IESB say Spielberg has been "blown away" by Stuart Beattie's screenplay, which as we know deals with a kid called John. Oh, and some aliens as well, along with a little shooting.

IESB also point out that having lost Transformers, Dreamworks (having recently split from their distribution deal with Paramount) will be looking to gain a replacement "tentpole" action series, and Halo - which has been abandoned by Peter Jackson and Neil Blomkamp - fits the bill perfectly.

Apparently CAA, who list Spielberg as a client, have the director in "active negotiations" to produce the movie. So please, make note of this. He's rumoured to be in talks to produce the movie, not direct it.

Sounds crazy, but then, five years ago how many of you would have picked that Spielberg would produce a Transformers movie?

We have contacted Microsoft and will update if the company comments.

IESB Exclusive: Master Chief and HALO May Be Coming to the Big Screen Sooner than Expected with a New Big Name Producer [IESB]

While at E3, Ubisoft's Maxime Bernard's told Official Xbox 360 Magazine in a recently published article: "He [Spielberg] had an entourage... and he said to his friend 'it gives us a lot of ideas, it's very inspiring.' I was thinking, like, wow. If we made a game that inspires Spielberg then [censored], we're doing something good here."

That censored word is going to bug me all day. What ever could it be?

Ubisoft: Spielberg inspired by Splinter Cell [OXM via VG247] [Pic]

Earlier this year, we heard that despite the many denials, Steven Speilberg action title LMNO (pronounced Elemental) was dead in the water, the budget pulled, the assets locked away. The game was apparently victim of the sluggish economy.

In a recent interview, game designer Jason Rohrer gives that LMNO-is-D.O.A. talk further credence when he let this slip about the title: "On top of that, I did some consulting work, most recently for EA on the Spielberg LMNO project. My understanding is that project's pretty much been canceled now, what with the changing economy, but I'm not sure."

So maybe canceled, maybe not. This guy isn't sure. What we're sure about: if you're a consultant, you probably shouldn't go around blabbering the status of projects you've worked on. But, hey, we're not consultants. We're gourmet chefs. No, really.

Update: EA contacted Kotaku, stating: "The rumor is incorrect. EA remains deeply committed to its collaboration with Steven Spielberg and projects we are developing together. LMNO was a code name for a project in development at EALA. While the project continues to develop at EALA with Steven, we no longer refer to it as LMNO. We have no further details to reveal at this time."

Interview: Jason Rohrer [EDGE via Joystiq]

Well, I'm currently making video games through EA. And right now, I'm so excited to be able to write for this platform. That's what I'm most excited about. Because it sort of changes the paradigm of what I would have written for last week. Now all that has been thrown away. And now it's a whole new world, a new beginning.

Spielberg believes that the game industry has never allowed players to cry, because the current controller interface does not allow for players to pause from their adrenaline rush.

"Because of that there's no room for a video game to break your heart. I think, in terms of a technology," Spielberg adds, "we have a little more room to be much more emotional with the Natal technology than we ever had before." As we flail around our living rooms, that is.

Microsoft unveils new controller [BBC via VG247]

"Now we're all playing at home and someday we'll be playing directly on our TV sets, bypassing all of the platforms," says Spielberg. The director, who says he's a PC gamer more than anything else, wants to see 3D games developed for "a real three-dimensional experience".

"And after that, will certainly be virtual reality, which just like 3D came and went in the 1950s, and now it's here to stay in movies," he continues. "I really think virtual reality, which experimentally came and went in the eighties, is going to be redeveloped, just like 3D is being redeveloped today, and that's going to be the new platform for our gaming future."

For the director, home consoles will go "the way of the Dodo bird".

Tech Weekly: Steven Spielberg on gaming, The tech behind transport [The Guardian via Eurogamer]

Normally a job reserved for Japanese idols, voice actors and bikini models, EA has tapped Mr. Spielberg to hold aloft his latest Wii creation, showing expert product placement with a hint of a smile that shows just how pleasing a game of Boom Blox Bash Party can be.

