xbox 360 Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Netflix subscribers rejoiced when Microsoft partnered with the incredibly popular online rental service a little shy of a year ago to bring Netflix Watch Instantly streaming service to the Xbox 360 free of charge to members with a Gold Xbox Live Subscription. This move boosted Netflix' subscriber base considerably while also being a feather in Microsoft's multimedia cap; the 360 may not have a Blu-ray drive, but it does allow a user to stream all of Netflix' WI library to their TV. Well, now that feather has lost a little bit of its luster, as Microsoft's exclusive arrangement with the movie provider is no longer all that exclusive.

Starting this November, Netflix Watch Instantly streaming will be available for Sony's Playstation 3, also completely free of charge to anyone who owns a PS3 and subscribes to at least the $8.99 per month Netflix plan (that would be the 1 DVD out at-a-time plan with unlimited instant watching). It's a deal that should give PS3 owners a great feeling, as they now have the most multi-media friendly console on the market. I'm not picking sides here, but the system will soon be boasting the impressive combination of A) Sony's own online rental service, B) a Blu-ray drive, C) a built in web-browser that allows users to access sites like YouTube and Hulu, D) unrestricted access to Netflix' Watch Instantly library, which includes a several thousand strong selection of movies and TV shows. Oh, and it plays games too.

Read on for more details, including how to enable your PS3 for the new service, which is slightly more complicated than a system update.

Want to become heir apparent to the throne of Lyons and Mankiewicz (which is no Ebert and Roeper, which was no Siskel and Ebert)? Then pick up your Xbox 360 controller and gird your loins, because according to The Daily Beast, "smart people" like "Ben Lyons" recommend Scene It? Box Office Smash for Xbox, and he wants to challenge you in "The Lyons Den." Growl!

Lyons endorses the game, welcoming opponents and daring them to beat the oft-updated trivia and puzzles more than he, Watcher of 300-ish Flicks Per Annum, can -- that is, when not already playing with his "homies" (word!). Yes, the man who thought I Am Legend was "one of the greatest movies ever made" and wanted to hear the young boy's side of the story after watching Doubt is putting up his virtual dukes, and I'm tempted to bring home an Xbox 360 and a copy of the game just to put up a fight with The Wizard here.

Maybe that's the idea, though: More people would be willing to pick up this game to beat him rather than to beat it. A smart plan, perhaps, but I think I'll abstain. After all, Ebert beat him without pushing a button, and I'd just rather not risk tossing my controller through the screen at the mere sight of the L word (no, not the hot one, the other one, the one in the "Den" with all his "homies").

I've ranted once or twice about some of the geekier goodies I've found through Netflix, but somehow this one got by me. It'd been a while since I'd visited Hacking Netflix, which is an excellent blog by the way, and it was there that I read ... huh, what's this? I can now view ALL* my "Watch Instantly" titles through my Xbox 360? Really? Well I just had to check that out.

My system needed to update to the jazzy new 360 dashboard, but introducing my Xbox to my Netflix queue was remarkably easy. Now, you can't exactly browse through the Netflix website -- in fact the 360 system only accesses your WI queue. But I watched two episodes of Heroes (Season 3) and the whole of Sam Peckinpah's The Killer Elite (starring James Caan AND Robert Duvall!) in one enjoyable sitting. (Yeah, I'm a good sitter.) Just another reason that Xbox is cooler than Playstation ... says the guy who plays games with his console maybe five times a year.

In other Netflix news, I've discovered a few more obscurities that might be worthy of note: In addition to the aforementioned Peckinpah film, I recently watched a few Gene Hackman ones from 1977: March or Die and The Domino Principle. Both uneven, but dang I love Gene Hackman. Other recent flicks include George C. Scott in The Hindenburg (meh), Marooned (more Hackman!), and THX 1138 (more Duvall!) And I finally saw the mega-weird Spider Baby. Sheesh. Frankly the Netflix Watch Insantly service has improved exponentially since they partnered up with Starz. Now there's NO excuse for me not to have a movie on at all times.

(* Nope, not all. Some of your queued titles will NOT be available via your 360. According to the HN blog, looks like it's all the Sony-owned titles.)

As part of a soon-to-close multi-million dollar deal, Legendary Pictures, the production company behind the recent mega-hit 300, and Warner Bros. are teaming up to enter another arena of production -- video games. According to Variety, Legendary Pictures, led by Thomas Tull and Warner Bros. will team up to produce and distribute a slate of video game titles to be based on as-yet unspecified Warner Bros. films.

The new venture, known as Brash Entertainment, will be funded by private investors currently being courted by Tull and Legendary Pictures co-founder Bert Ellis and will be run by Mitch Davis and Nicholas Longano, former execs. of in-game advertising company Massive. At the moment, its not known if Warner Bros. will also be an investor in the company or simply handle game distribution in North America -- as they already do for companies such as British publisher Eidios. Even if the full extent of the partnership between Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. isn't known at present, according to the article, there is one project they almost certainly intend to tackle -- a next gen game based on 300 for the XBox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.

