Games and entertainment

Xbox 360 owners who don't have Live Gold accounts can join in on some of the usual festivities this weekend.

From April 19 through April 23, Microsoft is runing a special promo dubbed "Entertainment Unlocked," offering all Xbox owners a taste of free music, TV shows, and movies.

Xbox users who log in during Microsoft's extended weekend will find free access to SyFy, Crackle, Epix, YouTube, Vevo, and other entertainment sites. Netflix and Hulu Plus are kicking in free 30-day trials. And other online providers will offer streaming music and movies.

The promo is obviously aimed … Read more

Hulu Plus is starting to see stronger growth, according to a new report.

The online streaming service is slated to announce this week that it has hit 2 million paid subscribers for its Hulu Plus service, according to The New York Times.

If that is in fact the case, it would mean that Hulu Plus added 500,000 new subscribers in just the last four months and that its growth is accelerating.

"We grew the business 60 percent from 2010 to approximately $420 million in revenue" in 2011, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said back in January while announcing … Read more

A U.K.-based Zynga competitor has made some strategic moves to assert itself in the social-gaming space.

Zattikka announced yesterday that it has completed the acquisitions of online-gaming firms, Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, and Concept Art House.

According to Zattikka, Hattrick Holdings is best known for its free-to-play online soccer manager, Hattrick. Concept Art House is a development studio that has worked on a host of games, including Command and Conquer and World of Warcraft. Sneaky Games has a three-game portfolio focusing on online role-playing games.

"The vision for the company is to become a large scale, diverse … Read more

Given all the license restrictions roaming the music industry, few Web site owners are willing to integrate tracks into their pages. But Spotify just made it much easier to do so.

The streaming company today launched the Spotify Play Button, a service that enables Web site owners or bloggers to integrate a song, album, or playlist into their site. Spotify said it will allow Web site owners to embed the player for free and will take care of paying the artists on its own.

"You want to give your fans access to any song, album or playlist of your … Read more

Cutting the cord in hopes of saving money on television programming is often contemplated. But last year, relatively few cable or satellite subscribers in the U.S. actually did it, a new study shows.

The Convergence Consulting Group yesterday released its research on TV cord cutting to see how many people left their cable or satellite plans behind to access all their content over the Web. The firm found that 1.05 million people in the U.S. cut their TV subscriptions last year. Since 2008, 2.65 million people have decided against cable or satellite and gone to alternative … Read more

YouTube has launched a new feature to help those of us who don't have the time to edit videos before we pop them onto the Web.

Upon uploading a video to YouTube, users will find a notification bar that will ask them if they want to allow the video site to auto-correct their clip. If the user chooses to fix the video, YouTube will automatically tweak the video's color and shakiness.

"Sometimes videos suffer from symptoms like 'shaky-camera-itis' or 'augmented-darkness-levels' that keep viewers from seeing just how awesome your video really is," YouTube software engineer John … Read more

In the video game Re-Mission, players are tasked with piloting the microscopic robot Roxxi to blast away cancer cells as she navigates the bodies of fictional cancer patients.

A new study that took real-time functional MRI scans of 57 people randomly assigned to either play the game or watch it being played has found that those who played exhibited increased activity in the brain's positive motivation circuits, while those who merely observed exhibited no increase in activity.

"Identifying a direct connection between the stimulation of neural circuits and game play is a key step in unlocking the potential … Read more

The Zynga Platform has signed on a major partner.

The social-gaming company has inked a deal with Konami Digital Entertainment that will see the developer bring titles to the new Zynga Platform, the firms announced yesterday. Zynga has also signed on developers Rebellion and Playdemic.

Konami is one of the most-respected game developers in the world, thanks to its many successful franchises, including Metal Gear Solid, Contra, Silent Hill, and others. The Konami deal adds some additional legitimacy to Zynga Platform--a service that is still in its infancy.

Zynga announced its Platform service earlier this month. When gamers head over … Read more

After only 15 minutes of play, I'm already disoriented and feeling queasy but I'm going back in; Hexagon is both dizzying and addicting.

Developed by Terry Cavanagh (known for VVVVVV), Hexagon throws you in an orbital endurance run where you must guide a triangle around a (you guessed it) hexagon and dodge collapsing obstacles. Sounds simple, right? Try surviving for even 20 seconds on your first couple of tries.

Each stage is separated by 10-second runs and themes itself after a shape. Each level throws faster, more-complex patterns to try and crush your three-sided friend. In addition to … Read more