Disney is taking advantage of a technology that more content developers should be. The studio has released a special edition version Blu-ray Disc that allow users to watch the original Toy Story movie and play the Toy Story 3 movie-based game without swapping discs.
When players pop in the Toy Story 3 Hybrid Premium Edition game, the game will be playable from the PS3’s menu just like any other game disc. However, move over to the “Video” field of the system, and there will be something there too: the complete Toy Story 1 movie.
The idea of cross media launching from a single disc first showed up on Sony’s PSP system, where some UMD movies had a game demo built in. The PS3’s ecosystem works similarly, allowing Blu-ray Disc manufacturers to partition the disc to recognize different types of media.
For example, a PS3 game developer could put the game soundtrack on the disc, and users could easily access it through the system’s “Music” menu. However, hardly anyone has really taken advantage of this feature due to the fact that it costs more and most gamers would probably overlook it anyway.
However, I think there’s a potential market here. It would be great to see more game developers and movie studios working to cross-promote content through the powerful Blu-ray medium and the way the PS3 makes it easy to siphon off different types of content.
For now, Toy Story 3 is a start. It carries a $15 premium over the standard version of the Toy Story 3 PS3 game, at $65.
