Keepingitreal

Microsoft, Netflix to offer videos on Xbox

Microsoft, in its effort to dominate the digital living room, unveiled a series of announcements at the E3 video game conference Monday including a deal to offer free Netflix videos through its Xbox 360 video game console.Microsoft opened the annual expo with a news conference that outlined its strategy for beating rival Sony and winning the home entertainment battle. The partnership with Netflix, of Los Gatos, allows Microsoft to effectively double the amount of video content offered through its Xbox Live online service.People who have both an Xbox Live Gold membership and a Netflix membership will be able to have free access to Netflix's library of 10,000 online movies and TV shows.While the library doesn't boast all of the top titles Netflix offers through its mail service, it helps bolster Microsoft's current library of 10,000 videos, which it sells through its own Live Marketplace."There is no better way to deliver entertainment to your living room" than the Xbox 360, said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft's video game business.For Netflix, the deal expands on its ambitions to provide content directly to televisions. The company has previously announced plans to offer a similar service on set-top boxes from Roku and LG. SOURCE:SFGATE.COM

Crime pays for music biz with new Grand Theft Auto

DENVER (Billboard) - When "Grand Theft Auto IV" reaches stores on Tuesday, the latest chapter in the wildly popular and controversial videogame franchise will make history on several levels. First, it will have the largest soundtrack of any videogame. Second, it will be the first game that lets players tag songs in the soundtrack for subsequent purchase online. And should it meet early sales forecasts, the handiwork of Take-Two Interactive Software's Rockstar game studio could break single-day and opening-week records, not to mention potentially becoming the best-selling game of all time.Taken together, these feats make "Grand Theft Auto IV" the most important videogame release for the music industry since "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero III" on promotional and financial levels.While the latter two games, released late last year, use music as the central gameplay element -- allowing gamers to play along to the included songs using special instruments/controllers -- "Grand Theft Auto IV" is a more traditional game, but still one in which music plays an important role. The more sophisticated that videogames get in terms of storyline and presentation, the more important music becomes to setting that tone, and the music industry is demanding higher licensing fees as a result. More so than most videogames, the "Grand Theft Auto" crime series has used music to establish the tone for each installment's storyline, setting and era. The plot for "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" was set in a Miami-like city circa 1985, featuring a soundtrack of '80s classics straight out of "Miami Vice." "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" fast-forwarded to the late '90s, in a setting resembling South Central Los Angeles and with a hip-hop-heavy soundtrack to match. SOURCE: REUTERS

'Grand Theft Auto' Helps Shape New Game About Immigrants In America, In GameFile

The player runs through a fictional city, dashing through icons that represent acts of civic good like planting trees, donating blood or volunteering at a soup kitchen, and answering questions about immigration in America. But if they give wrong answers, a "Grand Theft Auto"-style "wanted" system is activated, sending government agents who are determined to detain and deport. Boisvert said that she and her colleague wanted to be sure that there was "not necessarily a pleasure component, but ... engagement with the game as a game at the same time we're educating people about these ideas." Should people enjoy the game? Not really. "ICED," which stands for both the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department and "I Can End Deportation," launched on Monday, Presidents Day. It was produced by Breakthrough, a group that hopes the game will raise awareness of what it sees as severe flaws in the United States' immigration program that has resulted in the detention or deportation of hundreds of thousands — possibly millions — of people in the last decade. "We are trying to shift the conversation about immigration from one that criminalizes people to really having a conversation about due process and human rights for everybody in the United States," Breakthrough Executive Director Mallika Dutt told GameFile in an interview last week. She said the game is designed to show the harsh repercussions of an immigration policy that triggers mandatory deportation for people born outside of America who commit a crime in the U.S. SOURCE OF THIS STORY