Microsoft reached has reached an agreement with a company headed by Peter Safran, the former president of Brillstein-Grey Management, to bring digital entertainment to the Xbox Live system. Safran is to allegedly produce original shows for distribution on Xbox Live, NYT reports.

“The Xbox is unique. It operates at a level outside of what we generally consider Web entertainment,” Mr. Safran said to the New York Times in an interview last week.

The news source reports that Safran's first run of programming will allegedly be scripted ventures that run under 10 minutes and span a variety of genres that appeal primarily to men aged 14 to 34, who are considered to be the Xbox 360's primary audience. The genres will include comedy and horror.

As the NPD Group released its latest data earlier this month about the gaming console sales, the Xbox 360’s situation does not look very good. It looks like Microsoft is looking for new incentives for its current customers and potential buyers.

Is Microsoft’s gaming console in trouble? The thing that surprises us the most is that Sony managed to outsell Microsoft’s Xbox for the second consecutive month, and if we take into consideration Microsoft’s own estimations that a fresh supply of consoles is to be expected in April, we’ll just have to wait and see how Sony does then. It remains to be seen if these figures reflect Sony’s PS3 upward trend or just a circumstantial position on the market.

Maybe Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was beaten in hardware sales, but in terms of games sales, the Xbox 360 titles are still best sellers as the first places in the Top 10 were achieved by Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare with 296,000 units and Devil May Cry 4 with 295,200 units.