Steven Spielberg’s Wii Game
Steven Spielberg loves games! More specifically he loves the Wii!

A couple years ago, he made a deal with EA to produce his own titles, and the first of them was revealed this past week, exclusively for Nintendo’s box. Surprisingly, the game has nothing to do with Nazis or aliens.

Titled Boom Blox, it’s part puzzler and part demolition crew as you meet over 300 challenges to create all manner of silly looking buildings out of a multitude of blocks surrounded by beavers, chickens, and grim reapers. Once built, you must figure out creative ways to make the buildings explode. And that’s about it. What else do we need really? Who doesn’t love building a sandcastle or snow fort only to tear it down in the most destructive possible way? Yay human nature!

By going with a family-friendly title on the family-friendliest console, Spielberg has inched himself one step closer to multimedia omnipotence.

Boom Blox will be available this May.

On a non-gaming, Spielberg-related note–Roy Scheider R.I.P.

New Mass Effect Content
Fans of Mass Effect and its nude, amorous aliens can look forward to all new content, named “Bring Down the Sky,” next month on March 10 for 400 MS Points ($5).

This will be the first downloadable content for the million-selling space RPG, and includes and new world inhabited by the Batarian race, who kind of resemble a cross between Webstor, the man-spider from He-Man and Walrus Man (or Ponda Baba, for the nerds) from Star Wars.

These salacious dudes have apparently hijacked an asteroid and intend on running it straight into the colony of Terra Nova. Only you can stop them! Or not. It’s your dime so what do I care?

On the upside, this little episode will provide you with about two hours of fun time in space. On the downside, depending on how far you are in the game already when you download it, you may be forced to play a few things over. Why? We have no idea, but if you love Mass Effect like we love Mass Effect, then you won’t mind wandering around the Citadel aimlessly for another hour or two.

HD-DVD Dies a Little Every Day
Okay, six months ago I would have said there was no way Blu-ray DVD could beat out HD-DVD. Blu-ray is just a stupid name that I hate saying. Not that saying HD-DVD is easier, or cooler, but at least it contains two ideas I’m familiar with and make sense. Hi-def and DVD. I got it.

But not only have most of the major studios pledged their allegiance to Sony’s proprietary Blu-ray format since then, this past week, Microsoft announced a price-cut on its Xbox 360 HD-DVD from $179 to $129. Perhaps most damning for the red-boxed titles, Netflix has announced that it will be phasing out HD-DVD by the end of the year and will carry Blu-ray exclusively.

For those keeping track, the PlayStation 3 is still the cheapest Blu-ray DVD player available. Sneaky bastards.