally end up root­ing for them.When Robert Rodriguez announced his intent to reboot the fran­chise there was a part of me that was con­cerned because of the cast­ing that was involved, but as I researched the film more, I enjoyed the con­cept Rodriguez was using. In this new inter­pre­ta­tion human “Preda­tors”  and cold blooded killers are taken to a planet which serves as a Preda­tor hunt­ing ground and, of course, it becomes sur­vival of the fittest. I feel that the Preda­tor books as well as the films always focused on the hunt­ing of the strongest prey, and this film con­tin­ues to enforce that.  Here is your sneak peek at the Robert Rodriguez’s Predators.

For those of you that have been fol­low­ing MTR on Twit­ter & Face­book, you know that Blog Talk Radio suf­fered some seri­ous issues on Thurs­day night/early Fri­day which resulted in the loss of episode 34. Blog Talk Radio rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­firmed that the show was lost, but sur­pris­ingly enough, some of it has been restored. You’ll be able to lis­ten to about 1hr and 15minutes of the episode. Here is the state­ment from Blog Talk acknowl­edg­ing the issue, as well as a response from me and the fol­low up email as well.

1st Email from BTR:

Hi there,

We are very sorry for any incon­ve­nience. The site did expe­ri­ence tech­ni­cal issues dur­ing your show. Our tech­ni­cians are work­ing dili­gently to ensure this does not hap­pen again. Thank you so much for your under­stand­ing. Please let us know if there is any­thing we can do to help.

Regards,
–S

My Response:

S,
I am very upset at the fact that this hap­pened. I went to great lengths to get these guests from the video game com­pany THQ. Get­ting them back on will be very dif­fi­cult. Not to men­tion that it makes my show look unpro­fes­sional. I am very dis­pleased with the out­come. What steps can I take on my end to pro­tect and/or back up my broad­casts going for­ward?
Rich

Sent via Black­Berry from T-Mobile

BTR 2nd Response:

S,

Again, we would like to apol­o­gize for this incon­ve­nience. There was noth­ing you could do to pre­vent this, it was a tech­ni­cal mal­func­tion that caused this issue. We know how hard hosts work to orga­nize their shows and we are so sorry that this happened.

Again, while unfor­tu­nate, at least some of it has been recov­ered. I will at least need another day or two before upload­ing to iTunes in the event the full episode is recovered.