New Sonic Movie

GDC 2012: Young, Selfon, Tallarico On Goals For Game Audio

Seasoned industry professionals such as Media Molecule's Kenneth Young, HUGEsound.com's Chance Thomas, Microsoft's Scott Selfon, Brian Schmidt Studios' titular Brian Schmidt, and Video Games Live/Game Audio Network Guild founder Tommy Tallarico all discussed the most significant accomplishments, challenges, and trends facing audio production as part of their drive to encourage submission ideas for the GDC 2012 Main Conference. Kenneth Young: Download size and available storage space certainly have a big impact on the approach -- for example, you don't have the liberty of throwing an abundance of streaming music, ambiences or voice assets at the project. On the positive side, such limitations force the developer to really consider whether wallpapering their game with music or thousands of lines of clunky, information-heavy and exposition-heavy dialogue is a good idea. Here's my obligatory Angry Birds example -- it only uses music when it is needed, in the menu and as a payoff upon level completion. Therefore, today's games still have to sound good on the minimum spec platform. For example, a cool interactive music design that works great on the iPad 2 using let's say, three stereo streams, is useless on earlier phones with only a single music stream available. It's important that audio designs still do the game justice on the minimum spec platform. In addition to download size, for web-based games, sometimes the developer is extremely concerned with "time to play" -- that is, from the time the user clicks on the game icon, they want to start playing the game within seconds. A game that requires lengthy downloads won't hold the user's attention, and they'll click and go do something else rather than wait even 60 seconds for a download or install. A phone or web game will have a far smaller team and you will probably be the only audio person, so if you're a composer, get used to doing sound effects -- and not hacky, crappy ones! SFX is probably more important than music in many of these games. The SFX for these gmaes are much more likely to be abstract -- or non-diegetic -- than on consoles, so get good at knowing how to inform the player with sound without annoying them. Scott Selfon: You should also aim for agility and "purity" of vision -- game production schedules and budgets mean there will likely be a sole audio creating force.

Sears, K-Mart Launch Movie Download Service | The Wrap Movies

Sears and K-Mart are getting into the movie download business.

The companies announced on Tuesday a partnership with Sonic Solutions' RoxioNow to launch an online movie download service -- called Alphaline Entertainment -- that will allow Sears and K-Mart customers to download new movies on the same day they are released on DVD and Blu-Ray.

That part gives Sears and K-Mart an advantage over Netflix and RedBox, which often have to wait 28 days before offering new releases to customers -- and on par with iTunes and Best Buy's CinemaNow platform, which is also powered by RoxioNow. (Shares of Sears Holdings Co. rose Tuesday on the news.)

Sonic is "working with Sears on a multi-phase rollout that includes making the service available from a broad range of connected devices and ensuring compatibility with studio-supported digital programs." That includes mobile devices and HDTVs.

Netflix is facing more and more competition from a range of movie download entrants -- including Comcast, Hulu and -- possibly -- Google.

But ... Sears ? Not sure anyone saw that coming.

Here's the full release:

Sears and Kmart Team with Sonic to Launch Movie Download Service

RoxioNow-Powered Alphaline Entertainment Service Now Live and Providing Consumers Instant Access to Movies and TV Shows

Novato, CA (December 28, 2010) - Sonic Solutions® (NASDAQ: SNIC) today announced that RoxioNow™ platform licensee, Sears, has officially launched its online movie download service, Alphaline Entertainment http://alphaline.roxionow.com . The new service enables Sears and Kmart customers to download entertainment online, including new movies on the same day they are released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Sonic is working with Sears on a multi-phase rollout that includes making the service available from a broad range of connected devices and ensuring compatibility with studio-supported digital programs.

Sonic's multi-year agreement with Sears extends the reach of the RoxioNow platform which powers a range of digital services for leading brick and mortar retailers, cable operators, PC manufacturers, game system vendors, consumer electronics makers, and Hollywood studios' direct-to-consumer initiatives. Sonic and Sears are teaming to embed the services at a chip level on a growing network of devices including portable media players, Blu-ray Disc players, mobile phones, and high-definition television sets from leading manufacturers.