VKontakte founder Pavel Durov clashed with authorities for providing forum for activists to protest against Putin regime

Russia's leading online social network was banned briefly on Friday in a move dismissed as a "mistake" but which follows intensifying official pressure on the company as President Vladimir Putin consolidates his power.

VKontakte, Europe's largest homegrown social network with 210 million registered users, was put overnight on a "blacklist" of sites barred from distributing content inside Russia. Hours later, the ban was lifted.

The company's founder, Pavel Durov, has clashed with the authorities in the past for providing a forum for opposition activists to organise protests against Putin.

"This happened by mistake," said Vladimir Pikov, a spokesman for Roskomnadzor, the state communications regulator.

"In this case, someone checked a box against the address of the social network. The site has been removed from the list and restrictions on access to it have been lifted."

Durov, 28, founded VKontakte in his native St Petersburg in 2006 and his success in building the network – which attracts 47 million users daily – has drawn comparisons with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

Durov refused to comply with an order by the Federal Security Service, a successor to the Soviet-era KGB, to close groups used by activists to organise protests over the December 2011 parliamentary election, which handed victory to Putin's ruling United Russia party.

Last month, he was implicated in a traffic incident in the city of St Petersburg in which a policeman was slightly injured.

Durov has denied being involved in the accident but, instead of agreeing to testify as a witness, he left the country, say sources close to him. He has not been seen in public or posted on his VKontakte page since 24 April.

The executive's difficulties coincided with a change of ownership at the company, in which a private equity fund with Kremlin connections bought a 48% stake from the founding partners who backed Durov.

The day before the deal closed on 17 April, VK's office and Durov's home were searched by investigators.

The buyer, United Capital Partners, controls assets worth some $3.5bn (£3bn) and is run by financier Ilya Sherbovich, who sits on the board of three large state firms including Rosneft, the oil firm run by Putin's former chief of staff, Igor Sechin.

"It's a meticulous and methodical effort to bring the network under the control of the Kremlin," science fiction writer and blogger Dmitry Glukhovsky, creator of the Metro 2033 video game, told Reuters this week of the pressure on VK.

"It's too important a resource to stand independently from the 'siloviki'," he added, referring to Putin's allies that share the Russian leader's security-service background and are now in the political ascendant.

Sherbovich, in an interview, has denied fronting for the Kremlin and said he wanted Durov to stay on as chief executive of VKontakte.

A source close to the company said it held a board meeting in Switzerland this week that was attended by Durov.

Durov owns 12% of VK, but under a shareholder pact he also votes on behalf of the 40% holding owned by Mail.ru, the London-listed internet group backed by Uzbek-born tycoon Alisher Usmanov, Russia's richest man.

No comment was available from representatives for VK, United Capital Partners or Usmanov.

At issue, say internet watchers, is control over user-generated content frowned on by the authorities. Friday's ban, despite being quickly lifted, could be a shot across VKontakte's bows to ensure it tightens its monitoring.

The network has also been accused by Russia's ombudsman for children's rights of hosting images of child abuse. At least one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects had a page on VKontakte.

After Putin rose to power in 2000, the Kremlin reined in Russia's print and broadcast media, encouraging trusted business "oligarchs" to buy strategic stakes. A similar scenario, in which loyal investors ensure internet content is screened, may now be unfolding, say some commentators.

"All big media have been brought under the control of the Kremlin, and VK is the last medium that is free," journalist Nickolay Kononov, author of biography The Durov Code, said in a recent interview.

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Al-Qaida's slick and sinister magazine for jihadis, Inspire, suggests using a vehicle to mow down a target – which is apparently what happened in Woolwich

In the murky world of terrorism-watchers, the first port of call is often an unusual magazine called Inspire, a "self-help manual" for jihadis that is crammed full of dangerous advice, attractively presented.

So it comes as no surprise, in the wake of the Woolwich killing of an off-duty soldier, that the online publication's recommendations have included the use of a vehicle to mow down a target – apparently what happened outside the Royal Artillery barracks on Wednesday.

This 21st-century version of The Anarchists' Cookbook has a habit of turning up in unpleasant circumstances. In the wake of the Boston bombings in April, FBI investigators found that the explosive pressure cooker devices made by Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were strikingly similar to a "recipe" in the first issue of Inspire, memorably entitled "How to build a bomb in your Mom's kitchen."

