YouTube’s been offering movies to rent since 2009, but the streaming service never really popped due to lack of popular content. Things are about to change. Thanks to super-duper partnerships with major Hollywood studios like NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros. the collection of rentable movies from YouTube just got a whole lot more exciting. In a press release, YouTube says that customers can expect classic films such as Caddyshack, Goodfellas, Scarface, and Taxi Driver to blockbuster new releases like Inception, The King’s Speech, Little Fockers, The Green Hornet and Despicable Me to start making their way into the video store shortly. New titles will continually be added to the library every week. The renting process is simple and works similarly to competitors out there (read: Apple TV, etc.). Sign into your YouTube account, browse the movies library, and rent a movie with your credit card. Pricing ranges from $2.99 to $3.99 depending on SD/HD resolutions and new releases vs. older selections. Interestingly the press release notes that the site supports video in up to 4k resolution, but I don’t see studios uploading that kind of quality in the foreseeable future. Once a movie is rented, customers will have 30 days to begin watching and once the movie is played it will vanish from existence in 24 hours. Note that movies are strictly streamed over the Internet and not downloaded locally. They are viewable on PCs and Google TVs only for the time being. YouTube is trying to differentiate itself by including “YouTube Movie Extras,” free behind-the-scenes videos, cast interviews, parodies, clips and remixes from YouTube’s unique community of content creators alongside the rentable movies.
Head over to youtube.com/movies to check out the new and highly improved movie selection. Full PR with FAQ after the break.
Having updated Xbox.com for Xbox 360 gamers, Microsoft is readying a relaunch of their Games for Windows Marketplace online portal for PC gamers. The gaming on-demand online distribution site “will offer PC gamers a robust lineup of games they love, easier navigation and purchase, and recurring specials such as Deal of the Week.” The new streamlined experience promises fewer clicks to purchase and download games and better search functionality. The Marketplace will launch with a portfolio of 100 “top-quality titles” including Fable: The Lost Chapters from Microsoft and Grand Theft Auto III from Rockstar. As long as you’ve got a Windows Live ID (that emcompasses Windows Live, Xbox LIVE, Games for Windows – LIVE and Zune accounts) you will have access to the store and all that it offers. Microsoft Points are accepted as currency. Expect the site to undergo core and aesthetic changes November 15. In a recent interview with Kotaku, Microsoft’s Peter Orullian says that the company is “doubling down” on PC gaming”, so you can expect the revamp of the Marketplace the beginning of a chain of events in the PC gaming realm as far as Microsoft is concerned. Better Windows/Xbox 360/Windows Phone 7 integration? Fingers crossed. PR after the break.
OnLive, the gaming on-demand cloud-based service, is no longer requiring a monthy fee to access its features. This is really great news, so great in fact I’ll allow Founder & CEO Steve Perlman to explain the sudden change in philosophy.
Of course, we’ve had a promotion waiving the monthly fee for the first year, so this announcement is confirming what we had hoped—that we can continue without a monthly fee beyond the first year. Although we wish we could have confirmed no monthly fee from the get-go, pioneering a major new video game paradigm is hard: we had to first grow to a large base of regular users before we could understand usage patterns and operating costs. Now that we’ve reached that stage, we can confidently say a monthly fee is not needed, which deserves a double WOOT! WOOT!
Woot woot, indeed. The original plan was to waive the monthy fee for the first year, as Perlman explained, and then charge $4.95/month for the second year. All that’s been scrapped. Instant-play demos, massive spectating, brag clip videos, messaging, and friending are all absolutely free to access now. The only time you’ll need to whip out a credit card is if you decide to buy a 3-day or 5-day PlayPass to stream a full game. You may also decide to purchase a game for keeps. All in all this is an exciting move forward for OnLive. And coming this holiday season are the MicroConsole TV Adapters and OnLive Game Pad Controllers that promise to bring the games from the PC to the TV hassle-free. So watcha waiting for? Get your streamin’ on.
