It's been a time-honoured cliche that console manufacturers want to take over your entire living room. But finally - finally - it looks like some of those predictions might be fulfilled.
This morning Virgin radio announced that it was going to be available via Wii and PS3, and we've just heard that the Xbox 360 will now incorporate instant messaging capabilities.
Some are sceptical - GigaOM's line is that the Xbox deal is just an attempt to sell high end peripherals. But what if this is about something bigger than just selling some keyboards, and is about some greater change in behaviour?
Even if people aren't quite yet using their consoles in a different way, the manufacturers certainly are. Sony's hoping that it can use PS3 to get Blu-Ray into people's homes - as Charles pointed out a couple of weeks ago - though it remains to be seen whether they've put the cart before the horse. And Microsoft is slowly (its extender capabilities, for example, that let you stream media from your PC to your TV via the Xbox).
I've heard the lean-back, lean-forward arguments a thousand time - that people don't want to use the internet on their big screen TV. That, of course, depends on what you want to use the internet for full stop. Maybe a dumb terminal for the web isn't such a dumb idea, if we're using it as a complement to our other sorts of media consumption.
With hi-def slowly encroaching into the mainstream, with the online capabilities growing and with web use becoming ubiquitous for many of us, that little box under your TV is getting more powerful by the day.