Its latest issue, number 10, proclaims on the home page: "Crusaders, you will never enjoy tranquility. Your nations will never enjoy security as long as we have pulsing veins and pumping hearts. We are coming by the will of Allah!"

In the "open-source jihad" section – "a resource manual for those who loathe the tyrants" – it offers useful practical tips: "Following simple instructions you can carry out a lethal ambush. There is no retaliation to face. Just place and vanish." (The illustration shows a masked man with a spike device to puncture car tyres.)

Inspire's USP is its chirpy, colloquial English style, apparently courtesy of its founder, Anwar al-Awlaki, an extremist American-Yemeni preacher who was raised in New Mexico but met his end, controversially, in a drone strike in September 2011. By coincidence, the US government formally admitted for the first time on Wednesday that it had killed him, even though he was a citizen who had never been charged with a crime.

Al-Qaida's famously slick and sinister mag first appeared in 2010 when the focus of the global "war on terror" was shifting from the Afghan-Pakistan border to faraway Yemen – the poorest country in the Arab world and a magnet for wannabe jihadis after their defeat in neighbouring Saudi Arabia. Appearing in English rather than Arabic – a difficult language even for non-native speakers who are Muslims – made it widely accessible. There is also an Urdu version.

Dubbed "the Vanity Fair of terrorism", Inspire features prominently in professional literature on the "self-radicalisation" of extremists who find their way to al-Qaida or like-minded groups via computer screens in their bedrooms, rather than fighting kuffar ("infidels") in Afghanistan or Iraq. But the magazine has offered guidance to novices on what to expect at jihadist training camps and the rules recruits have to live by.

In addition to advice on bomb-making, encryption, manufacturing poisons or conducting surveillance, Inspire offers Quranic commentary and crude al-Qaida propaganda. Possession of it has led to prosecutions in the UK and Australia. But it has also been targeted by anonymous hackers seeking to curtail its influence: a suitable case, if ever there was one, for government cyber-warfare treatment.

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Theguardian.com will provide one destination for UK, mobile, US and Australian sites as monthly digital browsers hits 80m

The Guardian is to launch a new global web presence, theguardian.com, in recognition of the newspaper's increasingly international digital appeal.

The move will streamline access to Guardian content – amalgamating the main entry point Guardian.co.uk, mobile site m.guardian.co.uk, US homepage guardiannews.com and the soon-to-launch Australian digital edition – into one core web destination.

In the last five years, the number of monthly Guardian digital browsers has grown from 20 million to more than 80 million, with much of that growth coming from international markets.

"Every month, our online content is accessed from almost every country around the world," said Tanya Cordrey, chief digital officer at Guardian News & Media, in a blog post called Going global on our digitaljourney. "In fact, UK users now represent just a third of our total audience."

The home of the newspaper's content has been guardian.co.uk, which is the only non-"dot com" domain suffix in the top 10 Google News list of digital news outlets.

"This may be a small URL change, but it marks a big step for the Guardian and reflects our evolution from a much-respected national print newspaper based only in the UK … to a leading global news and media brand … and an ever-growing worldwide audience accessing Guardian journalism every minute of every day," said Cordrey.

Cordrey added that the move to theguardian.com will make for a simplified user experience, but will also be more appealing to major advertisers in international markets, who are perhaps not drawn to the idea of running campaigns on a UK-specific website, despite the reality of the Guardian's global digital readership.

The move, which will take place later this year, will involve the transition of millions of URLs attached to the Guardian's websites and about 15 years of archived content.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@guardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.

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Breakfast by Morecambe and Wise, clothes by Abercrombie & Fitch and a sob story from the mayor of Toronto

This week's Viral Video Chart is guaranteed to give you a good cry – but we can offer you tears of laughter, as well as tears of sadness. We defy you to watch the last days of Zach Sobiech without grabbing a box of tissues. Zach's inspirational story - and his song, Clouds – have taken the internet by storm.

The comedy world mourned a great writer last week with the death of Eddie Braben, who wrote sketches for Morecambe and Wise. We celebrate his work with one of the funniest Morecambe and Wise sketches ever - Breakfast. Or do you have another favourite?

There is more laughter in store as two hapless gaming fans join Burnie Burns and his crew of scientists in Immersion! Gavin and Michael are thrown behind the wheel to figure out if a video game car can beat its real life equivalent with a professional race car driver. Pass the sick bag …

If that's not exciting enough for you, we join surfers at Teahupoo in Tahititi as they tackle the heaviest wave in the world and there's a surf-eit of liquid chocolate in our clip from a chocolate factory in Melbourne, Australia. How do they do that?

