Nintendo Wii Gets Video Downloads, but Only in Japan (for now)

A new partnership between Fujisoft and Sonic Solutions will see video downloads now available for the console. Check it out:

Sonic Solutions’ Roxio CinemaNow announced today a partnership with Japan’s Fujisoft Inc. to deliver Hollywood movies through the Wii in the Japanese market. Instant-streaming downloads will be available through Fujisoft’s video-on-demand service “Minna no Theater Wii” (Everyone’s Theater Wii), which debuted earlier this year in Japan.

Sonic has signed Paramount Pictures as the first major studio to sell new release and catalog downloads through the service.

Sonic and Fujisoft said they plan to continue to work together to make more content available through the Wii, but didn’t give details on when or where.

That might give some of the people who criticize the Wii as a gimmick more than a console something to chew on. Thanks VidBiz.

[Update] – Also, NetFlix is currently polling their users as to how high demand for their video steaming is for the Nintendo console. Check it out:

A reader participated in one of Netflix’s many customer surveys, and one of the questions asked “…how likely would you or someone in your household be to a Netflix Instant Streaming Disc for the Nintendo Wii (available for free) in order to instantly watch movies & TV episodes on your TV?“

Thanks to HackingNetflix for that one.

New Sony PSP Go a Download Only Portable

Sony has wisely opted to make their updated PSP unit a download only machine. Details:

The PSP Go is the industry’s first portable advanced gaming system that solely plays downloadable content. Users will be able to access Sony’s download marketplace, PlayStation Store, on PSP Go’s screen via its built-in wireless connection. Sony has signed on new content partners for its PlayStation Store, including Showtime Networks, Starz Media, Summit Entertainment, The Weinstein Co., HDnet and Magnolia Pictures.

PSP Go, with 16 gigabytes of internal flash memory, will street on Oct. 1 in North America and Europe for $249. It is 50% smaller and 40% lighter than Sony’s original PSP design.

Going forward all PSP games will be released as both downloads and physical UMD product. Sony plans to continue supporting its $169-priced PSP 3000, which plays physical media as well as downloaded content transferred from the Playstation 3.

After the widely ridiculed and failed format of UMD, Sony seems to have wised up. Still, the portable marketplace is really changing with smart phones taking over that territory slowly but surely. Story thanks to VidBiz.

Sony Adds 16 New Content Providers to the PSNetwork

E3 is bustling with new announcements, and one of them concerns some fresh offerings on Sony’s Playstation Network. They’re probably feeling a little pressure from Microsoft’s push to control your living room. Here’s the dirty:

Sony is adding movies, sports and entertainment programming from 16 new partners — including Showtime Networks, Starz Media, Comcast’s G4 and E!, HDNet and The Weinstein Company — to the PlayStation Network for its videogame consoles.

[...]

With the additional content, the PlayStation Network video-delivery service will have nearly 1,900 movies and 9,400 TV episodes, covering reality, mixed martial arts, sports, anime, manga and animation genres. The PlayStation Store offers a combined total of nearly 9,000 hours of video-on-demand content, with more than 35% of the movies in HD format.

PlayStation Store will feature TV shows such as Showtime’s Dexter, E!’s The Soup, G4′s X-Play and Starz Media’s Painkiller Jane. New movies on the service will include films such as Overture Films’ “Righteous Kill,” Summit Entertainment’s “Twilight” and The Weinstein Company’s “Zack & Miri Make a Porno.”

Rumors of a PS3 price cut are very common right now. Something tells me Sony is fighing a tough battle though. Story at Multichannel.

Are You Content with The Future of Content?

There’s an interesting article over on Content Agenda regarding the future of content. There’s a few nuggets of wisdom to be found, and if you aren’t keeping a close eye on the way media delivery is rapidly changing, this might be of interest:

Piracy of digital content has become something of a big business in its own right. Recently, an incomplete version of the upcoming summer movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked out, perhaps one of the earliest leaks of a major Hollywood movie to date. Perhaps more interesting, a reviewer for Fox News got into hot water when he reviewed the unfinished movie–ironically, a movie by another News Corp. affiliate, 20th Century Fox.

Meanwhile, the much-ballyhooed trial of the bad, bad boys who run The Pirate Bay tracking site were found guilty. The comments from The Pirate Bay organizers in response to the verdict reads much like something right out of one of Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan graphic novels.

Then there’s the ongoing battle between Hulu and just about any non-browser device or software maker who wants to embed content streamed from Hulu into their device, particularly Boxee.

Finally, Stardock Software has become a victim of software piracy, something the company has tried to avoid by eliminating content protection from their games, which removes one of the major annoyances of PC games. Stardock published Gas Powered Games Demigod, but the game was released a day early by one retailer. Shortly afterwards, Stardock’s servers were hammered by multiplayer game play requests–most of them from illegal copies of the game. A patch or two later, and the pirates can no longer annoy actual owners of Demigod. Still, it’s something of a lesson learned for the Michigan software company, who is trying in all sincerity to develop content protection that serves the needs of game developers without annoying users.

What does all this mean? It means that how we look at content (no pun intended) is evolving at a rate so rapid, the legal system and purveyors of content simply can’t keep up. Trying to find successful business models for writing and disseminating news has become one of the major challenges of the 21st century. While citizen journalism is well and good, it costs serious time and money to do good investigative journalism. Who will pay for that if all news is aggregated coverage by bloggers?

Entertainment media, like music, movies, games, and television are trying to adopt the Web, but are mired in old business models that are both location based and hard goods based.

I can only agree that I don’t know the future, but I’ll be watching just like you.

Amazon Now Selling Xbox 360 Content

Today Amazon launched a Xbox 360 Live points site, where many of the Xbox Live service’s games are offered for sale as redemption codes. They also offer subscriptions and points for no specific title. TV and Film downloads do not appear to be included in the items for sale. A quote from Microsoft:

“With the overwhelming success of our existing Xbox Live Marketplace, it is clear that the 17 million active and engaged members of the Xbox Live community enjoy digital access to entertainment content,” Christina DeRosa, general manager of the Xbox Live unit, said in a statement. “Now we’re happy to be extending our storefront to Amazon.com, a cutting-edge online retailer who is helping make digital distribution more mainstream.”

For more information, check out this Video Business article.

Onlive Revealed at GDC 09

A new video on demand service called Onlive was announced at GDC 09. There’s a video of the press conference, where they answer some questions from the audience and describe the features of Onlive.