Playing the game based on Terminator and Titanic director James Cameron's next big thing, Avatar, in full 3D sure sounded like a neat idea. After all, the movie itself is being shot to take advantage of the growing number of digital 3D cinemas popping up across the globe. Leave it to Ubisoft prez Yves Guillemot to get us all un-jazzed by revealing to GamesIndustry.biz that the game will only be playable in 3D on certain HDTVs.

According to Guillemot, the technology used to 3D-ify Ubi's Avatar game has been designed only for "a specific TV" and glasses that work with it. He goes on to say that the display is already available in the US. Could these TVs and these glasses be what he's referring to?

So ... no new TV, no Avatar 3D. Bummer. Though Guillemot has confirmed that the game will be playable in one less "D" on that nice, big old style HDTV you just spent your economic stimulus check on.

Someone should tell James Cameron that games have been "3D" since, well ... a really long time ago. Oh, he means that other 3D. Like, the kind where things (yo-yos, swords, clowns ... shudder ... the clowns!) spring off of the movie screen at you.

Speaking at Microsoft's Advance 08 advertising conference (where his audience was surely a lively bunch, probably total gaming geeks) the Titanic director let slip that the video game based on his upcoming sci-fi epic Avatar (not The Last Airbender -- M. Night Shyamalan's got that) will be in 3D, just like the movie. CNet reports Cameron -- who's been talking up stereoscopic films, TV, books -- for the past few years told the crowd that publisher/developer Ubisoft already has a version of its Avatar game up-and-running on Xbox 360 using standard 3D glasses (the polarized sort that look like sunglasses).

Avatar (the movie) is set to hit theaters summer 2009. Avatar (the game) is tipped to precede the film's debut, although it will likely not be an MMO as originally planned.

Filmmaker James Cameron has chosen Ubisoft to handle the video game portion of his next project Avatar (formerly Project 880) that will be released alongside the feature film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The project will be based around the movie's story about a former Marine, played by Sam Worthington, "who persists in an alien world as an avatar, a human mind in an alien body." Peter Jackson's WETA digital is helping with the film's visuals, which will reportedly also serve to aid in development of the game. We'd love to see how the game's visuals compare to the film.

Avatar is being planned for a May 2009 release, giving Ubisoft just under two years to transform the MMO-like story into a game (which likely won't be a proper MMO).

[Update: Clarified the MMO aspect of the film.]