In further efforts to keep shut-ins completely mired and satiated, Xbox has announced a partnership with Netflix to stream movies right into your television. Now you won’t even have to go to you mailbox. Hell, stay in your room FOREVER.

As soon as Xbox starts shipping feeding tubes, MREs and catheters, the world’s biggest winners will never have to get out of bed.

Associated Press Reports:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console will be able to stream thousands of movies over the Internet, thanks to a deal with Netflix.

The arrangement Microsoft Corp. announced Monday at the E3 Media & Business Summit in Los Angeles will give Netflix’s 8 million subscribers another way to stream movies on a TV instead of a computer. A Netflix-backed startup called Roku already sells a small streaming device that connects to TVs.

The Netflix streaming service — which operates in addition to its DVD-by-mail program — offers 10,000 movies and TV shows. Microsoft’s Xbox had movies available before, but not nearly as many. This expansion is key in helping Microsoft compete with Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, because gaming consoles are becoming entertainment hubs with movies, videos and music.

According to the New York Times, a new track from Guns ‘ N’ Roses will be featured on the forthcoming second installment of the mammoth rad time waster known as Rock Band, due this September. Entitled “Shackler’s Revenge,” the song is purportedly from G’N'R’s perpetually soon-to-be-released “comeback” album, Chinese Democracy.

Word on the street is, when you play the song, if the deli trays and carved, fragrant soaps aren’t perfectly arranged back stage as the rider dictates, Axl is frickin’ out of there.

From Billboard.biz:

Report: New GNR Song Heads To ‘Rock Band 2′
July 14, 2008 - Digital and Mobile

By Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

A new Guns N’ Roses song, “Shackler’s Revenge,” apparently from the decade-in-the-works album “Chinese Democracy,” will be included in the video game “Rock Band 2,” according to a report in the New York Times. The game will be released in September.

The news makes it seem increasingly likely that “Chinese Democracy” will finally see the light of day before year’s end via Interscope. Nine seemingly complete tracks from the album, not including “Shackler’s Revenge,” leaked online earlier this summer.

“Rock Band 2,” developed by MTV and Harmonix, will support all songs downloaded for the game to date and will also support the original game’s instrument controllers. But it will also introduce new controllers for drums and guitar and boast a soundtrack of more than 100 master recordings.

In April, Motley Crue made its new single, “Saints of Los Angeles,” available for download “Rock Band” well in advance of the release of the album of the same name. The only other place to obtain the track was iTunes.

According to data provided in late May by the band’s management, Tenth Street Entertainment, the track was downloaded more than 47,000 times via the Xbox 360 version of the game alone in the first week after it became available. (”Rock Band” publisher MTV Networks was unable to independently verify these figures, and total downloads that include the PlayStation 3 version of the game were not available.)

By comparison, the same track received slightly more than 10,000 downloads via digital services like iTunes and Amazon, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The track has now sold more than 62,000 downloads

Metallica is being honored with their own version of Guitar Hero in 2009. Song selection might be a problem for the band, especially deciding whether to feature any of their new material. The Metallica version of Guitar Hero will probably include mostly tracks from the new album to up record sales.

Choosing the entire album Kill ‘Em All is unlikely but seems like it would make the most Metallica fans happy. Ride The Lightning may be a better choice for Guitar Hero because the featured songs are perfect for smashing buttons on a plastic guitar. This album could potentially be problematic on a game that plenty of youngsters play because it discusses the death penalty, etc. This would probably have to have a mature rating, limiting sales. Master of Puppets would be a better choice for Guitar Hero because after coming out, it reached a large and diverse audience. Metal fans who consider Master of Puppets the best metal album of all time could have a problem with it entering the video game world, but who knows? And Justice For All will most likely be included, or at least the popular track “One.” For now we’ll just have to wait and keep playing the Aerosmith edition.

Sony took a lot of heat for its botched release of the PlayStation 3, and many speculated that its stranglehold on the console gaming market was finally broken. However, now that Blu-ray has been named the winner of the next gen DVD battle, Microsoft is looking to its biggest competitor for help with its HD DVD-aligned Xbox 360.

Though Microsoft denies anything official, the Financial Times reported that the two companies are discussing the possibilities.

The newspaper said that there is also the possibility of an internal Blu-ray drive being incorporated into a new, more expensive “premium” 360 model, as it is already in the PlayStation 3. Thusly, Sony would earn royalties from sales of a rival console–a first for the game industry.

As you’d imagine, Sony’s pretty pumped:

For its part, Sony welcomes the possibility of a Blu-ray-equipped Xbox 360. “If Microsoft wants to release Gears of War 3 on a Blu-ray Disc, I think we can make that happen,” Sony Computer Entertainment America’s vice president of product marketing Scott A. Steinberg told GameSpot prior to today’s report.

Sony caught a lot of flack for its over-hyped but utterly disappointing Playstation 3 launch. The Playstation has been the king of the console hill for the past two generations, but poor reviews and little game selection has seen the third gen Playstation struggle to compete with its peers. But Sony’s not going to go down without a fight, especially to something with a name like “Wii”. Sony and Rockstar Games, creators of the Grand Theft Auto series, have signed and exclusive deal for the controversial video game companies “next great franchise.” As Sony’s Michael Shorrock on the PlayStation blog:

“Rockstar really wanted to make a game that you can truly only do on PS3, harnessing the power of Cell and Blu-ray disc.”

Good news for Sony fans (and their stockholders), but really, you can keep all that wannabe gangsta bullshit. I’m just counting the days till Final Fantasy XIII.

133t.