Whitten highlighted four areas – content, community, curation, and control – governing the evolution of the television and video content.

“I don’t believe we are currently in the golden age of the television or the golden age of the game console or the golden age of the Internet; frankly, five years from now I don’t know that you’ll be able to tell the difference between those worlds,” Whitten said.

Not surprisingly, Whitten used his talk to highlight recent additions to the Xbox 360 platform. With Netflix running on top of Xbox Live, consumers and gamers alike have access to hundreds of thousands of movies. Whitten called the shift between the Xbox 360 as a gaming platform and its evolution to a video platform as the “biggest surprise” of his job.

Microsoft implemented the Sky Player on the Xbox 360 in the U.K. in late October, adding Sky TV’s video content and on-demand programming for a subscription fee. While Whitten said that the service is now available to all, he also added that it was a “mistake” to launch the service as a full-fledged option, rather than roll it out on a limited basis. The service crashed three days after launch under an unexpectedly heavy bandwidth load.

It’s difficult to think of “community” as an addition to the service, Whitten said, since the Xbox originally launched as a matchmaking service allowing gamers to play and interact with each other over the Internet. In June, for example Microsoft signed deals to integrate Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm, which the company recently rolled out.

In the areas of curation and control, however, Whitten looked more to the future than the recent past.

In the 1950s through the dawn of cable TV, Americans shared TV experiences, whether it be the network news or the annual viewing ofThe Wizard of Oz. Now, Whitten said, users have to think in terms of 2.1 million people watching a billion channels of experiences.

“It’s hard for me to think of that even in terms of a programming or channel guide,” Whitten said. “It’s hard for me to think of a channel 1 billion. I imagine you’d need a really good ‘up’ button on the remote control.”

In the future, content will be organized according to brand and/or user, Whitten said. When a user views a Nancy Grace or “The Daily Show” or a Bill O’Reilly, a user has a pretty good idea of what content will be associated with that particular name. But that direction will have to intersect with automated recommendations byNetflix and others.

“The context is not 1 billion channels, but one,” Whitten said. “One channel, with what I want, when I want it.”

And as Microsoft and its partners become more sophisticated about trying to determine what content users will be interested in, the methods of controlling or providing input to that content will become more sophisticated.

“With the flick of my wrist I can change a channel,” Whitten said. “With the power of my voice I can start a movie.”

Watching a movie is a passive input, but a TV should understand what you’re trying to do, Whitten added. “Laughter is an input,” he said. “Yelling at the TV when I know an answer on ‘Jeopardy’ is an input. Attention is an input. The number of people in the room at one time is an input.”

Microsoft’s goal is to make it easy and simple to find the content consumers want, and to share it with friends, Whitten said, and to enable experiences they care about. “It won’t be a remote control” that consumers use,” Whitten said. “A remote control is already too hard.”

Instead, Whitten said he envisions a future where Natal recognizes the users in the room, and their voices as well. Knowing the identity of the users will coalesce the content they’re interested in, and allow one of multiple users to control the interface. (In one recorded demonstration, Natal picked up on a user’s voice to control a game.)

“I believe that this will be the largest leap of TV experience since the remote control,” Whitten said of Natal.

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Packed with beloved characters and remarkable new features, New Super Mario Bros. Wii takes the classic side-scrolling adventure of the Super Mario Bros. series and gives it a manic multiplayer boost. Featuring free-form multiplayer action, players can save their companions from danger or literally toss them right into it. While controlling Mario, Luigi or one of two playable Toad characters, players can jump in and join a friend’s Story Mode game at the start of any level. The game also features two dedicated multiplayer modes, Coin Battle mode and Free For All mode, that let players easily select their favorite stages and compete across a variety of objectives. Each copy of New Super Mario Bros. Wii comes in a red case with a foil-stamped cover.

Among the new features in New Super Mario Bros. Wii is Mario’s ability to transform into Penguin Mario, which allows him to toss snowballs and slide on his belly at breakneck speed. Players also can hop onto a Yoshi character and use his tongue to eat enemies, items and fireballs. The game also makes use of the Wii console’s unique motion controls, allowing players to tilt the Wii Remote controller to control seesaw platforms or shake it to send Mario skyward in his new Propeller Suit.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii introduces a new feature called Super Guide that offers players optional game-play tips if they are having trouble getting past particular parts of the game. Super Guide lets players watch as a computer-controlled Luigi character makes his way through any stage that the player finds difficult. At any time in the video, the player can take control of Luigi and complete the stage at his or her own pace.

“As the holiday season draws near, it feels especially appropriate to offer consumers a new Mario adventure that they can enjoy together with family and friends, for the first time in the series’ illustrious history,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “New Super Mario Bros. Wii has something special for everyone, and lets players of all abilities explore the imaginative world of the Mushroom Kingdom like never before.”

Since the series’ debut in North America on the NES in 1986, more than 222 million Super Mario Bros. games have been sold worldwide. Mario remains one of the most recognizable characters in the entertainment world, and stands as a symbol of fun worldwide.

Remember that Wii features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about this and other Wii features, visit Wii.com.

For more information about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, visit www.mariobroswii.com.

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Get ready to pull your jaw back off the floor. It seems the recent dramatic headlines of ‘One-Million Xbox Live Users Banned’ may have been over-dramatic, according to Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten. In an interview for Venturebeat, the Microsoft man said that the numbers of gamers banned for using modded consoles was nowhere near a million.
Whitten said: “We didn’t release the number [of one-million banned modders]. I cannot explain to you why people would think it was a million people. It wasn’t a million people. Check the veracity of that claim. It was one news source.”