Chocolate is great for cheering people up – and our sad cats seem as if they need a Kit Kat or two to buck them up. Jimmy Kimmel often has a smile on his face – and he's up to mischief with his spoof interview of Toronto mayor Rob Ford who is accused of taking drugs.

Finally, Eurovision may have reduced you to tears of laughter – or tears of boredom – but we leave you with a smile on your face as you watch our misheard lyrics clip. Sadly it doesn't improve the quality of the songs!

Guardian Viral Video Chart. Compiled by Unruly Media and emoted by Janette

1. My Last Days: Meet Zach Sobiech
Brave lad's legacy

2. Classic Comedy Morecambe and Wise
Makes today's comics look like toast

3. Surfing the Heaviest Wave in the World - Teahupoo
Pipe dreams

4. Abercrombie & Fitch Gets a Brand Readjustment #FitchTheHomeless
A dressing down

5. Sad Cat Diary
Paws for thought

6. Jimmy Kimmel Interviews Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
Chain reaction

7. Eurovision 2013 Misheard lyrics
Possibly better than the real lyrics

8. Wait for it...
Chocolate heaven

9. Immersion: Simulation Racer
This is sick

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 23 May 2013. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

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Report finds evidence of a high correlation between exposure to violent and sadistic images and behaviour

Children are exposed to violent and sadistic imagery which risks distorting their attitudes towards relationships and sex, according to the children's commissioner for England.

A report released on Thursday by the commissioner's office found that children who watch pornography are more likely to develop sexually risky behaviour and become sexually active at a younger age.

It called for urgent action to "develop children's resilience to pornography" after discovering that a significant number have access to sexually explicit images. It also called on the Department for Education to ensure all schools delivered effective relationship and sex education, including how to use the internet safely.

"We are living at a time when violent and sadistic imagery is readily available to very young children … even if they do not go searching for it, their friends may show it to them or they may stumble on it while using the internet," said the commissioner, Maggie Atkinson.

"For years we have applied age restrictions to films at the cinema but now we are permitting access to far more troubling imagery via the internet. It is a risky experiment to allow a generation of young people to be raised on a diet of pornography."

The report, based on a review of academic research, also found that pornography could influence children's sexual attitudes, foster a negative attitude towards relationships and lead them to engage in risky behaviours such as unprotected anal sex, sex at a younger age and the use of alcohol and drugs during sex.

Sue Berelowitz, the deputy children's commissioner, said compulsory education was the only way to ensure children were guarded "against the possible impact of pornography on them and their relationships". She said: "As part of our inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children in gangs and groups we have seen that young perpetrators of sexual abuse describe their activity as 'like having been in a porn film'. This report provides the evidence to support there being a high correlation between exposure to pornography and it influencing children's behaviour and attitudes."

Miranda Horvath, senior lecturer at Middlesex University, which led the review of academic evidence, said: "When pornography is discussed, it is often between groups of people with polarised moral views on the subject. Rather than adopting a particular ideological stance, this report uses evidence-based research to draw its conclusions and further the debate."

The report's recommendations echo calls made by the End Violence Against Women coalition to make sex and relationships education compulsory in secondary schools. A recent survey by the National Association of Head Teachers found many parents believe schools should teach about the dangers of pornography as soon as children are old enough to use the internet.

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'Abby Clancy poses in nothing but heels' story provides joint highest website traffic day for the Sun

The Boston marathon bombing on 16 April provided Mail Online with its biggest ever digital day, attracting more than 9.5 million unique users.

However, the bombing proved the 12th and 16th most popular web days in April for the Independent and Mirror websites respectively – while the Sun website network's joint highest traffic day last month coincided with a story headlined "Abby Clancy poses in nothing but heels".

Coverage of the terrorist attack on 16 April underlined Mail Online's seemingly inexorable global growth, particularly in North America, with just 39.8% of the 9,558,256 global unique browsers that day coming from the UK.

This was the lowest proportion of UK visitors in any day in April, according to the Mail Online's officially audited Audit Bureau of Circulations certificate published on Thursday.

A week later, Dzokhar Tsarnaev being charged with using a weapon of mass destruction in relation to the Boston marathon bombing provided Mail Online with its second biggest day on record, with 9,226,255 daily unique browsers.

