Microsoft signs HD movie deal with Lionsgate

Microsoft's digital content push continues to gather pace on the Xbox 360, with the announcement that Lionsgate has signed up to supply hi-def films via the Xbox Live Video Marketplace.

The distributor of movies such as Blair Witch Project, Crank, Saw III and Hard Candy now joins the likes of MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. in benefiting from the burgeoning service.

"This partnership is great for Lionsgate. The Xbox gamer is the same moviegoer who wants to watch Saw III or Crank," commented Jon Ferro, executive vice president for Lionsgate.

"That is why we are so thrilled to bring Lionsgate films to Xbox Live Video Marketplace. Bringing our content to this audience makes perfect sense and reflects our commitment to remain at the cutting edge of content distribution to new media platforms," he added.

Since the service was launched last November, partners already taking advantage of Video Marketplace have praised the reach it has into consumers' homes, where movies and TV shows are downloaded directly to, and accessed from, the Xbox 360 hard drive.

"Bringing our content to the coveted gaming audience on the Xbox 360 has been a huge success and has exceeded our expectations," offered Andrew Mellet, VP of video on demand for Warner Bros.

"In fact, Xbox 360 has become one of the top distributors of our content direct to consumers' TV sets over the internet," he revealed.

Caleb Weinstein, senior VP of strategy and business development at Comedy Central said: "In nearly two months, Xbox has become our second highest performing digital distributor."

GamesIndustry.biz

More details about IPTV on Xbox 360

Doug Anderson chatted with Microsoft yesterday and managed to scare up some interesting new details about that new IPTV service that is due out for the Xbox 360 later this year. Seems that their partner here in the US will be AT&T (no surprise there), which is rolling out its new fiber optic Project Lightspeed network (though last mile service will be over copper). The service will reportedly have enough bandwidth for viewing 2 simultaneous HD channels and 2 simultaneous SD channels and will require a router with special QoS features that can handle IPTV traffic. Sounds about right, since those are more or less the basic requirements for IPTV, and we figured that getting watching live HD broadcasts on your Xbox 360 wouldn't be as simple as a software upgrade.

Engadget

PS3 is most powerful console, says Hirai

Speaking to Blu-ray Today, as reported by IGN, the Sony president said, "I have heard many people say our competitors' systems are just as powerful as the PS3. That simply is not true.

"No other next generation entertainment system pushes the envelope on advanced technology like PS3."

However, he conceded, producing such advanced technology has caused difficulties for Sony - with manufacturing problems leading to stock shortages and launch delays.

"I don't think anyone could have foreseen the difficulties we encountered in the production of the blue laser diode for the PlayStation 3, which ultimately delayed the launch of PlayStation 3," Hirai said.

"We were asking our teams to develop millions of components for the PlayStation 3, like the Blu-ray disc player and cell broadband engine, that had previously only been produced in the thousands."

GamesIndustry.biz

PS3 hacked to accept Xbox 360 controller

If you're running Fedora Core 5 on your PS3 and happen to have an Xbox 360 controller lying around -- blasphemy, we know -- then you may be interested to know that a new hack makes the PlayStation 3 capable of accepting instructions from its arch rival's wired controller. Apparently a guy called diabolix managed to throw together a driver for the device, taking us one step closer to realizing one of the runner-up designs from Joystiq's PS3 controller redesign contest (pictured.) So far the PS3 has been the most congenial of the new-gen consoles, seeing as it can now read instructions from the controllers of both its rivals. Of course, neither of these activities was motivated by a desire to make up for inadequacies in the PS3's Dualshake -- that thing's an Emmy award winner!

Engadget