Microsoft and AMD have created a collaborative puzzle game, the Vanishing Point sweepstakes, to celebrate the consumer release of Windows Vista at the end of this month. First prize? A ride into suborbital space.

Given all of the news coming out of International CES in Las Vegas this week, I nearly missed the official announcement confirming the mysterious Vanishing Point game and detailing all the prizes.

You have to hand it to Microsoft to never miss the opportunity to get a lot of product buzz going through an interesting or unusual marketing-type campaign.

But winning is not going to be easy and the competition will be fierce. Vanishing Point challenges players to solve an international game, drawing clues from events at various locations across the world to decipher online puzzles.

Each week, 12 puzzles will be posted on the Web site along with footage of an unusual real-world event. Each puzzle consists of an online element and a real-world element, which have to be combined to arrive at the correct answer.

View: Full Story Via: Microsoft Watch
View: VanishingPointGame.com