For the first time since its inception back in 2002, the cost to become an Xbox Live Gold member is about to become a bit steeper. In the US, Canada, UK & Mexico only the Xbox Live pricing scheme will jump on November 1. See the chart above to see how the change will affect you. In the U.S., the yearly subscription will increase from $59.99 to $49.99; the three month sunscription from $19.99 to $24.99; and the one month subscription from $7.99 to $9.99. Super lame, I know. Industry analyst Jesse Divnich tries to cushion the news of the price increase: “When originally launched in 2002, a Gold subscription cost the same as an AAA video game, $49.99. When taking into account for inflation ($50 in 2002 is roughly $60 in 2010) and the additional services available to Gold subscribers in 2010, such as ESPN, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm and Video Kinect, a $10 price increase still represents an incredible value to consumers.” Alright, I guess that makes sense. But for those of you who may still be fuming over this news Xbox’s Major Nelson has a special incentive for you. Microsoft is offering a limited-time savings deal to “lock in” Xbox Live gamers before the price increase becomes effective. You can upgrade or renew your account today for an additional year for $39.99. That’s $10 cheaper than the current one year subscription, and $20 cheaper than the new price coming in November. Head over to the Xbox price lock site to secure an addional year of Live Gold membership at the cheaper before before it’s too late.
Due to a low adoption rate, Google has decided to pull the switch on their “community collaboration” tool called Google Wave. Wave entered the scene with great intentions. It boasted such advanced features that a standard web browser had never housed before. They include character-by-character live typing, the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word, and so on. Though Wave promised so much, it fell flat in executing all of these things because none of it made sense to an everyday user. Wave tried to pack too much into a jumbled user interface that was difficult to comprehend from the get-go. Here were all these new and exciting features, but one could not understand how they all meshed together and why it was so important to learn all of them. There’s Gmail, Google Calendar, Contacts, etc. My question is, why did Wave exist at all? The most appropriate step forward would have been to incorporate Wave’s features into Google’s other respective (and already wildly popular) services. With news of Wave’s anticipated death, it’s as if my prayers have been answered. Says Urs Hölzle, Google Senior Vice President:
Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.
Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web.
Google Wave, though your icky UI won’t be missed, the innovations you introduced and cultivated are welcome with open arms into the products we have come to know and use with ease.
OnLive is a gaming on-demand cloud-based service that’s able to stream video game titles from massive servers around the U.S. straight into your home. Man is that a packed sentence. Let me break it down for you. OnLive has three data centers in the country (east coast, central, and west coast) that house large servers; these servers act as hosts to a bunch of video games. If you sign up for the OnLive service and become a member of the community, the servers will pump video game content from the data center nearest you to your Internet-enabled PC or Mac. Again, it’s essentially gaming on-demand. After installing a plugin in your browser, you can launch OnLive and gain access to a growing library of video game titles. It’s that simple, really.
The OnLive interface is neat. There’s a game marketplace that allows you to choose from a wide selection of games. With a single click you can play a game; or you can find out more about the game before you dive in by watching game previews & trailers. You can even watch other OnLive members play the selected game in real time. The interface drags you into the action of other players, and this is a great way to get a glimpse of a game’s visuals and game style. Besides strictly being there for on-demand gaming, the service hopes to form a community of gamers with features like profiles, friends lists, and brag clips (you can record gameplay and share these moments with other OnLive members).
What’s most exciting about the OnLive service is that it does away with the need for over-the-top and expensive hardware requirements for games. Crysis, a game that is known to be hardware intensive, will play smoothly and look great playing off an old Macbook or PC laptop. The secret formula is OnLive’s proprietary video compression chips that pump out the games from the servers over the Internet and to your computer. As long as you have a 4-5 Mbps Internet connection you will have no problem playing what used to be hardware intensive games in HD (a 1.5 Mbps connection is recommended for SD quality). I really want to hit this point home as well: Since this is gaming on-demand, the service brings together games from all major game consoles (Xbox, PlayStation, PC) and enables you to play them right on your PC or Mac. No need for proprietary hardware and cables. All you need is an Internet connection, a computer, and a keyboard and/or Xbox-type USB controller.
