Redbox Instant will be shutting down tomorrow, according to an announcement by Redbox. Verizon's attempt to compete against Netflix and to supplement Redbox's brisk kiosk-based movie and video game rental service with an online streaming component, is being closed after two-years in existence.

"Redbox Instant by Verizon... will be shut down on Tuesday, October 7, 2014, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time," customers were told in a notice on the service's website.

A new report from research firm GfK indicates that, while videogame systems are still the most common hardware used for watching Netflix on a TV screen , they are being used much less than they were three years ago. The report, "Over-the-Top TV 2014," also indicated a growing number of US households are relying more and more on dedicated set-top/plug-in devices to watch Netflix on a TV set.

According to new research from Parks Associates - as reported on by Home Media Magazine - 46 percent of all American households with broadband have a video game console connected to the Internet, and about 38 percent use said console devices as their primary means of streaming entertainment content such as Netflix or Hulu.

During its Tokyo Game Show press conference yesterday, Square Enix revealed Shinra Technologies, a new cloud-based gaming platform that hopes to deliver first-party titles to consumers. Named after the evil corporation in Final Fantasy VII, and headed up by former Square Enix president and representative director Yoichi Wada, the service is set for a beta launch early next year in Japan. A North American beta is planned for sometime in 2015 as well, but a concrete date has not been set.

Sony is set to launch an internet television service with the promise of streaming dozens of channels to PlayStation systems later this year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It looks like the paid peering agreements video streaming service Netflix signed with AT&T and Verizon earlier this year are finally paying off. According to Netflix's Monthly Speed Index for August, the average Netflix stream on Verizon FiOS was 2.41Mbps during the month, up dramatically from 1.61Mbps in July. AT&T's U-verse service offered average Netflix performance of 2.61Mbps in August, up from 1.44Mbps in July.

Cloud-based gaming service OnLive and TP Vision have announced a new strategic partnership that will bring the OnLive Game Service on new models of Philips TVs powered by Android that will be released in Europe during 2014 and beyond.

Many were positive that Google would be the one to buy Twitch but nope!  Amazon picked up the video-streaming service for a cool billion dollars.

For its part, Amazon says that "Twitch is absolutely doing a great job and we don't want to change that at all."

During a recent Hack Day - as chronicled in this blog post - engineers at Netflix mange to design a prototype Oculus Rift user interface for its popular streaming service. The specially designed UI that makes this possible is being called "Oculix" and lets users control the Netflix menu using hand and head gesture controls.

Time Warner Cable is the latest internet service provider to get a fee from streaming video service Netflix, according to GIGA OM. Time Warner Cable has officially signed a paid peering agreement with Netflix, giving it direct access to the ISP's customers.

After a rather tumultuous and contentious Reddit AMA yesterday featuring Twitch CEO Emmett Sheer, a new blog post from Twitch VP of Marketing & Communications Matthew DiPietro announces a couple of changes.

In a status update on Facebook, Netflix CEO Red Hastings said that Netflix now generates more revenue than premium pay channel Home Box Office (HBO). Reed said in his post that the company managed to pull in $1.146 billion compared to HBO's $1.141 billion.

In a Reddit AMA, Twitch CEO Emmet Shear said that in-game music getting muted was a mistake. Shear said that the target of the mass muting of archived streams was music played in the background that was not licensed ("ambient music"). He also acknowledged in the thread that some accidental mutings occurred and that they are looking into fixing that problem. He acknowledged that it was also probably a bad idea to roll out all of this stuff without first announcing it to the community.

In a lengthy post on its official Blog, game streaming service Twitch announced that it will soon begin implementing a revamped video-on-demand service that offers users higher quality VOD options, the ability to view archived content on mobile and other devices, and a simplified system for exporting video to YouTube.

Justin.tv has closed its doors today after seven years in operation. The service launched in 2007 and later spun off its gaming category into a new service called Twitch due to its popularity.

"The Justin.tv website, mobile apps, and APIs are no longer in service," reads a message on the official website. "Thank you sincerely for seven years of live video memories."

