At E3, game-console makers show off streaming-video features – latimes.com

When Chris and Rebecca Rider sit down to watch a romantic movie together, they don’t pop in a DVD or turn on the DVR. They fire up their video game console.

Once kept in rec rooms for a family’s gamers, Microsoft Corp.‘s Xbox 360, Sony Corp.‘s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Co.‘s Wii are increasingly being used by people who have no interest in helping Mario save the princess or the “Call of Duty” soldiers win the war.

The 31-year-old Chris Rider began playing video games on his family’s Atari in the early 1980s. He stood in line all night in 2005 to buy an Xbox 360 the day it went on sale.

But he knew things had changed in 2009 when he sent his wife a text message at 2 a.m. and discovered she was up using the Xbox to stream episodes of the Scott Bakula drama “Quantum Leap” via Netflix.

Now the Harbor City couple watch so many movies and television shows through their game console that Rider has considered canceling their DirecTV subscription.

“Since I’m a gamer, I’m always going to need a console,” he said. “So why bother with anything else if I don’t have to?”

As nearly 50,000 industry professionals gather in downtown Los Angeles this week for the annual E3 video game conference, players like Rider are front and center in their minds. Instead of focusing just on hot new titles like “Halo 4″ and “God of War: Ascension,” companies are also showing off applications that turn their game consoles into media machines.

Video game consoles are now the most common means through which people watch content from the Internet on a television set, according to a recent study by Leichtman Research Group. Microsoft recently reported that Xbox 360 owners spend more time online watching video and listening to music than playing games.

via At E3, game-console makers show off streaming-video features – latimes.com.

Strange Random Technology Quote:

“Technology, of course, is not the only distraction.” – Jacqueline Glassman

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