Xbox, PlayStation, Wii also see action for video, sports, music non-gaming features

When Chris and Rebecca Rider sit down to watch a romantic movie together, they don't pop in a DVD or turn on the DVR. They fire up their video game console.

Once kept in rec rooms for a family's gamers, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360, Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Co.'s Wii are increasingly being used by people who have no interest in helping Mario save the princess or the "Call of Duty" soldiers win the war.

Chris Rider, 31, began playing video games on his family's Atari in the early 1980s. He stood in line all night in 2005 to buy an Xbox 360 the day it went on sale. But he knew things had changed in 2009 when he sent his wife a text message at 2 a.m. and discovered she was awake, using the Xbox to stream episodes of the Scott Bakula drama "Quantum Leap" via Netflix.

Now the Los Angeles couple watches so many movies and television shows through their game console that Rider has considered canceling their DirecTV subscription.

"Since I'm a gamer, I'm always going to need a console," he said. "So why bother with anything else if I don't have to?"

Media machines for millions

When nearly 50,000 industry professionals gathered in downtown Los Angeles recently for the annual E3 video game conference, players like Rider were front and center in their minds. Instead of focusing just on such hot new titles as "Halo 4" and "God of War: Ascension," companies were also showing off applications that turn their game consoles into media machines.

More than 40 million people use the Xbox Live online service -- and more than half of those pay to subscribe to premium services. And about 51 million PlayStation 3 consoles are connected to Sony's free Internet offering.

Less than four years ago, playing video games was the only thing to do online with either device. Now people use the consoles to access Netflix, Hulu and HBO Go, get sports on ESPN or Major League Baseball's MLB.tv, and stream music through Last.FM and Sony's Music Unlimited.

At Microsoft's news conference earlier this month kicking off the E3 convention, the tech giant announced applications from 35 new entertainment partners coming to the Xbox 360 in the next year. Among them: Univision, Nickelodeon, the NBA and the National Hockey League. ESPN is significantly expanding its offerings on the Xbox to include live feeds of all its channels, and Microsoft is launching a music service to compete with the likes of iTunes and Spotify.

Most significantly, all of Microsoft's digital entertainment efforts are being housed under the Xbox title. The company's new music service will be called Xbox Music, and a group of applications that help consumers enjoy media on multiple devices simultaneously -- looking at a map of the mythical land of Westeros on a tablet while watching "Game of Thrones" on a TV set, for instance -- will be called Xbox Smart Glass.

Some in the video game industry have envisioned these developments for more than a decade. Microsoft and Sony each justified their multibillion-dollar investments in video game consoles in large part by saying the consoles could enable them to "own" the digital living room.

Xbox 360 opened the gate

The turning point came in late 2008 when Netflix launched on the Xbox 360. It was the first simple way for millions of people to stream Netflix video on a television.

Netflix soon became available on the PS3 and Wii. Today, game consoles are the most popular conduit, aside from PCs, used by the company's 23.4 million streaming video customers in the United States.

Dozens of apps have since followed. It's now unusual to find an online video or music service that isn't available on the PS3 or Xbox 360. (The Wii has only Netflix.)

"When digital retailers launch on these consoles, we can see sales jumps of more than 100 percent," said David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures home entertainment.

Of course, the more broadly the game consoles try to appeal, the bigger the risk of losing their earliest, most loyal audience.