There are a lot 
of ways to stream Netflix to your television these days — including, in some cases, directly through the television itself. But new data from ABI Research shows that the method of choice for most people is through game consoles.
Owners of game machines spent an average of seven to eight hours per week watching streaming video, the company found.
Madden 12 won’t be 
the only football being played on the PlayStation 3 this fall.
Sony and DirectTV have teamed up to bring the satellite company’s hit NFL Sunday Ticket service to the game console, marking the first time people who don’t subscribe to DirecTV will be able to get access to the subscription service.
The 2011 holiday 
price wars have begun.
During the Gamescom event in Germany on Tuesday, Sony cut the global price of the PlayStation 3 from $299 to $249, positioning the company for a tremendous holiday season. The price drop is effective immediately.
When it comes to audience 
reach, Netflix owes a debt of gratitude to the video game industry.
A new Nielsen Co. study finds that Netflix users are primarily streaming content to television sets – with half of those customers streaming the service through their Wii, PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
[In this interview with Gamasutra editor at large 
Chris Morris, SCEA CEO Jack Tretton talks candidly about April’s PSN security breach and outage, and how low-priced mobile titles aren’t necessarily “training people to pay $5 for games.”]
While Sony would probably argue otherwise, the rest of the world tends to agree that the company’s public handling of April’s data intrusion was a textbook example of PR fumbling. After waiting what many consider to be too long to address the problem, the company finally apologized, but the sentiment seemed rehearsed — and less than sincere to many.
But when Jack Tretton stepped on stage at this year’s pre-E3 press conference and addressed the issue for the first time, he did so without a script or teleprompter, choosing instead to speak from the heart.
In late April, there wasn’t a company 
in the world — inside or outside of the video game industry — that wanted to be Sony. By the end of December, though, there are likely to be several willing to switch places.
While there’s no denying that 2011 will not go down as the PlayStation’s greatest year, Sony actually seems poised to bounce back significantly from its hacker problems (and the accompanying PR disaster) by the time we’re singing Auld Lang Syne.
Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris 
considers how important E3 now is to the gaming industry, noting that “the industry has changed – and so have the marketing strategies of its players.”
As the circus comes to Los Angeles and the gaming industry prepares for the weeklong bacchanalia that is E3, there’s already plenty of hype about what to expect, what will be said and what will be the biggest thing at the show.
These are all fun questions – but as E3 enters its 17th year, it’s worth a look to see if the show is as important and as relevant to the industry as it was in years past. While E3 used to be a Mecca for game developers and publishers to show off their wares, the industry has changed – and so have the marketing strategies of its players.
While April was an awful month for Sony, 
the Easter Bunny may have brought some good news for the video game industry as a whole.
The NPD Group will report monthly sales figures after the market closes Thursday and analysts expect sales to rebound solidly, with software sales (the industry’s most closely tracked number) poised to increase by up to 15 percent over April 2010.
Sony has some mounting problems
in Europe.
Customs officials have been ordered to seize shipments of all PlayStation 3 shipments from the manufacturer and hold them in storage for at least 10 days. The orders come as LG has won a preliminary injunction against Sony in an ongoing patent dispute between the companies.
In the video game world, there’s bundling – 
and there’s true customer appreciation.
Valve Software is showing other publishers how to beef up a software release without looking like an obvious play to boost sales. The company announced Tuesday that gamers who buy the PlayStation 3 version of “Portal 2” will receive the PC/Mac version for free.
Chris Morris: Journalist 