While total digital records were being broken this was not the case on mobile devices – Mail Online's iPhone or Android apps barely registered an uplift in average usage on either of the Boston bombing news days.

April also highlighted the biggest online traffic drivers for the Sun, the biggest selling UK newspaper in print, which has failed to capture an equivalent digital audience.

The Sun's biggest online story in April was "Michelle Keegan in topless pic riddle", which included a picture of breasts posted on her Instagram page, on 5 April, and "Abby Clancy poses in nothing but heels" five days later.

The two days were almost neck-and-neck in terms of traffic, with Keegan narrowly shading it, at just over 2 million daily browsers. The Sun's daily average is just under 1.7 million.

Mirror Group Digital's barnstorming April, with total web traffic surging 30% month on month, was driven by a range of factors.

While the Boston bombing failed to register as a major traffic day, ranking 16th for the month as a whole, the charging of Tsarnaev proved the biggest traffic driver with 2,067,955 daily users across all devices.

It was also its biggest day of mobile browsers across Mirror Group Digital's website network, which includes Mirror.co.uk, 3am.co.uk and MirrorFootball.co.uk.

However, the other major events that fuelled Mirror Group Digital's traffic growth was an exclusive video from inside North Korea, which provided its second biggest day in April with 1,912,588 daily browsers.

The next biggest day of traffic was related to the Grand National, at about 1.6 million, while Margaret Thatcher's death drew 1.55 million.

The Boston bombing also provided the biggest traffic day in April for Telegraph.co.uk and guardian.co.uk (5.8 million and 4.55 million respectively). For Independent.co.uk, it only ranked 16th in April, with Thatcher's death coverage on 8 April the biggest at 1.55 million.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@guardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook

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Breaking news is no longer the preserve of established broadcasters, thanks to the camera phone and social media

A man covered in the blood of his recent victim, still holding the weapons, explains to a passer-by with a camera phone the motives for his appalling attack. Peppered with political messages and carrying a clumsy apology to "women who had to see that", the bloodied man is not enraged that his macabre and twisted actions have been filmed, he is gratified. This is a 21st century terrorist "press" conference, conducted on a pavement in Woolwich in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon.

The video obtained by ITV News, but evidently not actually shot by them, is uploaded and disseminated to the globe, through YouTube, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, on emailed links, on reddit, Tumblr. Meanwhile on Twitter another eyewitness, rapper "Boya Dee", whose timeline of mundane tweets previously focused on cheesy jokes, Arsenal and the appeal of Mila Kunis, was able to give a firsthand, dramatic and colloquial account of what he saw. It did not need a reporter or policeman to relay what he witnessed: "The two black bredas run this white guy over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!"

Attacks by extremists which include filmed beheadings and executions are nothing new. Islamic extreme terror groups in the Middle East and Chechnya have deployed the tactic of filming and disseminating shocking footage for well over a decade. Increasingly it is a tactic also seen in the narcotic wars of Mexico, with a series of gruesome and public murders, beheadings and disembowellings of those seeking to interfere with the narco trade. It is distressingly easy to find all of these images online.

The speed of uploading images and video, the quality and length of video on camera phones, the ability to stream live events from a phone without a battery of attendant satellite trucks, and the frictionless sharing of all material through social recommendation transform our expectation and experience of news. We still know very little about the planning and motivation for the attacks in Woolwich, but we know the tools of recording and dissemination are leading us into a world of streamed events and atrocity which will find us, unfiltered, through the phones in our pockets.

What this means in a commercial, political and cultural realm is unclear. News organisations, such as the Irish start-up Storyful, focus on the verification of non-mainstream footage – a kind of 21st century Associated Press. The major platforms for dissemination; YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, have tried hard to hold the line that they are neutral networks, but as their usage figures overtake those of mainstream media they too are forced to respond to difficult editorial and ethical problems thrown out by this hyper connectivity. Privately all organisations acknowledge that as the default news providers for the world, there has to be attention paid to both verification and filtering systems. Two months ago, Facebook removed gruesome footage of a beheading from its pages. It said it would be "re-evaluating" its content policy.

Writing recently in the New Republic, legal scholar and columnist Jeffrey Rosen described semi-confidential meetings in Silicon Valley of a group he calls "the Deciders", effectively the legal and policy heads of social networks, who are trying to hash out a standard of free speech which can be applied to the open web. Rosen observes that the work in screening stretches to building complex algorithms, but that ultimately the broader interpretation of expression in accordance with US standards of free speech is likely to prevail. The challenges, though, of extreme acts of graphic terror are as much the problem now of these technology companies as they used to be of news and picture editors.

