The game and show have been pitched as groundbreaking transmedia, thanks to how they have been designed to complement each other and build out the world of its characters. And digging into the way both elements have been created to co-exist, it’s hard to deny the potential in the approach.

Syfy and game company Trion Worlds began collaborating on Defiance in 2008, when parent company NBC Universal made an investment in Trion and the two sides began discussing how they might work together.

“We definitely knew that we wanted to create something that would live beyond the television screen, something that would live in different platforms,” Syfy head of original content Mark Stern said, adding:

“But the pilots we were showing them were’t helpful to them from a game perspective, so we really had to start with the ground up. We started trading ideas back and forth until we came up with the concept for this world that was really interesting to both of us, and went from there.”

The biggest challenge, according to Nick Beliaeff, senior VP of development at Trion Worlds, was Trion and Syfy learning to work outside of their normal pattern. For example, he said, “We needed to know in 2010 who they cast because we needed to be able to build playable characters. But at that time they had just one writer on, no production staff — not even the people who would do makeup and costume design.”

The collaboration came together, though: Five years later, the result is a sprawling game universe populated by at least a half dozen alien races, and a series headlined by a cast including Grant Bowler, Julie Benz, Mia Kirshner and Fionnula Flanagan.

“There’s no question that having this very rich, diverse and deep world and mythology, part of the requisite for the game in particular, was really helpful for the series,” Stern said. “There are details that have been worked out that you would never have had the chance to do with a normal show.”

A few examples of how the show and game work together (it’s hard to detail exactly how the game and show work together without some minor spoilers, so apologies): In the opening minutes of the pilot, we meet Nolan (Bowler) and Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas), who have obtained a strange gem — a gem you helped them acquire in the game, as one of the very first missions.

Also, one episode of the show will end with a virus outbreak — over the following week, players of the game will be able to create a vaccine. And one character will be first introduced on the show, then will escape to the game world mid-way through the season.

Plot points like these, plus details like wardrobe, character design and music (the latter of which was created for both experiences by Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary) are meant to blend the two experiences together, rewarding viewers who participate in both: “We’ll alter the game every single time an episode is on the air,” Beliaeff said.

It also, in an interesting twist, rewards those who don’t time-shift their viewing of the show, as game elements are timed to the airing of episodes. “We want to incentivize people — not force them. But if you watch it live while playing the game, you’re going to get more out of it,” Stern said.

Key to keeping the two components separate but collaborative is geography: The show takes place in what was once St. Louis, while players of the game roam around a post-apocalyptic San Francisco.

“We first started out thinking it would be awesome if they took place in the same city — we thought the whole Defiance universe would take place in the Bay Area. But as we developed that idea further, it became problematic,” Beliaeff said. “So we placed them close enough that communication is easy, but travel is difficult.”

Another interesting difference between the game and the show is its rating — while the televised Defiance is in line with Syfy’s other programming (which rarely exceeds a TV-14), the game has been rated Mature for “Blood, Drug Reference, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, and Violence.”

That difference, according to Stern, is by design. “[The show] is going for a broader, older demo, but [the game] is going for a younger and more male-skewed audience,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to pull more of that younger demo into our channel and push older audience into the game.”

That’s the real hope of Defiance — while all of these elements are interesting, the only ones who will really get to enjoy them are those who participate in both parts of the story.

Trion did not provide sales numbers for the game, but Beliaeff did say that they received replenishment orders from Wal-Mart and GameSpot in the first week, and sold out of their Xbox inventory. “We’re smiling,” he added.

It’s now down to Monday night’s television premiere, but either way, Defiance has been a learning experience for both teams. “It’s just been fascinating to see these creative elements cross over and learn what it takes to build an successful interactive MMO. That’s been educational on all sorts of levels,” Stern said. “Not only are we going to be able to use all these elements to launch a potential season two, but we’ll also hopefully be able to apply it to new properties.”

Right now, the writing staff for the show is breaking stories for a potential (not-yet-greenlit) season two, while Trion works to create more content for after the show’s season finale. “We’ll certainly be lighter on our feet with season two than we were with season one. It won’t take us five years,” Stern added.

It’ll take a while to see whether this level of cross-platform storytelling makes Defiance better than your average sci-fi drama. But it definitely makes it bigger.

