Archive for: xbox

The Future of Home Entertainment and Films

Netflix is a great service. I think that the days of strolling to the DVD store to pick out a few of your favourites are ending rapidly. Why should you pay full price for a DVD when you could stream loads every month for the same price? The same kind of service is taking place with our games consoles. Less than two weeks ago Games On Demand was released for the XBOX 360.

This allows you to download games paying a reduced price for them. I downloaded Battlefield 1943 and Assassin’s Creed – it’s just like having the game on a disc without the trip to the store. It saves the distributors money, it saves the producers money and more importantly it saves you money. But this rapid change in the way we get our movies will have big repercussions.

Firstly, there will be job losses. All those staff at the DVD store will be given their notice. What’s the point in keeping on staff when there isn’t enough business to pay them? The only solution for the big entertainment stores is to head online and try to create a Games on Demand or Netflix alternative.

Secondly, the whole hobby of collecting special edition DVDs and first editions will die. Because we can simply press ‘Download’, movies are starting to loose their individuality and allure that they’ve had for generations. The only thing, I believe, that will stop cult films and massive hits from loosing their spark will be the cinema.

Thirdly, you can say good bye to physical media. Games consoles are now being sold with hundreds of GM of memory. Soon, all media players (the equivalent of today’s BlueRay players) will just be giant memory card sitting underneath your TV.

But it may not all be bad news for the businesses, collectors and DVD player makers out there. When VCRs came out everyone assumed that the cinema would be finished in ten years. Yet here we are. I also think this will be good for piracy. Yes there will be more films online but once they are protected properly, sharing should diminish. After all, the main reason why people watch illegal copies of films online is because they don’t want the trouble of buying a DVD. If they offer videos of a very high quality at a small price, video viewing that’s all above board will come back.

The future looks bright for home entertainment indeed.

Project Natal The New Thing Coming To Xbox 360

Last night Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda dropped by the show to demo Project Natal to a very appreciative SNL alum. Take a look.

Sky on a box? No, Sky on an Xbox

Are you an Xbox gamer? I’m sure you are going to enjoy this. Sky broadcaster has just signed a deal with Microsoft, more specifically with the Xbox platform to deliver their transmissions to all Xbox Live users.

Since Sky has their main offices in England, this offering will available only for UK and Ireland users. But I’m sure if this works for them, will be available in other countries.

In fall, british XBox Live users will have the possibility to enjoy live transmissions, including football games. And the transmissions will be streamed in DVD quality, the standard for this broadcaster. Here’s a quick image that was revealed in advance (from TechRadar):

There are two things that are not official yet: price and the channel that will be available, we’ll have to wait for a confirmation. But there is already the minimum requirement for the connection speed: 1mb connection as minimum and 2mb recommended… not much if you ask me, considering the you’ll be receiving fine quality video streamed in real-time.

Sky also expects that this service won’t be exclusive for Xbox and already thinking in other platforms that could support the same functionality (yes, PS3 mainly).

Mooch: P2P Video Game Trading

Mooch has just announced that it has launched its peer-to-peer video game trading website to the public. Mooch provides video game players and owners an affordable and simple way to trade their old and used video games.

Instead of exchanging used titles at retail stores for a fraction of the original price, Mooch subscribers can enter a list of the games they have as well as the games they want, and Mooch’s patent-pending trading engine goes to work. Each step of the trading process is intelligently automated, including finding potential trades, balancing each trade, and even allowing users to print postage directly from the site.

A limited number of free accounts will be available during the beta period. Following the free beta, membership to Mooch will require an annual subscription fee of $19.99.