There’s gotta be some lag, you’re thinking to yourself. I was skeptical at first, too. But I gotta say, after playing Just Cause 2 off an old Macbook over the OnLive service, I did not notice the slightest bit of latency between my controller button-mashing and the on-screen action. It truly felt as if I was playing the game locally off a computer or video games console. And what’s fascinating is that Just Cause 2 was running off a server more than 500 miles away in Santa Clara! Though there likely is some latency if you want to get all technical, I honestly did not pick up on it during my brief session of gameplay. I was told that as long as you are within a 1000 mile radius of an OnLive data center you should not experience noticeable latency.
Now let’s talk pricing and availability. OnLive is available to use today (in fact it was turned on a day after my interview took place). You sign up for the service at their website. The “OnLive Founding Members Program” is backed by AT&T and it offers the first year of use for free (!), followed by a $4.95/month fee for the second year. There’s no contract requirement which means if there’s a month you don’t feel like using the service just don’t for it that month. Right now it looks like the company is slowly opening the gates to the OnLive community; if you want to sign up to play you have to sit on a waiting list. Bummer, I know, but the service is still in its infancy and I’m sure the company does not want to overload its servers this early in the game.
And what about software partners? You will not be disappointed on this front. Just announced was partnerships with Sega, Capcom, Konami, and Square Enix. Popular publishers like EA, Ubisoft, THQ, Warner Bros. Interactive, and Disney Interactive are also bringing their titles to the service as well. I’m told new publishers are jumping on the OnLive bandwagon all the time, and this is great news for gamers.
Beside the addition of developer support, OnLive will be adding their MicroConsole to the mix later this year. Basically it’s a small (and I’m told inexpensive) piece of hardware that will allow members to play the streaming games on their HDTVs. It will support up to four wireless controllers, multiple Bluetooth headsets, and it packs two USB ports for wired controllers and keyboards.
Is OnLive the future of gaming? Though it’s too early to tell, you can definitely see the potential it brings to the table. With OnLive there’s no need for high-end graphics cards and to run to a store to purchase a game disc. No longer do you have to worry about upgrading hardware to play the latest and greatest games. If you’ve got the proper Internet connection and live within range of a data center, you are golden. I’ve experience it with my own two eyes and thumbs–the latency was non-existent on the show floor. Though my skepticism has been lowered down a notch, I’m still going to wait for a final verdict after I give the service a try on my own computer at home. Even if OnLive doesn’t catch on and become widely popular, replace game consoles and eliminate the graphics cards arms race, you can bet everyone from industry leaders to gamers will turn to this service as an example of how the next phase of video game distribution was imagined and first put into place.
You all knew it was coming: On April 15 access to Xbox Live on all original Xbox consoles and games will shut down. That’s right, means no more Halo 2 online multiplayer. Instead of just pulling the plug and sitting there idly, Microsoft has decided to reward all gamers who will lose their Live service. They will get a free three month Xbox Live Gold membership card, 400 MS points, and an invite to the Halo: Reach beta. Not too shabby if you ask me. Those of you who stand by your original Xbox console and Live-enabled games listen here: Take the three month membership and the MS points and the beta invitation, buy yourself an Xbox 360 Arcade ($199), and bask in the world of next-gen gaming. Halo: Reach will surely fill in the hole its extremely aged predecessor once ruled.
Guess who’s back, back again? Steve Jobs graciously owned the stage in San Fransisco on Thursday during the latest Apple keynote presentation. There was lots of discussion and reveals on the iTunes and iPod front. Let’s not waste any time and get right to it. Read on for all the juicy details of the keynote.
iPhone OS 3.1
Genius will now “automatically make recommendations from the App Store based on the applications you own.” Think of it as iTunes Genius for your music, but now for your purchased apps.
Ringtones – over 30,000 ringtones available to purchase at $1.29 each. All four major record labels are on-board.
3.1 firmware update is a free download available now for iPhone and iPod touch owners (there is a $5 upgrade price for those iPod touch users who have not upgraded to 3.0)
iTunes 9
Features a cleaner, easier-to-navigate UI with a redesigned store
Genius Mixes – Think of this as your own personal DJ spinning your favorite songs continuously. Genius Mixes takes your current music library and groups songs/artists/genres together for you to listen to; it’s like listening to your preferred radio station.