Disclaimer: I was previously employed by G4, a division of NBC Universal, but had no interaction with Syfy.

Redbox Instant offers subscribers four Redbox DVD rentals as well as unlimited streaming access to around 4,600 movies for $8 a month. An additional 4,000 newer titles are offered as streaming rentals or purchases. After a limited-time free introductory offer, Redbox Instant customers will need an Xbox Live Gold subscription to use the service on Microsoft’s game console, which will set them back another $5 a month.

The company launched its closed beta test at the end of December, and opened up to the public mid-March after convincing tens of thousands of testers to become paying customers, according to Redbox Instant CEO Shawn Strickland.

Strickland told me last week that the launch on Xbox Live would also kick off the company’s first real marketing efforts, and that Redbox Instant would start to specifically target Verizon and Redbox customers soon after. Apps for LG, Google TV and Vizio devices would follow in the next few weeks, he added.

Microsoft made a significant showing in the area of internet VOD, which is industry slang for those 24 or 48 hour video rentals you can get from iTunes, Vudu and others. That segment currently accounts for just 12 percent of total video-on-demand revenue, with 72 percent of the money coming from rentals through pay TV operators. But it’s an interesting segment, in part because it’s not dominated by just one or two players.

Apple’s iTunes does have a strong lead with 45 percent of all internet VOD revenue, according to NPD, but there’s a fierce competition going on for second place: Amazon Instant Video generated 18 percent of the industry’s revenue in this segment in 2012, followed by Walmart’s Vudu with 15 percent and Xbox video with 14 percent.

That’s a pretty strong showing for Microsoft, considering that the company has just begun to put some more muscle behind its own video rental offering. Microsoft just recently unified all of its entertainment offerings under the Xbox brand and is now beginning to promote it as its home entertainment property across all of its Windows 8 platforms, as well as the Xbox 360. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Microsoft surpassed Vudu and maybe even Amazon by the end of this year for internet VOD rentals.

Of course, one has to look at these numbers with a grain of salt: NPD’s home video data focuses entirely on transactional spending, meaning that Netflix and competing subscription offerings don’t show up at all. That’s despite the fact that Netflix now has some 27 million subscribers in the U.S. alone. But subscriptions generally don’t offer access to movies right after they were in the theaters — and that’s an area in which Microsoft, with a pretty big installed device base, is starting to move a lot of media.

Fifteen years after it paid $425 million to buy WebTV, Microsoft on Monday announced several new features for its seven-year-old Xbox 360 gaming platform aimed at letting users access the web on their big-screen TV.

Also read: Amazon’s video services launch on Xbox 360

Starting this fall, the company will launch a version of its popular Internet Explorer web browser for Xbox, which will be available in the U.S. and other markets featuring Microsoft’s Xbox Live entertainment programming services. This will be accompanied by the separate but complimentary introduction of a new app, Xbox SmartGlass, which among other things, will turn a user’s tablet or smartphone into a controller needed to conduct said web browsing. Users will also be able to use Xbox’s voice-control feature, Kinect, to get around the Internet.

Hamstrung by a clunky keyboard, dial-up access, low-resolution standard-def screens and very little in the way of video to look at, the Web 1.0-era WebTV never came close to achieving wide-scale adoption.

But the experience might catch on with Xbox users.

As a complimentary feature that lets users access video on the open Internet using voice control, Microsoft’s inclusion of Explorer on Xbox seems to have further augmented the available programming on what has become the leading over-the-top  platform.

Microsoft announced this new functionality — and several other features and content partners — for its aging Xbox 360 platform Monday at the E3 gaming conference in Downtown Los Angeles. (As expected, there was no major hardware news.)

The presentation, of course, was thick with demos of new versions of popular gaming titles such as Splinter Cell and Halo. But with entertainment usage now outpacing gaming on Xbox, Live-related entertainment announcements took center stage at E3 Monday.

Also read: Step aside, gamers: Xbox Live expands “TV-like” ads

Other announcements made Monday:

– A truly viable cord-cutting solution that lets a user access a respectable level of live sports without a cable bill is still a ways away. But Xbox Live has far and away the most robust sports portfolio of any over-the-top service with the addition of NBA Game Time With League Pass and NHL Game Center to its mix. Both subscription services make hundreds of out-of-market regular-season games available to fans with no cable bill required.  Microsoft also announced the addition of the authenticated WatchESPN service, with subscribers to Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Verizon FiOS and Comcast Xfinity able to view ESPN networks through Xbox.

