Amazon is going to raise the cost of its yearly membership for its Prime service, which gives consumers discounts on overnight shipping, free two-day shipping on select items, and access to its streaming video on demand services via various devices including iOS, Android, Roku, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, etc.

A new patent filed by AT&T Mobility in September 2013 and published this month hopes to keep customers from "abusing a telecommunications system" by consuming too much bandwidth, according to a report on TorrentFreak. The ultimate goal of such a patent is to apparently keep users from using certain services within the confines of packages they subscribe to.

According to "trusted sources" speaking to Eurogamer, game streaming on PlayStation 4 powered by Gaikai will launch in the third quarter of 2014, with a European launch slated for sometime in 2015. Developers have been briefed on Gaikai, the report claims, and some have been asked to participate in a beta for the cloud service said to begin in 2014.

The party is officially over for PS4 The Playroom streaming on Twitch, according to Polygon. The game streaming services company said that it did this because the majority of content coming from the free app was not game related.

"We removed Playroom content from the directory because a majority of it was non-gaming related," the firm has told Polygon.

As PS4 users find new, exciting and sometimes questionable ways to stream content, Twitch shows them who's boss with a handful of bans. Apparently the streaming service is not pleased with some of the content being streamed by a select few PS4 owners. In addition to cracking down on non-gaming content, Twitch has banned a small number of accounts for streaming inappropriate content and inappropriate conversations that go against parts of its terms of service.

Valve has opened up registration for the Steam In-home Streaming closed beta, which will begin within the next two months (before the end of 2013). Those interested in getting in on the closed beta can do so simply by joining the official Steam group. The beta will let users play PC games on other machines within their house.

Minecraft for Mac and PC will soon have native support for Twitch live streaming, according to news coming out of Minecon 2013 this weekend. Speaking at Minecon 2013 over the weekend, Twitch Marketing Vice President Matthew DiPietro confirmed that this level of functionality would be introduced 'soon'.

"Minecraft has struck a very powerful chord with the Twitch community," DiPietro said.

Nvidia has a simple enough solution for not having any original games on its upcoming Android-based hand-held or for offering support for thousands of Android games already available on Google Play: simply use their new mapping technology. When the device launched in July it offered support for a couple of hundred Android titles, much to the chagrin of those who purchased the $300 hand-held system.

The beta version of Nvidia ShadowPlay will be available Oct. 28 alongside version 1.7 of the GeForce Experience software, Nvidia announced today.

A newer Nvidia graphics card like the GeForce GTX 600 series or higher is required because it uses the GPUs on those cards that feature an on-board H.264 video encoder Nvidia says that the software is capable of recording footage (in the background) at up to 60 frames per second in 1080p, with a performance hit of between 5 and 10 percent.

If you can't make it to the New York Comic Con, you can at least watch all the goings-on via Twitch. Twitch announced today that it will begin live-streaming from the event on Oct 11, giving viewers a look inside all the most important things taking place during the show this year.

In a recent interview with Dengeki Online, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida said that the company's ultimate goal with its Gaikai streaming technology is to deliver PlayStation games to "all devices." He claims that the technology could be used to one day to stream PlayStation games to a variety of non-Sony devices like PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

As part of its Tokyo Game Show press conference today Sony Computer Entertainment revealed that it will be launching the Gaikai cloud-streaming service in North America next year. The service will launch with a specific selection of PlayStation 3 games, playable on the PS4, PlayStation Vita TV, and PS Vita. The announcement was made by Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida, who compared the streaming games service to Netflix.

If you own an Xbox 360, have an Xbox Live Gold account, and happen to be a Time Warner Cable subscriber, then you'll be happy to hear that the official application for Microsoft's console is now available for download. The app allows Time Warner Cable subscribers to access live television programming via their Xbox 360. The app was announced in June by both companies.

Yesterday Microsoft confirmed that only Xbox Live Gold subscribers would be able to use the new Game DVR feature on Xbox One. No one was shocked by that news, given the current structure of Xbox Live and how it limits features of those not willing to pay for the service.

A new research report from ABI Research claims that new technologies like cloud-based streaming will not be a game changer for new consoles coming out this fall. In fact the research firm predicts that new console numbers will not be on par with the previous generation's retail sales number in the first five years. ABI Research says that the push to "market online video access in the new consoles is undermined by the availability of cheaper streaming devices from Roku, Netgear, WD, Apple and Seagate, among others."

Valve Software and Twitch have inked a deal this week that will allow Steam users to link their Twitch accounts and watch video streams outside of a game. The deal is mainly for DOTA2 players, who will become eligible for tournament item drops while watching a Twitch stream. Valve said it plans to expand on the features available through the deal, and is asking players for feedback on the matter.

The deal came to light as part of a new DOTA 2 update that added a number of new features into the game including six new tutorial missions and a new Limited Heroes mode.

One of the issues some players have with transitioning to a fancy new console is leaving behind a massive library of games because newer systems tend not to support backwards compatibility. Sony's new console is no exception because it has abandoned its old architecture in favor of a new one that is completely different from what the PS3 uses.

But Sony has found a round-about way of allowing players to enjoy their old games on their new system - even though it will likely cost consumers a little extra money for the pleasure of playing those old games.

At about this time last year adult video streaming and rental outfit SugarDVD announced that it would bring its services to the PlayStation 3. Since that time the service has been added to every imaginable device on the planet either through a custom app or simply via a device's version of a web browser. SugarDVD is available (or at least accessible) on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, Ouya, iPad, Android, ROKU, BOXEE, and Google TV.

Select Twitch.tv content is now available via Xbox 360 thanks to the release of a new app. While Xbox Live Gold members won't be able to use the service to broadcast their gameplay exploits with the new app, they will be able to watch content from the top 300 live Twitch channels. For now the app is only available to Xbox Live Gold members in the United States.

Bluestacks wants its new console system, the Android-based GamePop, to be "Netflix for games." Pre-orders have launched for the device, which won't cost consumers more than a monthly commitment to sign up to its games services and to pay around $10 for shipping and handling. For a $6.99 monthly fee, customers get access to a library of over 500 Android-based games, the GamePop console, a controller, the power supply and HDMI cable.

It looks like Netflix is about to take a chainsaw to its catalog of content, according to information collected by content cataloguing site InstantWatcher. With several licensees set to expire, Netflix will begin removing content from MGM, Universal, Warner Bros., and more. Instant Watcher puts the amount of content to be removed this month at around 1,794. Some of that content include 15 seasons of South Park, older horror movies and some early James Bond films.

Back when OnLive was launched in 2010, cloud gaming was seen as a leviathan rising from the deep. On paper, the concept was not only pretty watertight, but it was a strong contender to traditional gaming models (especially the console market).

Cloud gaming was going to happen. It was just a question of logistics.

During the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week Google's YouTube announced a new API for game developers that allows them to allow users to directly stream video from their games without using an external streaming service such as Twitch.TV or Ustream. YouTube streaming is already in some games - like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 - but the goal of the new API is to bring in-game streaming solutions tied to YouTube to far more developers.

Multi-platform TV and movie streaming service Crackle today unveiled a new PlayStation 3 application, making its full suite of ad-supported, full-length movies, television series and original programming more easily accessible to all PlayStation 3 users in the United States and Canada. Along with the PS3 App, Crackle recently re-launched on Sony Entertainment Network (SEN), offering a "premium user-experience" to those accessing Crackle from Sony Connected Devices such as BRAVIA TVs and Blu-ray players.