Kudos go out to Spielberg's stylist, who downplays the Steven with a tasteful, homogeneously brown blend of merino wool, suede and corduroy, so as not to distract from the zany Boom Blox Bash Party box art.

Full-on Spielberg modeling after the break!

While Boom Blox's success can be argued—EA CEO John Riccitiello would probably call it a hit—the brand doesn't get much cover love in the sequel. In fact, your rods and cones are probably feeling unloved too, as the the cover art for the forthcoming "high-energy action-puzzle game for everyone" is total chaos. Maybe not as headache-inducing as Germany's revamped budget box art for Metal Gear Solid 4, but visually numbing nonetheless.

That bright yellow band to the left there might imply that EA has designs on labeling its Wii games like so—or at least for future Boom Blox sequels. We're pretty sure it wants more of those Wii party dollars to itself.

Coming so soon after the first game, Bash Party's focus is on polishing the experience and offering new features, such as new blocks, new tools, new actions, new multiplayer modes and new characters.

Most inspiring of the additions, however, is the introduction of user-generated DLC, with players promised the ability to download and rate new levels from both EA and other users.

Steven Spielberg is excited:

Boom Blox Bash Party is a wild social gaming experience. We know families and friends really enjoyed playing the original Boom Blox together, so we designed more explosive multiplayer experiences with Boom Blox Bash Party.

He's excited, we're (kinda) excited too.

Spielberg, EA play "Boom Blox" sequel [Reuters]

He tells Yahoo! Games' Celebrity Byte that he and his family bond over games of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, with Steven on the drums. They're not just playing Boom Blox to keep dad happy.

Spielberg himself is more of an action man, playing titles like Call of Duty 4 and Half-Life, raised on Pong which he calls the "Woodstock of video gaming." He's not a fan, however, of cut scenes in video games.

"You know the thing that doesn't work for me in these games are the little movies where they attempt to tell a story in between the playable levels," he says. "That's where there hasn't been a synergy between storytelling and gaming."

Spielberg says more needs to be done in the providing a "universal narrative" in video game storytelling.

"They go to a lot of trouble to do these [motion-capture] movies that explain the characters. And then the second the game is returned to you and it's under your control, you forget everything the interstitials are trying to impact you with, and you just go back to shooting things," Spielberg laments.

But we like shooting things, Steven.

A Close Encounter with Steven Spielberg [Celebrity Byte]

Just saw your story on the LMNO rumor and wanted to let you know the game is still in development at EALA under the creative leadership of Doug Church and Lou Castle.

The rumor is incorrect.

For those of you not up on your alphabet games, LMNO is said to be an ultra-realistic title that was once described by N’Gai Croal as “North by Northwest meets ET… if ET were female, grown up and hot.”

You don't play as the girl, however. You're an ex-secret agent, and the bond that you forge while on the run with the computer-controlled woman—good, bad, indifferent—determines the nature of her special abilities and the ways in which she'll assist you. Says Spielberg: "The challenge is, can the game have an emotional impact on players while they are actively manipulating the world?" Based on the clever ways in which he and EA are extracting a genuine performance from their digital Eve—complete with eyes that widen, lips that curl and translucent skin that lights up in different colors to express her quicksilver moods—we think Spielberg's got yet another hit on his hands.

Good to know that's still in the works.

The game's codename was LMNO, and apparently “almost everyone on the team has gone.” The game's been in development for a while now and supposedly included concepts like motion-capturing tear movements to evoke "emotion". The fate of the game is currently not known. Spielberg is still rich, though.

Rumour: Spielberg team laid off at EALA [VG247]

So why was Boom Blox an initial dud?

Our first thought was meager and poorly aimed marketing attempts. We don't personally recall seeing much in the way of advertising, but anecdotal evidence from net denizens who watch cartoons and networks aimed at kids swear they were fed a steady diet of Boom Blox TV spots. Why advertise just on kid-friendly programming, when Spielberg himself has said that the game was intended to be something that kids and their parents would play?

