James Cameron's Avatar is going to be released as a film and videogame at the same time, does that mean videogame fans can say Hollywood produces rubbish films if the videogame doesn't turn out well?

The rights have been given to Ubisoft, perhaps one of the best videogame companies for producing film rich games that mix action, suspense, story and heavy doses of reality. Sounds like an extremely good marriage for James Cameron's Avatar.

One great win for the Ubisoft team is that because the Avatar game is being created digitally, most of the assets from the film can be passed onto the developers to be placed straight into the game, giving the opportunity to create a very close tie in and some fantastic looking sequences.

According to the story from Variety, the television series Heroes, which is about to grace UK terrestrial television tomorrow, is also in negotiations between NBC and Ubisoft to become a videogame.

Indeed the links between the videogame and film industry are closing fast. Now if only Hollywood could work out the correct way to develop a film property from popular culture (videogame or comic books) without ruining it by trying to remould it into something else.