If you have videos on the site and are looking to somehow retrieve them, you are out of luck:

Raptr has introduced a major update to its service that adds the ability to record or stream gameplay video with virtually "no degradation of system performance thanks to hardware encoding support across both AMD- and Nvidia-based graphics processors (GPUs)."

This Saturday, July 12th at 6:15p PST, Super Podcast Action Committee is going to live stream its 105th episode on Twitch TV and we'd love you to drop buy and hang out with us!

There will be a live chat running so it will be a lot easier to chat with EZK, myself and other viewers while we discuss super important topics like:

A new blog post from Twitch reveals that its deal with the ESA to live-stream E3 Expo press conferences (and other content) was a smashing success for the company.

We're not sure how cloud-based game streaming service OnLive or Mad Catz Interactive Android-based micro-console Mojo are doing, but apparently those two things have teamed up, according to an announcement by OnLive today.

According to a new report from research firm IHS Technology, more people than ever are watching eSports thanks to popular games such as League of Legends and Dota 2. Around 2.4 billion hours of eSports videos were watched during 2013, according to the report - nearly double the 1.3 billion hours watched in 2012. The report goes on to predict that 6.6 billion hours will be watched by fans in 2018, with China representing the largest market for online eSport views in the world, followed by the U.S. and South Korea.

Rumors are circulating that Google's YouTube video service is in talks to buy out streaming service Twitch. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal and Variety, those talks are still in the preliminary stages. The deal is rumored to be worth $1 billion to Twitch if it comes to fruition.

According to multiple sources within the company, Microsoft plans to lift the Xbox Live Gold requirement for consumers who want to watch Netflix, Hulu and other streaming media apps on Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Basically it means that consumers who buy a brand new Xbox One will be able to watch these services right out of the box without having to worry about having an Xbox Live Gold account. Of course you'll still have to set up a free Silver account in order to do anything.

Electronic Arts and ISP Comcast are believed to be negotiating a game streaming deal, according to five independent sources speaking to Reuters. According to sources speaking to Reuters, Comcast will give some customers the ability to buy and stream EA titles through Comcast's new X1 operating system. X1 is only available in certain areas covered by Comcast at the moment.

Last week Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) sent a letter to entertainment streaming service Netflix asking the company to weigh in on the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. This week Netflix gave its opinion... to shareholders.

"If the Comcast and Time Warner Cable merger is approved, the combined company’s footprint will pass over 60 percent of U.S. broadband households," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings wrote in a letter to shareholders, adding, "Comcast could control high-speed broadband to the majority of American homes."

The long rumored set-top box/gaming device from Amazon has finally been revealed. The device is called the "Amazon Fire TV" and it is available today for $99. The device offers consumers the ability to play games and stream video from Amazon's video streaming service, Amazon Prime.

eSports gaming league Major League Gaming announced that its Xbox 360 app has launched today in Australia, Canada, the U.K and the U.S. You'll need an Xbox Live Gold account to use it. The streaming video / entertainment app allows users to get direct access via the Xbox 360 to its programming on MLG.tv, a streaming service the league launched in November of last year.

There were rumors floating about last week that the PlayStation Store would offer rental options to customers as part of its Gaikai-powered streaming service for older PS3 games. It turns out that there is some truth to it.

After a long wait Twitch game streaming is now available to Xbox One users. Twitch live broadcasting allows Xbox One owners to live stream their gameplay footage online in almost the exact same way that it does on PS4. The only caveat is that Twitch streaming is restricted to Xbox Live Gold users only - but you can't do much without Xbox Live gold on Xbox One or Xbox 360 anyway. Once the app is set on your Xbox One, you access Twitch broadcasting by saying, "Xbox Broadcast" to their Kinect sensor.

Game streaming service Twitch has inked a three year deal to serve as the official live streaming partner of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). The partnership with the tradeshow's owner, Entertainment Software Association (ESA) begins with E3 2014, which takes place in Los Angeles June 10 - 12 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

OnLive isn't back because it never left, but it is making headlines today by introducing several new services that it hopes can get it back on top of the video game streaming heap. First the company revealed that former IGN chief Mark Jung is its new executive chairman, and that it has launched OnLive Go and CloudLift. It has been working on this new technology since 2012 when the company fired most of its staff, sold itself to an investment firm and reformed under the same name.