Summer blockbusters don't just line the pockets of film studio executives and actors working on a percentage of the gross, it looks like they help resellers of licenced games too. According to a bit of research from the Video Game Price Charts blog—I've used them in the past when selling my unwanted games via eBay—the time to strike when selling your copy of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine or Iron Man / X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal is when the movie adaptations hit theatres.

Yes, there's even a market for the terrible PlayStation Speed Racer game! Plenty of interesting charts and graphs await hopeful auctioneers at VGPC. I'm off to put a spit shine on my copy of The X-Files for PSone in anticipation!

Summer Movies Increase Game Prices. Go Speed Racer! [VGPC]

Iron Man the movie wasn't the only Marvel enterprise to do well against GTA IV over the weekend, it looks like Iron Man the video game also held it's own, at least for rentals.

In GameFly's weekly run down of top releases they show that while Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360 took the top spot and Grand Theft Auto IV for the PS3 took the number three spot, Iron Man managed to wedge itself between the two, creating a crunchy GTA sandwich. The game based on the movie was also the top PSP and PS2 rental last week.

Not bad. Hit the jump to see the full list of cross-platform rentals for the week of GTA.

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$US 100.75 million opening day results for the Iron Man flick helped boost Marvel's sales for the first fiscal quarter to $US 112.6 million, the company announced today. While sales are down over the same period last year when the company raked in $US 151.4 million, Marvel said Iron Man was the 10th best opening weekend ever and the second-best non-sequel film debut ever, second only to Marvel's Spider Man. In total, Iron Man has generated about $US 201 million globally to date.

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Following the poor box office performance for movies released around the time Halo 3 came out, the film industry began to blame the major game release for causing the poor attendance rather than the poor quality of their films. Insiders began to speculate that the release of Grand Theft Auto IV would have significant impact on this last weekend's big movie release, Marvel's Iron Man. Well consider the whole video game versus movies theory shot down, as Iron Man earned an estimated $US 104.3 million this weekend including preview showings on Thursday, the second-highest grossing opening weekend ever for a non-sequel behind Spider-Man. I did my part, seeing the film twice over the weekend, and enjoying it immensely both times. Considering the fact that Iron Man is much lower on the public's radar than Spider-Man and the fact that GTA was a multi-platform release compared to the 360-exclusive Halo 3, we can safely assume that poor movie performance can still be blamed on poor movies.

'Iron Man' Blasts Off [Box Office Mojo]

In case you haven't been paying attention, both the Iron Man movie and the game of the Iron Man movie are coming out tomorrow (or tonight at midnight), so you only have a few hours to complete your homemade suit of armour before heading out to the stores. Andrew Le already has his done, having painstakingly crafted this suit of armour in just six days.

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The star-studded behind the scenes Iron Man action continues as Sega gathers Stan "The Man" Lee, John Favreau, Robert Downey Jr., and a cast of thousands sing the praises of the upcoming game, due out at the end of this week. There really isn't all that much more they can say at this point. Stan likes it. John likes it. I myself am mildly fond of what I've seen so far, while awaiting having the full game in my hands before I pass any sort of final judgment. I think we've seen just about everything we're going to see before the movie and game come out, so now we wait.

And play GTA IV.

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Personally I don't know why Sega and Secret Level keep putting these things out, seeing as we already posted the definitive Iron Man video on Friday, but at least this behind the scenes look at the making of the game deals with what we can probably all agree is the best-looking part of it - the armour itself. Having played the demo some 20 times more over the weekend after my initial impressions, I can say that I am a good bit excited by the potential of the title again.

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The weekend is finally here! After a long week of helping fill in for the mysteriously absent McWhertor and Crecente, it's time to kick back and have some fun, and I'm bringing Iron Man with me, because that guy knows how to party. Shoot at him and he only dances harder! Hell yeah!

You'll notice long periods of silence in this video of my play through of the Iron Man demo on the Xbox 360. Those were moments when I was genuinely enjoying myself enough that I forgot I was filming it. Despite said enjoyment, I'd have to say that if I weren't an Iron Man fan, I probably wouldn't have been moved to buy the game after a single play through. To controls take a great deal of getting used to, the bits that let you use special moves to take out vehicles and turrets are simply jarring interactive cutscenes, and I could certainly see Tony's running dialogue with his computer JARVIS (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System) growing stale quickly. You're watching my second play through here. On my third I actually took things slow, and the flight controls grew on me quite a bit. Oh, and you can upgrade a couple of the systems in the suit...just not the one I was attempting to. Not exactly overjoyed, yet not quite heartbroken either.