Sonic Unleashed

This is the first six minutes from the new video game, Sonic Unleashed. (This video is in Japanese; the good stuff starts at the 40-second mark):

Sega is also releasing a separate Sonic short film, Night of the WereHog, to promote the game. I don’t know if the game itself will be good, the visuals do seem to be well executed. Is this the first time Sega, or any video game company, released an animated short to coincide with a new game?

(Thanks, Lev Polyakov)