Well this we haven't heard of in quite a while. A new UMD movie is out and about on sale at Amazon, and Warner Bros. is apparently hoping some of the magic will spill over to the dying format. In celebration of the release of the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie, they are releasing a UMD box set containing the first five iterations of the wizarding franchise.

Is Harry Potter getting Lego-fied? The rumors are becoming more persistent on the web (it's been going on for a few years now, actually), but we're still not hearing anything confirmatory on the matter. Warner does not help the situation any better.

Another one joins the rosters of playable characters in Lego Batman: The Videogame (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, DS, PC). She's young, she's caped, and she's Commissioner Gordon's daughter. It's batgirl, y'all. What are her abilites? More than you actually think.

So how's life after striking a GBP 100 million (US$206 million) acquisition deal with Warner Bros? Warner Bros. UK president Josh Berger sheds light on this question, as he relates how Warner Bros. acquired Traveler's Tales Games without any restructuring, future plans, and the reasons why they acquired the small yet talented studio.

It's been reported earlier that Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group is acquiring TT Games, the studio behind the highly successful Lego games. Guess for how much though? A whopping GBP 100 million (US$ 206 million)!

Read more about the acquisition and about the founder of TT Games Jon Burton, now dubbed as the £100m geek.

Why aren't we surprised at all? We did see this coming. And it's all good. While the past videogame incarnations of Harry Potter were forgettable, we're eager to see what the next-gen versions have to offer. We can already picture players swishing and flicking the Wiimote while uttering "Alohamora!"

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix videogame will be the first in the franchise to be developed for the next-gen consoles. EA and Warner Bros. promise an accurate representation of the events surrounding J.K. Rowlings' fifth book, which happens to be Harry Potter's fifth year at Hogwarts.

The game will allow players to explore Hogwarts and take on missions presented in the book/movie.

Playable characters include Harry Potter (of course!), Dumbledore, and Sirius Black. Too bad, Ron and Hermione are non-playable. But we're pretty sure they'll get some exposure throughout the game.

The game is slated for a July 2007 release to coincide with the film. It'll also be released for the PSP, PS2, Gameboy Advance, and Windows PC.

Let's face it. The UMD is not really a very popular medium for people. It's struggling to make a profit, you could say, as its limited uses and high prices push consumers away from making purchases.

In Japan, however, the poor unloved UMD had Christmas early, as people actually started to buy universal media discs. After Warner Home Video opted to reduce prices for their UMD movies, sales of the discs went up tenfold! The UMD vids, which are now priced at 980 yen (around  $8.50) were only supposed to be marked down as part of a limited time sale. Warner decided to just keep the price down permanently.

It's a smart move to make it limited then permanent. People will think that this markdown is a godsend (or santasend) and buy more discs to suit their movie tastes because the high prices from before are still fresh in their mind. We wish they'd send that discount to other countries because the darned things, while cute, cost more than the usual Christmas gifts you buy for to family members you don't like and can barely tolerate (admit it, because it's bound to be true).

One last thing: Don't you think it's weird that they didn't offer numbers? There's this mental image of them selling only one a month with the old prices, so they still only sell 10 UMDs now... If any of you have actual numbers for the UMD sales, send us a tip, ok?