Bad news first: there might be a bit more competition than you expected for that home theater giveaway. Good luck bringing down Netflix's shooting star though, as if last week's good news train wasn't enough comes news that over a million Xbox Live Gold members have already downloaded and activated the Watch Instantly app since its NXE debut last November. That's more than 10% of Netflix's just announced 9.4 million subscribers who've already watched over 1.5 billion minutes of TV and movies through their consoles. They're not the only ones happy, while streaming may be eating into DVD rentals, Xbox Live Marketplace rentals are up 174 percent year over year. The streaming library is up to 12,000 titles, with a "growing percentage" in high definition, for the rest of the celebratory details check the full PR after the break. Nothing left for us to say but congratulations and hey, if you get a minute, could you fix Nilay's HD streaming on the Xbox? Thanks.
"Three days filled with specialist lectures delivered by almost 200 speakers, three thematic summits, and over 2600 guests from almost every corner of the world - the capital of Małopolska became the capital of the games industry for a few days.
Organized by the Krakow Technology Park, the Digital Dragons Conference once again showed that Poland is attracting more and more attention from the world's biggest industry tycoons for a reason." - Digital Dragons.
Atari has acquired Intellivision. The company announced today that it had acquired its long-time rival, ending one of the original console rivalries, dating back to the 1970s.
Wow.... two of my earliest gaming platforms. All they need is Coleco to round things out.
This is like Nintendo buying SEGA.
YES! Colecovision was my start! I came to know Mario there in Donkey Kong before the NES was even a thing. :)
Yes such fond memories. My first was the odyssey, but I really started gaming on my colecovision. Had atari and intelivision but coleco was by far the best of the bunch to me.
Good piece of history here.
edit: I wanted to read it but the cookies pop up is stopping me.
This was just before my time. I do remember my mom's friend having one all dusty in her apartment back in the day.
[R.I.P.} Ms. Irene
People forget that console wars are part of the history of this industry. The console wars were started by competitive companies all the way back then and continued through Sega vs Nintendo, Jaguar/3DO/NeonGeo, and PlayStation vs Nintendo and Xbox.
These companies are across oceans and competing for the same business. These companies created the console wars, not crazy fanboys.
Console wars are fun. It's fun to be a fanboy too. I don't get what's wrong with any of this as entertainment.
Young kid school yard banter was fun. 30-40+ year olds still doing it is just disturbing. Many my age (50+) grew out of that a long time ago. We may still have our preferences, but we also embrace a more central position because there is a lot to enjoy on a wide range of genres and systems.
You'll understand one day and then things will forever change.
The only thing back then was that the game would still appear on competing platforms.
Remember the Coleco Vision could play Atari2600 games via an Expansion modude.
I had both. Snafu on Intellivision was addicting as hell. Also had Colecovision which had Time Pilot. Combat was probably my favorite Atari game and both Atari and Intellivision had similar games like Pitfall and Jungle Hunt. It’s been so long I don’t really remember which game I liked bettter out of those but I did play my Intellivision a bit more than Atari though I’m not sure why besides Snafu. That was 40+ years ago damn I’m old lol
Ahh you're making me all nostalgic! Not old enough to have played these on original hardware but my first console was a bootleg console from Costco that had a bunch of intellivision and atari games. Then had a lot of fun with intellivision and atari collections on ps1 and 2.
Snafu was one of my favourite games and me and my partner still occasionally play it to this day
While some video games overwhelm you with sheer scale, titles like Asura's Wrath and Doom Eternal make you the boss player right upfront.
Just buried the Playstation brand. Making the system cost a fortune and ending any chance they had of market share, and in the end the future is probably indeed downloads.
Sh*t the day Sony thought of the word blu ray, it's was the downfall of their business.
It doesn't matter what great games the PS3 has, they don't even get a fair fight at the console war, because their system has to cost customers a crap load more for something they don't even want.
Hopefully Sony learned and next time around they'll give themselves a fighting chance and not blow their F*cken legs off, right at the starting line.
Wow,a Billion Minutes served!
Sony are doomed alright,I mean,how will they top a BILLION minutes SERVED :o !!?!??
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You see the "PM" part under my Avatar?Use it when these numbers are relevant.
Aren't there like 25 million 360s in homes?
Microsoft need to put more effort into their game division rather than Movies,everyone I know has Netflix already so there isn't really much more they can do to help the Rental service.
1 million Watch Instantly activations....out of.....at least 17 million subscribers to Live?
Hmm.