On February 18, Bizarre Creations officially closed its doors. Activison purchased the studio in 2007, and after 2 underperforming games (Blur and James Bond: Bloodstone), they decided to shut the group down. Previously, Bizarre had a stellar track record, including the Project Gotham Racing series for Microsoft Xbox and Xbox 360.
Bizarre can also be credited with creating the success of Xbox Live Arcade and downloadable console games in general. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved was an early hit, and at only $5 sold very well and helped pave the way for the hundreds of score attack and arcade style games that now populate the service.
There is little doubt that without Bizarre the Xbox platform would not be what it is today. Not even close. It is a shame that their move to Activision and producing for the PS3 as well resulted in closure so quickly.
(official site) (wikipedia)

A new theatrical trailer for Thor has been released, which includes everything you wish they put in the trailer that was shown during the Super Bowl.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

It’s only a matter of time now. This week on Jeopardy! a special event took place as Watson, a sophisticated computer system from IBM, faced off against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter who are generally regarded as the greatest human Jeopardy! players. This is a distinction we need to make now as Watson pretty much completely trounced them.

Despite his monolithic appearance when seen from the front Watson is actually conveniently placed monitor. He’s actually a huge computer system on state of the art IBM hardware. We know this of course because this event was basically a huge advertisement for IBM. They clearly put a good deal of work to program this guy so I guess that was the trade off for all the viewers this event pulled in.

Watson does some crazy algorithms to determine the most likely answer and the probabilities are then shown on screen. If the chance of the answer being right is above his threshold, he buzzes in, with great speed, and shoots and answer. But he’s not always right!

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Or maybe it will go all the way. Depending on if you’re a parent, the sheer horror of the scenario might be over the top, and the soft music with the dramatic events really pack a punch. I can’t say a game trailer has ever taken me by surprise like this.

Dead Island has been in production for several years and promises an open world Zombie infection game with strong action and role playing elements. The game has a glorious trailer and if the writing and visual can match the 3 minutes above, we’ll have a game worth celebrating. That is, if you can actually play it.

Geoff from Achievement Hunter and Red Vs Blue has a similar reaction to mine, watch after the break.
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Botcon.com has revealed the fourth figure in this year’s convention exclusive box set of Animated Stunticons. As expected, it is Wildrider. He uses the Blazing Lockdown mold with a retooled head. Unfortunately the hands aren’t fixed, but the head is pretty interesting. We also got a new view of the head thanks to the Collector Club’s facebook page. Next week, we finally get to see Motormaster!

   

I don’t think anyone planned on a long show. In fact, the show almost didn’t go on, with Sean and Sindra both out. But we got a last minute ringer in the form of Extra Zero, and still managed to talk about toys for an hour straight.

This may be the last Powetcast in the form you know it. We return with our 50th episode marking the 5th anniversary of Powet.tv next, and then a live recording from PAX. The show that comes back in March may be very different. Subscribe now and don’t miss it!

Music in this episode from the album Where Did the Night Fall by UNKLE

Direct Link: Powetcast 49: Free Parking

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Via the DC Nation twitter, we now know who will be TV’s next Wonder Woman.

Adrianne Palicki, a 27 year old actress best known for the recently concluded series Friday Night Lights, will take up the role of Diana Prince and the alter ego Wonder Woman. After several attemps by DC parent company Warner Bros to bring Wonder Woman to the silver screen in recent years, the prospect of a TV series was recently taken up by veteran David E. Kelley. Kelley, whose credits include Boston Public, Ally McBeal, and The Practice. A pilot episode is expect to begin production soon for NBC, which will be extended to a full season order if successful.

Previously a Wonder Woman series starring Lynda Carter ran for 3 seasons from 1975 to 1979 first on ABC and then CBS.