So there you have it, it seems there’s been a bit of Sunday Paper-esque tabloid-ery, that consequently ripped through the industry like wildfire. As Whitten implies, the actual figure of people banned would seem to be a lot smaller than those original reports. Meanwhile, in further developments, the Boutique law firm Abington IP has launched a lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the giant of delaying the Xbox Live bans until AFTER the release of AAA titles such as Halo 3: ODST and Modern Warfare 2.

It believes it wanted to secure maximum new Live subscriptions before punishing owners of modded machines. It’s asking banned Xbox Live subscribers who didn’t get refunded, to lend their names to the cause.

The site reads: ”If you are an Xbox Live subscriber, had your modified Xbox console banned from Xbox Live, were not refunded a prorated sum for the time left on your subscription or have experienced other problems as a result of being banned, and would like to participate in a class action against Microsoft, please submit your information below.”

Which on both sides, makes for very interesting reading, especially as the lawsuit seems to be encouraging ’suspected game pirates’ to counter-punish Microsoft for its own questionable dealings. Doesn’t it? Thoughts please!

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All hail the Sky Player for Xbox. As well as being a video-on-demand system online, Sky Player has been streaming live channels for over a year to PC users, and Sky Player for Xbox tries to replicate that experience on a games console.

It’s a nice idea – and it effortlessly makes the best possible use of the Xbox 360’s luscious new interface to create a service that’s lots of fun to use.

It’s expensive to non-Sky subscribers though and certainly a niche product in the mass market, but for Sky converts it’s essentially a VoD solution for the home (or a second home) that beats Sky Anytime hands-down.

The look and feel of the interface is stunning. ‘Xboxy’ is the only way to describe it; sweeping between the icons for live channels, VoD content and movie listings is familiar and effortless.

There’s no way to personalise the service and it doesn’t make recommendations about content it might think you like, but it’s so easy to use and the on-screen menus are mostly lightning quick.

FEATURES

Most Xboxy of all the features is Party mode, which only works with live TV channels.

The screen shows your avatar watching a huge TV screen, which fills most of the space. Send invites to your friends and if they accept, their avatars appear next to yours, and interact using an E-mote; a small dial appears on the screen and you can play your avatar like a puppet, making him shout at the screen or clap ferociously.

Back to the serious stuff. Scroll to live TV and you’ll find a thumbnail playing the last live channel you visited (with sound) alongside a stack of other channels and a TV guide, though it only gives listings for the next 48 hours and can’t handle reminders.

In terms of content, Sky Player is an exact copy of the online version, but unless you already have access to (or stump up the cash for) the Entertainment or Sky Sports packages, it’s not much to get excited about.

The 16 free live channels comprise GOLD, Sky Real Lives, Sky Arts 1, MTV, Sky Sports News, Eurosport UK, Sky News, Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild, History, Eden, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Nick Jr.

Add an Entertainment Pack and you’ll receive both the Sky Screen channels, which show the latest blockbusters on a loop – though that does seem decidedly old fashioned in the age of VoD.

Buy a Sky Sports Pack and you’ll get Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2, Sky Sports 3, Sky Sports Xtra, ESPN and ESPN Classic.

The movie VoD section is excellent and surely the backbone of Sky Player’s appeal. Stuffed with 421 movies (to be exact), you can browse via A-Z, genre, latest additions or most popular.

Choose one and you get a synopsis and information on the length, file size (for a future download service perhaps) and, best of all, a list of related films, which makes navigation even easier.

Aside from movies, there are repeats from Sky Sports, and a mix or free and paid documentaries from Sky, Nat Geo and the History Channel (at £0.98 an episode).

Some material – and occasionally, the interface as a whole – can be slow to load. Once it’s playing, you can call up a FF/RW/pause control and speed through content at 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x speeds.

VERDICT

We used the service on a 2Mpbs broadband line and the service struggled, buffering constantly, though upped to 6Mbps it worked without a hitch. If you do struggle, medium and low quality settings are available, but picture quality is very poor.

The advice is clear; don’t think about getting Sky Player on Xbox unless you always have upwards of 2Mbps.

What you’ll actually be able to watch on Sky Player depends on your regular Sky subscription.

If you already subscribe to the Sky Sports package via the satellite service, you can watch those same channels on your Xbox360 for free, wherever it’s used – though Xbox LIVE Gold membership is a prerequisite.

If you’re not a Sky subscriber and are looking at this as a way of getting live Premiership football into your life, you’ll need an Xbox LIVE Gold membership (£39.99 per year), a £15 Entertainment Pack for the movies, and a £19 Sports Pack.

That works out at £468 a year, though there is a £29.99 introductory deal that gets you three months of Xbox LIVE Gold and Sky Sports for a month.

If Sky Player and Xbox want to rival the BBC’s iPlayer as well as the PS3’s VoD service, it’s going to have to be super-slick, easy to use – and affordable.

In typical Sky fashion, Sky Player on Xbox fulfils those first two criteria with aplomb. Equally typical is its premium price for non-Sky subscribers, but if you’re already signed-up to its satellite service, Sky Player for Xbox is an innovation that introduces VoD and multiroom in the smoothest way possible.

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“Everyone wants to tweet, everyone wants to Facebook and I can tell you that we will expand the types of services we offer over time because we think this is just the core element for what the future of entertainment is,” said Neil Thompson. “That’s what we are trying to define and deliver all at the same time. The social capabilities that we bring are going to be at the heart of what we do in the future.

“Whatever technology that is, it is going to be a core part of the future. We never stop developing.”