Movies coming to an Xbox near you

As people spend more time on the Net, Hollywood has been moving to online video. But people are also spending lots of time on Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s Xbox.

So why not have cool Hollywood content for that?

Well, Microsoft has retained Peter Safran, who is an entertainment mogul who operates Safran Company. Some of his films include Scary Movie and Meet the Spartans.

Basically, Safran will produce a variety of shortform video shows for the Xbox Live, covering such things as comedy, sci-fi and so on (hey, the Xbox has a mostly young male demographic).

To get some perspective on things, I interviewed Chase Norlin, who operates Pixsy (a video search engine). According to him:

"Producing content for Xbox 360 represents the most significant trend impacting the entertainment industry today: the shift in the economics of content creation and distribution. Given the multitude of new content distribution opportunities available today (web, mobile, video on demand, and game consoles to name a few), expect to see all the majors leveraging the 'create once, syndicate everywhere' model. We are entering an era where a new type of 'digital Hollywood studio' is truly achievable."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.