While not exactly a cultural shockwave, it's definitely a complementary element of the digitial cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century: Video Streaming. On Monday, Netflix and Xbox announced a deal to steam videos via the Xbox 360 interface.
Netflix revolutionized the movie rental business with it's DVD shipping business model centered on a monthly subscription service. Users create an online queue of movies they would like to have delivered to their home and when those videos become available, Netflix ships them.
Some background from Wikipedia: "Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is the largest online DVD rental service, offering flat rate rental-by-mail and online streaming to customers in the United States. Established in 1997 and headquartered in Los Gatos, California, it has amassed a collection of 100,000 titles and approximately 8.2 million subscribers.[2] The company has more than 55 million discs and ships 1.9 million of them to customers each day, on average.[2] Netflix previously claimed to spend about $300 million a year on postage. On February 25, 2007, Netflix announced the billionth DVD delivery.[3][4] It topped the ForeSee Results’ Top 100 Online Retail Satisfaction Index with an American Customer Satisfaction Index score of 86, well over the industry average of 75.[5]"
The new agreement with Microsoft's Xbox system will surely decrease those postage expenses, and increase revenue significantly. According to an article on Yahoo News by Barbara Ortutay, Microsoft has sold 10 million Xboxs in the United States alone, and 50% of those who own Xbox pay $50 a year for an Xbox Live Gold Membership. The Gold Membership will be needed in order for someone to stream Netflix movies on the 360, as well as a $9 membership Netflix plan which includes unlimited streaming.
The deal is significant because it continues this streaming of digital avenues into the marketplace. Continuously, consumers have more and more abilities when it comes to consumption of media. The new digital platform for consumption is the all-in-one console: Gaming, movies, television, music, even news is making a debut via gaming consoles. Why is this culturally significant? Because as a culture we continue to drift into this digital medium, like a digital revolution. Not to be confused with the Industrial Revolution, the digital revolution will include much less physical labor, and a lot more code.....
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