Even though the studio has already released a 300 game for the Playstation Portable, now that the film has become such a huge success, it seems the studio would love to see a much higher-profile game to better take advantage of the movie's young male demographic. That makes sense considering the game for the PSP was pretty bad and felt rushed. Now that they have a hit on their hands, I don't blame them for wanting to go back and make a better game. I, for one, look forward to playing it.

One thing is for sure, if they make a big screen version of Gears of War, the trailer is going to have a hell of a time topping the commercial for the video game. Variety reported that New Line had bought the rights to the best-selling XBox 360 game. The Microsoft title was a huge seller (4th highest selling game in the US in 2006) and is one of the most played games on XBox Live. There isn't much of a story, just a loose setting of a world struggling in the aftermath of an invasion by an alien force known as the Locust. Since this is a video game after all, there is a small group of elite soldiers (including the typical anti-hero that has been freshly let out of prison) out to save humanity. I wish I had more gaming info to impart, but I've always been more of a Grand Theft Auto girl myself.

There is no word on who New Line is looking at to direct (but I guess there is one director we can take off the list), and the last time they were going to make a popular video game into a big budget Hollywood production it didn't exactly work out. Rumors of the studio balking at Halo's heavy price tag isn't a good sign because Gears doesn't exactly look like a low budget production either. This time, I hope New Line is bringing their checkbook.

As I reported before, Microsoft was going to start providing downloads of select movies and TV programs to users of its XBox 360 gaming console through its XBox Live service. Well, the day finally came and the results, while impressive due to the sheer number of sales, were not without their share of problems. According to Variety, Microsoft went live with the service on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it wasn't long before message boards, and Microsoft phones and emails, were jammed with complaints of slow download speeds, missing programs, being charged multiple times for the same program and other problems.

Microsoft responded quickly (especially for Microsoft) to the complaints with postings on its public message boards that it was aware of the problems and was working on fixes. But insiders at the software giant report that Microsoft vastly underestimated the amount of sales, especially of High Def programming from the WB, CBS and others, and so was ill-prepared for the incredibly large amount of bandwidth needed to download that much High-Def content. However, by Sunday Microsoft reported at its website that "download speeds for most users should be significantly improved across the board." After that announcement, according to the Variety article, online complaints dropped to almost nothing. In addition to improved download speeds after a few days, Microsoft also announced plans to offer refunds or "make-goods" for users encountering problems -- which is a good move on their part.

So, score one for Microsoft. Even if they have problems in other areas of their business and are often accused of being an evil company bent on world domination, they got it right with the Xbox 360. As a user of the console, I appreciate it's impressive design and how well it works. Also, I happened to download one or two programs on Friday afternoon (The Matrix and Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn if you want to know which ones) and although the download speed was glacially slow, once I finally got the content, it made for a very impressive viewing experience. If Microsoft really can work out the glitches and is able to expand its content to include a great deal more movies and TV programs, companies like Apple who seek to offer competing services might really have a problem on their hands. Who knows, maybe Microsoft really will become king of the living room?

Just when I thought I might be warming up to Michael Bay, I hear news of the stupidest of all possible Transformers rumors. I'm hoping this is nothing more than a stupid internet created rumor founded in nothing at all, but the word on the street says the lastest version of a Transformers script has been leaked, and it contains information regarding some severely annoying product placement. If you believe it, a Xbox 360, an iPod, and some plasma televisions will be ... you guessed it ... transforming. No word yet on what exactly these little toys will turn into, but are there really any good options?

I'll tell you what -- I think this one is just a bit much for me to believe on rumor. Despite my general distaste for Michael Bay, I'm going to give the guy benefit of the doubt on this one and presume that even he couldn't be that goofy. If anyone out there has legitimate information to substantiate this rumor, please let us know. In the meantime I'm going to continue refusing to believe it, because frankly, believing it would hurt my soul.

Cable network Starz! has just announced that they'll partner with Microsoft and Sony to form Vongo, a legal, pay-for-play movie download service. For a $9.99 service fee per month, Vongo users will obtain unlimited access to a rotating 1,000 film library, likely culled from Starz! current catalog. They'll be able to watch those downloads at any time on a PC or portable media device (presumably that means iPods, PSPs, etc), and will be able to download "new releases" (theatrical features will be available for download after a six month window) for $3.99 apiece. Though the service will obviously draw instant comparisons to the iTunes Music Store, which just started selling television shows for $1.99 an episode with a one day window, to VOD services like GreenCine and Movielink, and to traditional models of television-based pay-per-view, Vongo would seem to go beyond old methods of delivery in terms of its breadth of content alone. But that six month window seems terribly wide, doesn't it? Especially considering that, with the backing of Microsoft and Sony, Vongo will undoubtedly be marketed to PSP and Xbox-rocking gamers. Bill Gates is expected to expand on the deal and the concept in his CES keynote this week.