Xbox gamers can now watch Amazon movies, TV shows

Amazon extends its reach the next biggest threat to Netflix by zoning in on the game-console segment

Amazon really wants to make its instant streaming video service very attainable and enticing. The Amazon Prime Instant Streaming Service is now available on Microsoft’s Xbox 360. 

Xbox Live Gold subscribers that download the Amazon Instant Video app can now access the roughly 120,000 movies and TV episodes available for renting and purchasing on Amazon’s streaming video service. 

The app also offers access to the more limited Prime Instant video selection, Amazon’s video service for its $79 per year Prime members.

This Instant Video app also supports Amazon’s Whispersync syncing service and lets users to watching videos on their TVs and easily switch over to their Kindle Fire.

Kinect owners will able to use both voice commands and gestures to control the app.

As more people are looking for on-demand video services to supplement, if not replace, their cable offerings, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and other are getting their services on every Internet-connected device.

As it stands, more than 32 million U.S. households now access online video on their TVs and video game consoles like the Xbox and Wii are a major component in this shift.

Just a week ago, Amazon beefed up its video catalog with hundreds of new movies from Paramount Pictures. Amazon's new licensing agreement added to the 3,000 titles it gained from the March deal with Discovery. 

Now the Amazon service that is competition with Netflix offers more than 17,000 movies and TV episodes for unlimited streaming by Amazon Prime customers. 

Movies gained in this new agreement include Star Trek, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Mission: Impossible 3, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Top Gun, and The Italian Job.

So now Amazon Prime Instant Video has 120,000 titles that members can either rent or buy. This addition is greatly helping increase the value of the Amazon Prime membership, which already allows users to get free shipping on all items ordered and costs $79/year for the service.

As more services look to take a slice out of the Netflix monopoly, Amazon Prime is making its mark as a great value for people looking to buy, stream, rent or borrow digital goods -- especially those that have an Amazon Kindle. 

Just last month, Amazon continued to expand upon its domination in the digital reading material market by launching a whole section of its U.S. Kindle store dedicated to books in Spanish.

Labelled “Tienda Kindle“, Amazon's new section features 30,000 e-books in Spanish along with a whole new level of customer support aimed at Spanish-speaking users.  As more people continue to adopt the improving technology of electronic book readers and tablets, Amazon refuses to lose any readership to another marketplace.

Just last December, 17% of those surveyed had read an e-book in the past year and the four-percentage-point jump in two months is an impressive growth, especially now that a the new iPad has sold record numbers in the first few weeks on the market -- Apple sold more than 3 million new iPads during the product’s first weekend in stores. 

That’s at least triple the number of iPad 2 tablets that analysts estimated the company sold during that product’s opening weekend last year. While breaking the previous releases' record is now an expected move, the fact that it is triple is astounding and shows that there is no slowing rate at which people are snapping up these amazing screens.

With Netflix securly focused on movies and TV content, Amazon Prime may have an advantage since it has one annual fee for shipping, streaming, books and audio. Quite a deal if the catalog expands further.