– Xbox Music: Microsoft didn’t reveal too much about its new music service for Xbox consoles and Windows 8 PCs, other than to say it will arrive with almost 30 million licensed tracks.

– Thirty-five new content partners will launch channels on Xbox Live over the next year, a list that includes Comedy Central Stand Up, GameSpot TV, Machinima, Nickelodeon, Paramount Movies, Revision3, Rhapsody, SnagFilms and Univision.

– More on SmartGlass: Available for not just Windows mobile devices, but iOS and Android as well, the app acts as a second-screen extension for both gaming and TV watching. For example, a user playing the upcoming new version of Madden can design a play on their iPad. Or, their tablet can tell them the name of the actors they’re watching on TV.

“These guys have the pipe and the bandwidth,” Ars Technica reported Aragon as saying. “If they start capping things, it gets difficult.”

At issue isn’t just the 250 GB monthly cap that Comcast has imposed on its residential broadband customers, but the fact that it’s making exceptions to that cap. Content streamed to Comcast’s Xfinity app in the Xbox is off the meter, while content coming from other providers is counted against that monthly allotment. While Netflix , Sony and other over-the-top video providers aren’t happy with the situation, my colleague Stacey Higginbotham writes that Comcast may be well within its rights, since it’s using its own infrastructure to deliver the Xfinity service and can therefore treat it as a special case.

However, as my colleague Daniel Frankel at paidContent proposes, Comcast may be biting the hand that feeds it. Providing broadband services, which in turn bring third-party content into the home, is turning out to be a much better business model for cable operators than providing that content on their own. Cable providers are losing video customers and finding their programming margins squeezed, but those same customers remain willing to pay big bucks for raw broadband access.

Picture courtesy of Flickr user brizzlebornandbred.

The catch-up TV service on Tuesday became the latest TV app to launch in the Xbox Dashboard’s app initiative, for free with no subscription requirement (announcement).

Although the BBC has become reluctant to custom-build iPlayer apps for the burgeoning number of new devices, Xbox Kinect’s TV interface represents a sufficiently interesting new opportunity.

Users can swipe through iPlayer’s menus as well as navigate programming by voice control.

iPlayer had been available on Wii and Playstation 3 as an app and through the web browser for some time now. They made up five percent of iPlayer requests in September.

The BBC’s Xbox delay were the Xbox’s lack of web browser and, paidContent understands, that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) had initially wanted to give access only to paid-up Xbox Live Gold members – something which would have run contrary to the stipulation that the BBC must provide its services free at the point of use to UK license fee payers.

But Microsoft’s stance thawed late in 2011 when it announced several TV partners would bring in Xbox apps that could be outside as well as inside its Gold subscription.

I would expect Xbox to become one of the platforms on which iPlayer is most used.

As of Wednesday, when Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) made the service available to its nearly 3.2 million subscribers, HBO Go is finally, well, almost everywhere, available to 98 percent of houses that subscribe to pay television. Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Inc. is aggressively pushing the industry-wide TV Everywhere initiative, which calls for TV programming to be opened up to a wide range of digital devices, accessible to anyone on their computer, tablet or smart phone provided they can “authenticate” that they have a paid cable, satellite or telco TV subscription. And the HBO Go service is the leading edge of that push — no other TV programming supplier has made more deals and infiltrated its TV Everywhere service further than HBO.

But it’s not really everywhere just yet.

In addition to mobile devices, Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeff Bewkes has strongly urged pay TV providers to also allow authentication of TV Everywhere services in the living room. And since the end of October, HBO Go has been available on the set-top boxes of Roku, one of the so-called over-the-top services.

But even though all of the big cable and satellite companies have agreements in place to authenticate HBO, as first reported by GigaOM in November, three of the top four service providers — Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) and Time Warner Cable, which collectively control over half of U.S. pay TV homes — still won’t allow their subscribers to watch it via Roku.