The language of protest and shock have adapted themselves more quickly to the new technology platforms than any filtering mechanism or official media can keep up with. Whether it is the relatively benign topless ambushes of the Femen group of feminists, the handmade signs of Occupy Wall Street, or the hacking of Twitter accounts of the Syrian Electronic Army, protest can aggregate an international audience before the news anchor has brushed her hair. Terror has adopted the same path as we witnessed with the Boston bombings and now the butchering of a man in broad daylight on a south London street.

The impact of events is as much in direct proportion to our ability to witness them vividly and instantaneously, with the filter of time and geography removed. When a fertiliser factory in the small town of West, Texas explodes, our understanding of the impact is delivered through an amateur camera phone video which is blown out of the owner's hand. Our understanding of the horror of the Boston marathon attack is relayed by a photo of a pale runner, his lower legs jagged and incomplete, being wheeled to an ambulance. It reaches the world before he reaches the operating theatre.

When American Airlines flight 11, crashed into the World Trade Centre on September 11 2001, the precise moment of impact was captured by three people with video cameras: an artist in Brooklyn who was filming the Manhattan skyline for an installation project; a tourist who did not realise he had captured the first collision in the corner of a frame until months later; and a documentary maker filming firefighters.

Only a dozen years ago, the largest act of instantaneous terror taking place in the world's most photographed city, was captured on video by three people. Now, even the most mundane setting can yield the most potent and graphic images, filmed in real time, and shot to the world in a second. The future of how those images are received and filtered relies as much on the ability of networks to decide and implement their own rules and norms as on any top down filtering or editing process.

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Following Woolwich attack, Labour peers Lord West and Lord Reid call for Nick Clegg to revive 'snooper's charter' bill

Political pressure is mounting to revive the communications data bill in the wake of the Woolwich attack, with Labour peers Lord West and Lord Reid leading calls for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to drop their opposition to the legislation. West said Clegg was putting the country at risk.

Clegg hailed a major political victory when he prevented the draft bill being allowed into the Queen's speech. The home secretary, Theresa May, had hoped she had changed the bill sufficiently from its original format to win the deputy prime minister's support, and even when the bill did not feature in the Queen's speech, she refused to accept that it had been killed off.

Reid, the former Labour home secretary, said such measures were essential to combating terrorism, and warned it could otherwise take "some huge tragedy" to show the decision was wrong.

Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat and a former government reviewer of counter-terrorism, reiterated his call for the bill to be revived.

He said on BBC's Newsnight on Wednesday: "We have to learn proportionate lessons from what has occurred. We mustn't rush to judgment. But we must ensure that the police and the security services have for the future the tools they need that will enable them to prevent this kind of attack taking place.

"I hope that this will give the government pause for thought about their abandonment, for example, of the communications data bill, and possibly pause for thought about converting control orders into what are now called TPIMs, with a diluted set of powers."

Lord West, a former first sea lord and security minister under Gordon Brown, said: "The communications data bill is absolutely crucial. We may find the information we need on these mobiles is not there. It was meant to be in the Queen's speech. David Cameron and the home secretary both quite rightly wanted it, but the deputy prime minister said no and that is putting the country at risk.

"They need to look again at the bill, which has a lot of changes to stop it being a snoopers' charter. This ability is something that exists now, and will disappear. I have no doubt that if it goes we will be more at risk, so the deputy prime minister is, I believe, putting the country at risk."

The former Labour home secretary Jack Straw called for the intelligence and security committee to inquire into whether the communications bill was needed in light of the attack.

He said: "We need to know whether it would have made any difference. I don't know. I don't think John Reid knows. You have got to make sure that the proposals are proportionate".

He said the murder was an act of "stone-age savagery".

Asked whether the government may respond to the Woolwich killing by resurrecting the communications data bill, the faith and communities minister, Baroness Warsi, told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "I'm sure people will analyse how things could be done better and I'm sure people will have a lessons-learnt exercise.

"But I think the wrong way to make legislation is on the back of a tragedy like this. It isn't the moment to start looking at the kind of legislation we should or should not have. I'm sure at some point it will play into the debate."

