$1 Million Competition !

Remember when I posted a while back about the big push Majesco is doing for Psychonauts? I speculated it might mean big things for Advent Rising...

I was right... But only sort of, because this blows my expectations to the moon.

Majesco is running a competition for Advent Rising that is nothing short of amazing. I would go as far to say this is the biggest competition in the history of gaming outside of a console launch. (feel free to offer evidence to the contrary)

Paraphrasing the media release...
The Competition - the "Race to Save Humanity"
The contest commences June 9 and is limited to the first 500,000 copies of the game. These first 500,000 copies will be specially marked and will include a free, two-month subscription to Xbox Live. Then, once a week for six weeks, an "Easter egg" in the form of the letter 'A' will be downloaded via Xbox Live and hidden within a level of the game. Majesco will distribute clues as to which level the icon resides in and then the race is on to find it first.

Once the egg is found, gamers will be unlock a code and will then use the code and their Xbox Live gamer tag to log on to the competition website. The first person to do so is that week's winner. And you will want to be one of these winners...

The Prizes
There are '100s of prizes' on offer... we'll have to wait and see the exact break down but it includes :
* Six weeks of cash prizes totaling $10k, $20k, $30k, $40k, $50k, and
the Grand Prize of $1,000,000
* 12-month Xbox Live subscription cards from Microsoft
* SoBe refrigerator and a one-year supply of SoBe drinks
* SoBe guitars, golf bags, MP3 players, and more
* Advent Rising strategy guides from Brady Games
* Officially licensed Xbox controllers from Radica.

Wow. That all sounds amazing and should do really kickstart the hype machine like we've been wanting. It actually sounds like calling it a 1 million dollar comp is selling it short !

The bad news in all this is that it's only open to US and Canadian residents. (with a few exclusions) The rest of the world will have to make do with the game. We'll have to wait and see if the downloadable Easter Eggs will at least be available.

Good work Majesco... seems like you're really going all out to make Advent Rising a hit.

To check out a copy of the original media release go to Yahoo.

I'll update later, as I expect this to get A LOT of coverage from IGN, Gamespot etc.

Note : first heads up from subordinator over at the Majesco forums.

EDIT :
Gamespot Article
TeamXbox article