Looks like video games are finally in the mainstream media for good. CBS has renewed their contract with the World Series of Video Games, and will televise matches for a second year:

"The 2007 deal will expand WSVG coverage to four separate hour-long events timed after the three major U.S. events and the finals in Sweden. They will air as part of the CBS Sports Spectacular on Sunday, July 29; Sunday, August 19; Saturday, November 17; and Saturday, December 15. Each episode will feature competition footage for featured titles such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, Activision’s Guitar Hero II and EA Sports Fight Night Round 3. Segments on the competitors themselves will also be included."

I wonder how long it will be before video game events of this size get covered in Vegas regularly, with money lines, point spreads, prostitutes and everything else that's essential. I'm still hoping that one day Vegas can work out a deal with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to allow them to let multiplayer games be used for gambling. Video game gambling could tear Vegas apart. No more obnoxious sports betters and old dudes throwing away their retirement money. Anybody can be a gamer, so in ten years it might be the number one Vegas attraction. Prostitutes would ditch their pimps and take this up as a more profitable career, launching a whole new era of gaming. WSVGSTDs.

Maybe Vegas could even use this as leverage to lower the legal gambling age to help get in gamers while they're still young. Slot machine profits would rise drastically once again, but not because of bored wives. Half the ten year old world champions would need their moms to fly them to the events, and while their kids are out supporting the family with their trigger fingers, Vegas will steal it all back through their bored mothers at the slots.

Hopefully the televised show goes over well and we see this happening more and more soon. I don't see how there's any CSI crimes left to be solved, housewives left to be banged, or islands left to survive on. Even America is sick of American Idol, we need some new form of entertainment to take over television, and if we're lucky video games will claim reality TV's dying throne.

Microsoft just announced that they've got CBS, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Turner Broadcasting System Inc. (TBS Inc.), Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment  ready to bring an over 1,000 hours of TV shows and movies to the Xbox 360 by the end of the year. On top of this, Microsoft is proud to say that they will be the first gaming console to bring standard and high-definition TV shows and movies to gamers through digital distribution over the internet. Starting on November 22 (the 360's anniversary) the Xbox 360 will be the first gaming console in history to provide high-definition TV shows and movies directly to gamers in their living rooms. 

The setup will let 360 gamers download full-length TV shows to own, but only offers movie downloads as rentals. Here are some of the titles you'll be seeing soon:

• CSI
• Star Trek
• NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series
• Ultimate Fighting Championship
  
• Robot Chicken
• Survivor
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force
• South Park
• Chapelle's Show
• The Real World
• Pimp My Ride
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Hogan Knows Best
• Matrix
• MI:III
• Jackass: The Movie
• Nacho Libre