There was no immediate response from the Liberal Democrats, but Clegg's officials had previously said they were willing to look at some residual changes to make sure all mobiles were linked to IP addresses. It was not clear whether this required primary legislation.

Currently, police can identify who has made a telephone call or sent an SMS text message, and when and where. However, they cannot do the same for email, internet telephony, instant messaging or other internet-based services because communications service providers don't retain all of the relevant data.

Notes attached to the Queen's speech hinted that the security services still had ambitions to extend the willingness of the Liberal Democrats to link mobiles to internet providers. The notes said: "When communicating over the internet, people are allocated an IP address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people.

"In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them."

The government said it was looking at ways of addressing the issue with service providers and that this may involve new legislation.

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Microsoft focused on TV over games as it unveiled its new generation console – and it could threaten rival platforms

Xbox One's voice and gesture-activated TV wizardry is unlikely to leave BSkyB worried about its future. But with big name games and on-demand content Microsoft is aiming to maintain Xbox's appeal in the face of consumers spending increasing amounts of time on their tablets and smartphones.

Microsoft has not given its Xbox console a major revamp since 2005; in the interim there has been a digital revolution which is having an increasingly big influence on traditional living room entertainment.

The surge of smartphone and tablet usage has given rise to the "second screen" phenomenon – effectively users looking at other content or interacting with social media such as Twitter and Facebook while watching TV – and the promise of internet-enabled smart televisions meant Xbox One had to be more than just a games console to compete.

Xbox One will allow users to flick instantly between game play and watching TV, or activities such as browsing the internet or Skyping, as well as adding interactivity to programmes, such as fantasy football elements to live NFL matches.

"The key innovation is the overlay with live TV," says Piers Harding-Rolls, games analyst at research firm IHS. "It is all about maintaining Xbox's relevance and keeping it at the centre of entertainment by offering lots of games, content and channels. In some ways it is a defensive perimeter because Microsoft, and Sony, need to stop encroachment in the TV entertainment space."

He points to "ecosystem companies" such as Google, Apple and Amazon which offer products and content across a prolific range of devices, all of which could eventually damage Xbox's core gaming business by taking a growing slice of people's spend home entertainment time.

According to data from the BBC in March 8 million requests for TV shows on the iPlayer video catchup service came from people using games consoles, with pretty much zero growth in usage in the past year.

This compares with 81 million programme requests via mobiles and tablets in March, with portable devices growing rapidly from 15% to 30% of all iPlayer usage in the last year.

IHS estimates there were 47m smartphones and 11m tablets in the UK at the end of last year, compared with 8.2m Xbox 360s.

"Smartphones and tablets are increasingly used for viewing – they are good for catchup content and video delivery. All this eats into [Xbox] play time and usage time on TV," said Harding-Rolls.

While Xbox is aiming to be the gateway point for access to TV, analysts do not consider it to be a threat to broadcasters such as BSkyB.

Microsoft may have announced a big budget programming initiative with Steven Spielberg's TV series based on the Halo game, but it is considered to be more of a PR stunt to appeal to gamers than the first salvo in the battle to become a major TV content producer and rights owner.

"What Microsoft is doing there around creating exclusive interactive content is very interesting and certainly a draw for consumers," says IHS TV analyst Richard Broughton. "Unless Microsoft decides to take a big step and buys exclusive rights, which at this stage would be a risky bet and very territory-specific, it will be playing an aggregation role."

In the UK the Xbox Live service has content from more than 20 content providers including Sky, the BBC's iPlayer, LoveFilm, music video service Vevo and Channel 4's 4oD.

By beefing up the XBox Microsoft is also aiming to head off the growing threat of smart TV manufacturers like Samsung aiming to be the gateway for internet and linear content, as well as the threat of cheap rivals such as Android-based TV-meets-gaming console Ouya.

Analysts concur that for all Microsoft's talk of a making the Xbox One an "all-in-one" entertainment device it still boils down to one thing: games.

With a rumoured price of $400 (£265) in the US, and online games and technology store Zavvi in the UK offering a pre-order price of £400, the Xbox One is considered too pricey to appeal to a mass audience beyond its gaming heartland.

"At the price they are asking the TV elements are not enough to convince a mass audience to buy into it," said Harding-Rolls. "It all comes down to high-end games – smartphones and tablets can't replicate them, they are its strongest selling point."

Microsoft is expected to make major announcements about its games lineup at the E3 trade show in the coming weeks.

