Stranglehold Playstation 3 Special Edition box art

In emailing with Midway Home Entertainment senior vice president of marketing and chief marketing officer Steve Allison about the growing ties between Hollywood and the videogame industry, we were also curious about another Midway deal involving Stranglehold. The Playstation 3 Special Edition version of the game includes a copy of its inspiration, the 1992 John Woo film "Hard Boiled," stored on the same high-capacity Blu-Ray disc for $10 over the price of the regular version. How did this deal come about? Here is our exchange on the subject.

For years, companies like Disney and Sony have explained that the reason that they don't package the DVD of a movie with its videogame is that it's difficult to both get the fair market value for each and give consumers a bargain. How, then, did Midway put together the deal for the high-definition version of "Hard Boiled" that is being included as part of the PS3 special edition of John Woo's Stranglehold? Will the Stranglehold special edition be the only place consumers can get "Hard Boiled" on Blu-Ray, or will it be available elsewhere?

I think the days of this concern or rationale for not bringing our two forms of media together on special SKUs will be behind us now, especially with the storage capacity that new media like Blu-Ray allows. There's a tremendously powerful opportunity to bring content together that collectively makes for a much more powerful product when you do things like this. The argument you reference about "fair market value" kind of goes out the window especially on catalog movies that have been out on the market for a while. On newer DVD releases, I can see the issue when a home video division of a studio is dealing with a third party publisher. However, a strategic advantage held by studios like Disney or Warner Brothers who are taking on their own game publishing duties is to bring the newer film content together with the new game releases; it's up to them to figure out how to do the internal transactions between the divisions to make it all work. Having just done this deal with the Weinsteins for "Hard Boiled," I'm it certain it can be done; it's a matter of the studios deciding that it's important and doing it.

For us, it was a wild-haired idea at first: why not pair up a new videogame with a very good catalog film in the same genre if it holds some value to a consumer? Stranglehold continues the story of Inspector Tequila from "Hard Boiled," so tracking down the rights holder was super logical in the context of this "crazy idea," which is what everyone said when I first pitched it internally.

The Weinsteins and Genius Products, their home video partner, are very forward thinking on this issue, I have to say. We approached them not knowing their plans for their own re-release of "Hard Boiled" at the end of July. To protect them against worries of cannibalizing their release we did two things:

1. We contractually limited the total number of units we would produce to a set number. I can't tell you the number beyond the fact that it's a six-figure quantity, and this works to make the Special Edition a real collector's item--hopefully a part of videogame history in that it's the first ever SKU to have a game and film on the same disc.
2. The film can only play/launch on a Sony Playstation 3 game system, not from a dedicated Blu-Ray player. This means a videophile can't buy this for their Blu-Ray player; it's going to be a gamer who is passionate about this SKU.

We used the master digital tape from the film print and then ourselves converted it to support all HD resolutions, including 1080p. It's really the storage capacity of Blu-Ray that makes this pairing possible, and it's still a compelling product.