Meanwhile, last month, HBO Go finally rolled out on Samsung smart TVs, but Comcast, the No. 1 cable company in America with over 22 million subscribers, won’t authenticate it on those sets. Neither will No. 3 provider Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC).

Now, with HBO Go set to roll out on Xbox Live — perhaps the biggest over-the-top service of them all, with 40 million subscribers worldwide — media technology analysts including BTIG Research’s Richard Greenfield are curiously waiting to see who allows their subscribers in. As Greenfield noted Thursday, Comcast has a deal in place to make its on-demand programming, including HBO Go, available on Xbox Live through its Xfinity app.

However, while broadly criticizing the set-top programming interfaces and remote controls the cable industry leases to its customers, Greenfield called upon Comcast to allow its subscribers to directly access the HBO Go app on Xbox Live for what he calls a “simpler, cleaner user experience.”

In fact, in an earlier but related blog post, Greenfield urged companies including Comcast to stop clinging to a model under which they lose money by leasing set-top boxes to their customers.

His central thesis: the faster cable companies like Comcast enable their customers to access their programming bundles through broadband-enabled services like Xbox Live and Roku, the quicker profits will ramp up for these cable companies’ higher-margin internet service provider operations.

Andrew Hunter, general manager of digital media for Epix, disagrees with the notion that the formal launch of the premium channel’s iOS app — it’s been in beta since October — is in direct competition with the distribution agreement Epix signed with Netflix last year.

Epix, a premium channel jointly launched in 2008 by Paramount (NYSE: VIA) Pictures, Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF) and MGM, is letting authenticated subscribers to both Epix and TV service providers including Charter (NSDQ: CHTR), Cox Communications, Dish Network (NSDQ: DISH), Mediacom, Suddenlink and Verizon FiOS watch its programming on a range of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) mobile devices. Epix subscribers can also watch movies like Paramount’s Rango on Xbox Live, Roku and Android devices. It’s part of the cable industry’s broader “TV Everywhere” initiative, which seeks to keep cable’s traditional monetization structure intact as content migrates to a range of digital devices.

But Epix’s streaming service differs in a key way from the TV Everywhere authentication products launched by rivals like HBO, which has kept its programming largely confined to its own “Go” streaming service and thus is not competing with itself on other subscription platforms.

With Netflix’s distribution agreement with Starz officially ended, Epix is now one of its most important suppliers of big-studio movies. According to a 2010 GigaOM report, Netflix is paying Epix about $1 billion over five years to license its content. But in many cases, TV Everywhere users will have access to anticipated Epix movies before Netflix subscribers do.

“We’re happy to have our content on Netflix, and they’re a great partner, but we feel like we need to be in as many places as we can right now,” Hunter said.

ABC Family, meanwhile, said Tuesday that it’s giving Apple mobile device users — whether they have a cable subscription or not — the ability to watch free, ad-supported episodes from ABC Family millennial-targeted original series including Jane By Design, Make It or Break It, Switched at Birth and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. In most cases, these shows will be available for viewing on iOS the day after they originally air on linear television.

On Hulu — the streaming service partly owned by ABC Family’s parent company, Disney — shows like Jane By Design aren’t even available for viewing on mobile devices.

According to an ABC Family representative, free viewing of the basic cable network’s shows on iOS may not last long — the upcoming launch of authenticated viewing on Disney Channel very well might lead the march of other youth-targeted Disney cable properties like ABC Family into TV Everywhere lock step.

As for Hulu, there’s speculation that it too may soon begin signing deals related to TV Everywhere authentication. As for Hulu, the service already dipped its toes into the authentication waters with an agreement with Fox TV last year, and there’s speculation that it could be on the cusp of signing more such TV Everywhere-related deals. Last week, for example, the service joined a dispute which seeks to stop Dish Network from trademarking the term “TV Everywhere.”

Correction: The original version of this post failed to note an authentication deal that Hulu reached with Fox (NSDQ: NWS) TV last year.

“I actually think we’re entering the age of video now…some people think we’re already there but I think we’re just getting started,” he told an audience at the DLD digital media conference in Munich, Germany.

He predicted that digital video consumption will “rise for the next many years” as bandwidth to the home continues to grow, and new devices make it easier to consume more content than ever before.

