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10 Million Xbox 360s to Ship Before New Consoles from Sony, Nintendo

Authored by dmw on May 10, 2006 - 4:13am.
Los Angeles - Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles that the company plans to have shipped 10 million of its Xbox 360 video game consoles to market by the time Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii are launched. A total of 160 game titles will by then be available for Xbox 360, including the forthcoming "Halo 3," "Fable 2," "Gears of War," "Forza Motorsport 2" "Alan Wake," "Crackdown" and "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent". The company also signed deals with game publishers Konami, Namco Bandai, Midway Games and Sega to bring classic and new titles to its Xbox Live Arcade, where games can be purchased and downloaded for play on the Xbox 360. The deals include games like "Pac-Man," "Dig Dug," "Frogger," "Paperboy" and "Sonic the Hedgehog: High Speed." Gates also announced a new initiative called "Live Anywhere," which will expand the company's Xbox Live online gaming service to include PC and mobile games; Gates expects the number of gamers on Xbox Live to double to 6 million by this time next year. Finally, Microsoft plans to introduce an Xbox 360 HD DVD drive accessory in the fall, which will play movies on the next-generation DVD format from Toshiba. Sony plans to include a Blu-ray Disc drive in the PlayStation 3.
tags: Games | Tech | Sony | Xbox | Microsoft | E3 | Games Events | Xbox 360 | Events | Formats |

Sony to Support Apple Digital Music Format

Authored by dmw on May 10, 2006 - 4:10am.
San Francisco - In response to Apple's dominance of the digital music market, Sony this week made its own data compression technology that shrinks music and video files compatible with Apple's AAC format, CNET News.com reported. The change will enable the exchange of songs between iPod and Sony Walkman players via a PC, but will still not allow songs purchased from Apple's iTunes Store to play on Sony devices. Sony also included support for AAC in a software update for the Japanese version of its PSP handheld game device.
tags: Tech | Music | Sony | iPod | Apple | CE | Walkman | Music Tech | Formats | AAC |

RealNetworks Sues Major League Baseball Over Streaming Formats

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 9, 2004 - 6:32am.
Seattle -- RealNetworks announced on Tuesday that it has filed suit against the new media division of Major League Baseball (MLB), over a contract that provides for baseball broadcasts to be delivered over the Internet in RealNetworks' media format. The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order to compel MLB.com to stream games in RealNetworks' format, as laid out in a February 2004 contract with Major League Baseball Advanced Media. The two companies have worked together since 2001, when MLB signed a three-year, $20 million deal to use RealNetworks technology to power delivery of all of its audio and video feeds of baseball games. The two companies failed to renew that larger contract recently, and MLB has since been seeking a new partner for delivering its games online.
tags: Baseball | RealNetworks | Formats | Major League |