As the European launch of the PS3 nears, the excitement mounts for the PlayStation faithful counting down the minutes before the arrival of the long awaited console. Just to sweeten a PS3 purchase a little bit more, Sony has announced that the first 500,000 Europeans to register their console after launch will be given a free Blu-ray edition of the newest James Bond movie, Casino Royale.
Darren Carter, Sony’s Vice President of Marketing, said, "Casino Royale not only makes the most of the features and capabilities of the Blu-ray format, but is one of the most exciting and entertaining movies to debut on Blu-ray this year." The Blu-ray edition will sport a playback resolution of 1080p and will take up 50GB of storage on the dual layer disk. The movie, released in 2006, was produced with a budget of $150 million and has, to date, earned over $581 million in box office receipts worldwide.
In North America, Sony offered a similar Blu-ray movie bonus with the addition of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, a comedy staring Will Ferrell, to the first 400,000 purchasers of the PS3.
The benefits of including a Blu-ray ray movie are twofold for Sony. It helps to spread the popularity of the Blu-ray format–which was co-developed by Sony–and it will make the purchase of a PS3 more attractive to potential buyers.