Improved syncing – Now you have the option to manually sync exactly what you want (for example, you can sync specific artists, genres, albums, etc.)
App organization – You can arrange your apps in iTunes. Plug in your iPhone or iPod touch and you get a visual copy of your home screen and your multiple pages; you simply drag and drop 1 or more apps at a time. This couldn’t be any simpler.
Home Sharing – Allows you to “manage your family’s iTunes collection between computers in your home.” You can copy songs, movies, TV shows, etc. with up to 5 computers. For example, say you have 5 family members each with their own computer and iTunes accounts. Now you can all easily share your iTunes content by dragging and dropping other family members’ songs into your library. The files copy right over and viola–you now have songs in your library that originally resided in your brother’s music library.
iTunes LP – Tools are now given to record labels and artists to create and distribute many album extras in their digital music albums. These extras include behind-the-scenes videos, photos, liner notes, lyrics, chronology of albums, credits, animations, and more. Although digital downloads will never be the same as buying a physical CD or record in a retail store, iTunes LP is a step in the right direction for those who have switched to digital music and who miss receiving the entire “album experience” you get when you purchase your favorite artist’s latest album.
iTunes Extras (for movies) – Think of the extras you would find on a DVD; they will now be included when you purchase a movie from the iTunes Store
Facebook and Twitter integration – You now have the option to share your favorite songs and artists with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. There is an embedded option that allows you to link a song, artist, or album information to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
iTunes 9 is available today as a free download
iPod
iPod touch
Lineup: $199 (8GB); $299 (32GB); $399 (64GB)
cheaper and new storage capacity
up to 50% faster; OpenGL|ES Version 2.0 (adds more realism in games)
Publishers discuss upcoming games for the App Store – Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II Discovery; Tapulous’s Riddim Ribbon (an awesome music game that incorporates racing and DJ control); Gameloft’s Nova; EA’s Madden NFL 10
iPod classic
Lineup: $250 (160GB) (holds 40,000 songs)
Same price, capacity upgrade from 120GB
iPod shuffle
Lineup: $59 (2GB); $79 (4GB); $99 (4GB Special Edition in stainless steel, Apple Store exclusive)
all new shiny colors: black, silver, pink, green, blue
expand range of headphones with an adapter that will allow you to change volume/tracks
new VoiceOver features ( reads statuses, like battery level)
iPod nano
Lineup: $149 (8GB) and $179 (16GB)
all new colors in polished anodized aluminium: green, blue, purple, black, silver, pink, red, orange, yellow
larger 2.2 inch display
new included apps: FM radio, Voice Recorder, pedometer (syncs with Nike +)
VIDEO CAMERA (the one more thing) – Integrated video camera; only shoots videos (no picture stills); VGA resolution (640×480); includes microphone and speaker
Note: When asked why Apple did not include a video camera in the new iPod touch, Jobs responded: “Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine. We started to market it that way, and it just took off. And now what we really see is it’s the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw. So what we were focused on is just reducing the price to $199. We don’t need to add new stuff. We need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.”
Check out the gallery below for some official press shots of the new products and services.
The long hoped for feature for the iPhone finally gets a date of arrival: the Multimedia Messaging Service feature will be enabled on all iPhone 3G and 3GS devices (sorry, original iPhone users) on September 15. For those of you not in the know, MMS is the feature that allows you to send and receive picture/video messages to other cell phone users. Up until now, iPhone users have been stuck in the dark ages, only able to send and receive texts (and more recently audio and contact files). MSS will be enabled through a required software update via iTunes.
What took so long, you ask? Put simply, AT&T’s service is sucky and they believed that their cell tower structure was not ready to handle the heavy traffic of iPhone users sending pictures to each other. After having plently of time to fix and upgrade things (and breaking a promise of a Summer MMS release), AT&T is confident in saying:
“We know that iPhone users will embrace MMS. The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end. … We want you to know that we’re working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our network to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come.”
Note that there was no new information divulged about tethering. It was only mentioned that it will be supported “in the future.”
