"The Xbox 360 will ship in the UK with over 100 minutes of audio and video already on the system's hard drive, it has emerged, after Microsoft submitted the planned content to the British Board of Film Certification to be rated.
The content, which has been passed without cuts by the BBFC, consists of 22 separate files - the majority of which are between three and five minutes long, and appear to be music videos or movie clips, with titles such as "PUNK ROCK SUPERSTAR.WMA" and "1ST_TITANICTESTSEQUENCE_SINKING_8MBPS.WMV".
However, one stand-out piece of content is a 22 minutes 59 second long item described as "DVD OF GAME", which seems likely to be a trailer reel for upcoming Xbox 360 games. Advertisement
The fact that the Xbox 360 ships with video and audio content pre-loaded is further proof of Microsoft's commitment to pushing the console as a multimedia platform for the living room rather than simply as a games device.
It's expected that users will be able to download multimedia content - as well as things like game demos and add-ons - through retail systems on the Xbox Live service, and Microsoft is thought to see Xbox 360 as central to its ambitions in the digital video and audio space - where competitor Apple has a strong first-mover advantage thanks to the success of iPod and the iTunes Music Store."