"Xbox has gone for a sophisticated approach – it won't be bringing out another Xbox for maybe 10 years and it has to be prepared," says Heloise Thomson, a digital analyst at Enders. "It is about how they can make money subsequently, from selling content through the Xbox Live service and building usage. It will come down to games."

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Microsoft focused on TV over games as it unveiled its new generation console – and it could threaten rival platforms

Xbox One's voice and gesture-activated TV wizardry is unlikely to leave BSkyB worried about its future. But with big name games and on-demand content Microsoft is aiming to maintain Xbox's appeal in the face of consumers spending increasing amounts of time on their tablets and smartphones.

Microsoft has not given its Xbox console a major revamp since 2005; in the interim there has been a digital revolution which is having an increasingly big influence on traditional living room entertainment.

The surge of smartphone and tablet usage has given rise to the "second screen" phenomenon – effectively users looking at other content or interacting with social media such as Twitter and Facebook while watching TV – and the promise of internet-enabled smart televisions meant Xbox One had to be more than just a games console to compete.

Xbox One will allow users to flick instantly between game play and watching TV, or activities such as browsing the internet or Skyping, as well as adding interactivity to programmes, such as fantasy football elements to live NFL matches.

"The key innovation is the overlay with live TV," says Piers Harding-Rolls, games analyst at research firm IHS. "It is all about maintaining Xbox's relevance and keeping it at the centre of entertainment by offering lots of games, content and channels. In some ways it is a defensive perimeter because Microsoft, and Sony, need to stop encroachment in the TV entertainment space."

He points to "ecosystem companies" such as Google, Apple and Amazon which offer products and content across a prolific range of devices, all of which could eventually damage Xbox's core gaming business by taking a growing slice of people's spend home entertainment time.

According to data from the BBC in March 8 million requests for TV shows on the iPlayer video catchup service came from people using games consoles, with pretty much zero growth in usage in the past year.

This compares with 81 million programme requests via mobiles and tablets in March, with portable devices growing rapidly from 15% to 30% of all iPlayer usage in the last year.

IHS estimates there were 47m smartphones and 11m tablets in the UK at the end of last year, compared with 8.2m Xbox 360s.

"Smartphones and tablets are increasingly used for viewing – they are good for catchup content and video delivery. All this eats into [Xbox] play time and usage time on TV," said Harding-Rolls.

While Xbox is aiming to be the gateway point for access to TV, analysts do not consider it to be a threat to broadcasters such as BSkyB.

Microsoft may have announced a big budget programming initiative with Steven Spielberg's TV series based on the Halo game, but it is considered to be more of a PR stunt to appeal to gamers than the first salvo in the battle to become a major TV content producer and rights owner.

"What Microsoft is doing there around creating exclusive interactive content is very interesting and certainly a draw for consumers," says IHS TV analyst Richard Broughton. "Unless Microsoft decides to take a big step and buys exclusive rights, which at this stage would be a risky bet and very territory-specific, it will be playing an aggregation role."

In the UK the Xbox Live service has content from more than 20 content providers including Sky, the BBC's iPlayer, LoveFilm, music video service Vevo and Channel 4's 4oD.

By beefing up the XBox Microsoft is also aiming to head off the growing threat of smart TV manufacturers like Samsung aiming to be the gateway for internet and linear content, as well as the threat of cheap rivals such as Android-based TV-meets-gaming console Ouya.

Analysts concur that for all Microsoft's talk of a making the Xbox One an "all-in-one" entertainment device it still boils down to one thing: games.

With a rumoured price of $400 (£265) in the US, and online games and technology store Zavvi in the UK offering a pre-order price of £400, the Xbox One is considered too pricey to appeal to a mass audience beyond its gaming heartland.

"At the price they are asking the TV elements are not enough to convince a mass audience to buy into it," said Harding-Rolls. "It all comes down to high-end games – smartphones and tablets can't replicate them, they are its strongest selling point."

Microsoft is expected to make major announcements about its games lineup at the E3 trade show in the coming weeks.

"Xbox has gone for a sophisticated approach – it won't be bringing out another Xbox for maybe 10 years and it has to be prepared," says Heloise Thomson, a digital analyst at Enders. "It is about how they can make money subsequently, from selling content through the Xbox Live service and building usage. It will come down to games."

1. Xbox One: should TV broadcasters be afraid?
2. Xbox One: five key points you need to know
3. Xbox 720: Microsoft banking on entertainment services in the next generation