News Corp. like many other TV producers, has long been preparing itself for a time when that TV content is watched on anything but a TV, with the launch of online video and apps for new screens like those of tablets and smartphones. “TV is no longer a device,” he said. “It is a concept, and people go where the best screen is.”

And rather than simply ramping up the amount of content that News Corp.’s video properties produce — they include broadcasters like Fox as well as the film studio 20th Century Fox — Miller says that it is turning to News Corp. businesses that are traditionally more tied with written content, in what sounds like a very decentralized, try-everything-and-see-what-works approach to the space.

“We’re producing everything across the board now,” said Miller. “[Because] we’re focused on video…we’re trying to move our print publications into video, too.” That includes training Wall Street Journal reporters to “take videos on their iPhones,” as well as write.

And gaming site IGN, which originally started life as a collection of titles reviewing games, is running a dedicated channel on Microsoft’s Xbox, as well as the YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) channel dedicated to gaming. “We won the bakeoff for the YouTube channel last year,” said Miller, referring to YouTube’s strategy to launch 100 new premium content channels covering a variety of interests.

He also noted that through IGN News Corp is once again looking at how it might develop its own gaming content — this is something that it had tried to do through its old subsidiary Fox Mobile, although that content division, including the production studios, was sold off last year to Jesta Digital. The company seems to be taking a more cautious approach than in the past: “We are putting our toe into the water with casual games,” said Miller. “Playing games is a bedrock so we want to learn and earn our way into that.”

Miller was interviewed on stage by DLD’s chairman, Yossi Vardi, who noted that he once worked with Miller for four years, and also that DLD had been trying to get Miller to speak at the event for the past three years.

These two hooks might be part of the reason why Miller was thrown quite a few softballs in the interview. In other words, no questions about how News Corp. can avoid another MySpace or Fox Mobile investment (both written off and sold off) in its search for the next big revenue stream.

Nor were there any questions at all about the best business models for delivering that new material: News Corp has been strong on paywalls for its written content so far — with paid subscriptions required for much of the Wall Street Journal and The Times in London — would Miller and News Corp consider extending that to more of its video content?

One area where Vardi did press Miller a bit was on the Megaupload closure and how content companies are going after the “little guy” in their pursuit of copyright protection. Aren’t you ashamed your industry is chasing small kids who want to have some fun, asked Vardi.

“I think you’re confusing us with the music industry. We don’t do that,” answered Miller. “What you’re getting at is what is the proper way to protect copyright….There has to be a way for freedoms to be respected and for copyright to be respected.”

That is an issue that has yet to find a definitive solution from many of Miller’s peers, and perhaps Miller himself. “The industry takes a while to embrace new technologies,” he said. “We’re doing it as an industry but it’s a different world.”

That world, in Miller’s view, has discounted content to almost nothing, in order to shift value to other parts of the ecosystem — a complaint often heard from those in the content industry in the face of juggernaut’s like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Google, which respectively are more interested in pushing hardware sales and advertising for their own business models, offering easy and cheap access to content as part of the deal for consumers.

“Distributors have different businesses now,” he explained. “It’s not just to make money on the content as before.” “[Those who make hardware, or sell advertising] would like to keep the value of content low.” He said that this will eventually need to get “rebalanced” in the future. Whether that means more moves to paid content, or more advertising initiatives — or even partnerships on devices — remains to be seen.

Revenue for the quarter was $20.89 billion, a little off of what analysts were expecting but when the numbers are that big a miss of $40 million isn’t the end of the world. Earnings per share were $0.78, two cents better than expectations, and so overall there was much rejoicing in the after-hours market, which really shouldn’t be held during Happy Hour on the East Coast.

Still, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has a well-documented long-term problem. Windows continues to generate big profits but it’s in decline, buffeted by the mobile revolution that Microsoft mainly participates in through licensing agreements. This is a big year for Windows Phone and Windows 8, two projects that appear to show Microsoft has learned some lessons over the last five years but are still in “wait-and-see” mode.

In other areas, the company is doing quite well. Xbox sales continue to grow, leading Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices group to a 15 percent revenue boost, the best performance of any division. And the amount of money Microsoft continued to pour down the Internet drain decreased in its fourth quarter, to “just” $458 million, an improvement from last year’s loss of $559 million coupled with revenue growth of 10 percent.