PS3 Stranglehold getting <i>Hard Boiled</i>

This summer, Midway Games expects to ship Stranglehold for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Today, gamers sitting on the fence about which version to buy got an incentive to pick up the PS3 version--or, more accurately, the special Collector's Edition for the PS3.

Like many collector's editions, Stranglehold: CE will have special packaging and a slightly higher price point of $69.99, $10 more than the regular version. However, the boxed set will have one major extra--a full-length copy of Hard Boiled, a 1992 Hong Kong action film. Both the game and the movie will be on the same Blu-ray disc.

Directed by John Woo, Hard Boiled follows Inspector "Tequila" Yuen, a maverick Hong Kong police detective, as he brings down a ring of vicious gunrunners. Though it features some similar scenes, including a take on the iconic tea house shootout, Strangehold is intended as a sequel to the film. In both, Tequila is played by Chow Yun-Fat, whose likeness, voice, and motion-captured movements appear in the game, which is being codeveloped by Woo's Tiger Hill games studio and Midway Chicago.

Stranglehold: Collector's Edition will mark the first time a game and Blu-ray movie have been released in a single package. In North America, the initial run of PS3 hardware came bundled with a Blu-ray version of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. In the UK, the launch batch of PS3s included a copy of the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale. According to recent video-industry news reports, Blu-ray sales are currently outpacing those of the rival HD-DVD format, which is supported by Xbox 360 maker Microsoft.