NPD analyst Anita Frazier apparently had similar thoughts, telling GameDaily that despite positive review, new intellectual property like Boom Blox has a hard time breaking through the "noise in the market" and that perhaps marketing was to blame.

Frazier points to a noisy release schedule that included Mario Kart Wii, Grand Theft Auto IV, Wii Fit and Metal Gear Solid 4. One might think that Boom Blox may have drowned in a sea of Wii shovelware, but the amount of crap heaped onto retail shelves was relatively light in May.

Perhaps it was just that the Spielberg name just doesn't carry much weight with gamers, as the initial announcement that the famed director was involved in a block smashing game that looked a hell of a lot like a Jenga rip-off seemed like an odd, perhaps disappointing match. A $50 price tag for a game that doesn't come packed with an accessory like Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii likely didn't help matters, especially when better sellers like Game Party and Carnival Games undercut what looks like a similar offering.

While we're hoping that Boom Blox's initial misstep at retail will lead to smarter marketing and better prices for Wii games, we suspect we'll unfortunately see third-party publishers just point to Nintendo's high quality offerings for something to blame. The argument that only Nintendo published titles has some merit, but we think third-party publishers have to shoulder their own part of the blame.

Wii Third-Party Struggles Highlighted by May NPD [GameDaily]

[via Blues News]

LaBeouf kept following the calls until he got to the director’s office. And there was the master himself: shoes off, socks on, dressed in shooting gear, but sitting behind a computer, stuck on the fifteenth level of a first-person shooter called BioShock.

“This is like months to get to this level, and he can’t get past this one little mysterious spider god, and he’s losing his mind. He’s like, ‘I can’t do it, Shia! I can’t do it.’ ”

LaBeouf, who got into acting at age 12 partly because he wanted to make enough money to buy himself a Sega Genesis, had found himself a soul mate.

Bwah? The 15th level of BioShock? There are 15 levels in BioShock? And mysterious spider gods? Guess Spielberg really is losing his mind!
LaBeouf Article [GQ Thanks, Brendan!]

...some games are so over-the-top violent and so extraordinarily interactive that I am even afraid of them. I am not going to name names... My kids will never go in and take an R-rated DVD and play it. But there is something very compelling and different about the artwork on the box of what might be an M game that could tempt my kids... There are games that are taboo. And I won't have them on the premises. I don't want my kids saying, 'How come Dad is playing that and we can't?'

Side note: Watched Temple of Doom three times today. Damn, that's a good movie.
Spielberg Switches [USA Today via Go Nintendo]

There's definitely the potential to go to other consoles. Our mindset, our philosophy was that we didn't want to taint our thinking by taking any other console into account. The way we saw it we wanted to make this the most authentic Wii experience that it could possibly be. So we didn't think about the PC, DS, PS3 or Xbox 360. We're still very much in the mindset of finishing this game. But once it's over the sky's the limit. There's definitely the possibility of going to other consoles.

I tracked down who's signing that petition, and these are like a few people, getting under different identities and things in the internet and signing it over and over again. The second thing is that I was able to find that actually Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg under various different identities posting ongoing that I should stop making movies, and I know why: They are afraid of the competition. What jealous internet nerds and wannabe filmmakers are signing that petition?

I was actually pretty surprised to find out how much of a gamer Steven Spielberg is.

He - regularly, when we meet with him - makes references to games that a lot of us game developers haven't played or haven't played in years. But also recent games, like Crysis, he talks a lot about.

As a Chicagoan, when I used to hear "Michael Jordan's Bulls," even with as good as Michael Jordan was, it seemed to sell the incredible Bulls short. Now when I see names like John Woo and Steven Spielberg headlining titles—guys who don't even show up for every game, so to speak—it sure feels like the credit (and I'd guess, the paychecks) are a bit misaligned.

Boom Blox producer impressed by "gamer" Spielberg [Gamesindustry]