that is not featured by the television channel at a given time. In other cases, a viewer may only be interested in watching a how an expert player handles a particular level in a game. Still other viewers may wish to control the viewpoint that a video game is seen from, which is different from that chosen by the production team, etc. In short, a television viewer may have a myriad of preferences in watching video games that are not accommodated by the particular broadcast of a television network, even if several different television channels are available. For all of the aforementioned reasons, prior art video game television channels have significant limitations in presenting video games to television viewers.
Another drawback of prior art video games systems and applicationan XBox 360 has enough computing power to host many simultaneous Pac Man games at once.
Video games machines are typically turned off for most of the hours of a week. According to a July 2006 Nielsen Entertainment study of active gamers 13 years and older, on average, active gamers spend fourteen hours/week playing console video games, or just 12% of the total hours in a week. This means that the average video game console is idle 88% of the time, which is an inefficient use of an expensive resource. This is particularly significant given that video game consoles are often subsidized by the manufacturer to bring down the purchase price (with the expectation that the subsidy will be earned back by royalties from future video game software purchases).
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