Starz Digital Media announced today a sneak preview of its upcoming Facebook social game, Spartacus: Vengeance The Game, launching on January 27. Viewers can watch a sneak preview video teaser of the new series. Doing this allows them to “like” the game and sign up to be invited to play once the game launches. The Spartacus: Vengeance TV series will first air on January 27 at 10 p.m. EST.

The game is a sequel of sorts to the existing Facebook game Spartacus: The Game that was launched in January 2011. The big difference between the two is that Spartacus: Vengeance The Game takes players outside of the arena.

“We are thrilled to present a teaser video of Spartacus: Vengeance The Game on Facebook in advance of the official game launch and the highly anticipated second season,” Mara Winokur, senior vice president, digital media, business development and strategy, Starz Media and lead executive for Starz Digital Media, said. “The teaser video gives users a good overview of the new Spartacus: Vengeance The Game, which takes on a greater level of sophistication by adding new elements such as improved visuals, multi-fighter battles, a more robust game economy, advanced game progressions, and more varied strategic options.”

As with the original game, Starz is partnering with Large Animal Games and their proprietary Toga application platform to develop the game. Toga is a full-featured social game infrastructure which dramatically reduces the time, cost and resource needs of social and mobile game developers. The platform also allows for cross-platform support for Facebook, Google+, iOS and Android.

The game will take the player, a recently escaped slave, outside of the arena to lead a band of warriors. Throughout the journey, the player will travel from Capua to Vesuvius, performing the same feats as Spartacus’ own warriors. The game is more than just action though as it tasks players to strategically take over Roman territories by equipping the army correctly and acquiring fighters. The player will also interact with characters from the television series.

Beginning January 20, Starz will sample the first full episode of Spartacus: Vengeances to fans on their facebook page and on-demand subscribers at various providers.

Starz called off talks in the contract renewal process, leaving Netflix without one of its largest providers of newer content. This collapse in negotiations takes away Netflix’s ability to offer newer movies from Walt Disney Co. and Sony, both of which have their distribution controlled by Starz.

According to the Wall Street Journal, an inside source claims that Starz wanted Netflix to pay them 10 times the licensing fee that Netflix paid them in 2008. Netflix offered the premium TV network $300 million plus a year to renew the agreement, but Starz declined.

What do you plan to do to meet your streaming video needs, now that Netflix has changed their prices and lost Starz? Let us know in the comments.

Apparently, what Starz wanted was a tiered pricing system which would have Netflix customers pay more than the baseline $7.99 streaming price in order to access additional content from Starz. No dice, said Netflix.

Here’s what Starz said about the failed negotiations in a release –

Starz Entertainment has ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix. When the agreement expires on February 28, 2012, Starz will cease to distribute its content on the Netflix streaming platform. This decision is a result of our strategy to protect the premium nature of our brand by preserving the appropriate pricing and packaging of our exclusive and highly valuable content. With our current studio rights and growing original programming presence, the network is in an excellent position to evaluate new opportunities and expand its overall business.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings talked to Business Insider about the deal, saying that he “regrets their decision to let out agreement lapse.”

He went on to say that Starz doesn’t account for that much of Netflix’s content anymore –

Because we’ve licensed so much other great content, Starz content is now down to about 8% of domestic Netflix subscribers’ viewing. As we add a huge more content in Q4, we expect Starz content to naturally drift down to 5-6% of domestic viewing in Q1. We are confident we can take the money we had earmarked for Starz renewal next year, and spend it with other content providers to maintain or even improve the Netflix experience.

Shares of Netflix fell 10% Thursday night before closing.

The price change that went into effect on Sept. 1st, the same day of the collapse of the Starz deal, splits up the streaming service and DVD-delivery service into two different plans, both costing $7.99. That’s a total of $15.98 if you want to keep both plans. Before, streaming was $7.99 but the 1-DVD-at-a-time service was only a $2 add-on to that package, making it $9.99 total.

This announcement back in July didn’t go over too well, as the internet community threw a collective fit.

So, the most basic description of the day’s events is as follows: Netflix upped their prices and lost content at the same time. That’s a bummer, right?

The Reed Hastings argument, basically, is that the loss of Starz isn’t going to hurt Netflix at all. If Starz only accounts for 8% of the content that subscribers are watching on a regular basis, it’s true that Netflix isn’t going to be absolutely crippled by this loss. That statement becomes even more compelling if his projections are correct and Starz ends up accounting for only 5-6% of viewed content in Q1 2012.

But you have to consider what Netflix loses when it loses Starz: newer releases – Disney and Sony stuff. This is not the kind of stuff that resides in the outer regions of the library or stuff that will collect dust in a queue for months – this is popular stuff that people want to watch.

And even if Starz didn’t provide the most premium content, subscribers may have a legitimate reason to be perturbed. Isn’t any loss of content, especially 8% of the content watched, unacceptable?

Hastings said that they will take the $300 that they were going to give to Starz and use it to snatch up different content. But do subscribers want new content to replace lost content? Or do they want new content to add the all the existing content. I think I’ll bank on the latter.

It is important to remember through all of this, that the price you pay for your Netflix subscription doesn’t have to increase. If you choose to go streaming only, your monthly fee will actually go down. It’s only if you really want the physical DVDs that you’ll see a real price hike.

But on a day where many existing Netflix users feel forced into a streaming-only decision, Netflix announces that a lot of important streaming content (all the Starz play stuff) will be going away.

How do you feel about Netflix losing it’s deal with Starz? Do you think that it will have a significant negative effect on the company? Let us know in the comments.

The Beta version of the game will launch on January 6 to the first 10,000 “Spartacus” fans who register on Facebook.

A full launch of the “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” game is set for January 20, before the broadcast of the series on January 21.

Starz Digital Media has partnered with social media gaming publisher 6waves to launch the “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” social game.

"Given its powerful characters and larger-than-life storylines, few television properties have as much potential for innovative social game play as does ‘Spartacus,’" said Marc DeBevoise, senior vice president, digital media, business development and strategy for Starz Media.

"We are excited to make our social media gaming debut and be one of the early networks to bring a branded TV property to the social gaming universe." 

The Beta version of the game will launch on January 6 to the first 10,000 “Spartacus” fans who register on Facebook.

A full launch of the “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” game is set for January 20, before the broadcast of the series on January 21.

Starz Digital Media has partnered with social media gaming publisher 6waves to launch the “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” social game.

"Given its powerful characters and larger-than-life storylines, few television properties have as much potential for innovative social game play as does ‘Spartacus,’" said Marc DeBevoise, senior vice president, digital media, business development and strategy for Starz Media.

"We are excited to make our social media gaming debut and be one of the early networks to bring a branded TV property to the social gaming universe." 

The Beta version of the game will launch on January 6 to the first 10,000 “Spartacus” fans who register on Facebook.

A full launch of the “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” game is set for January 20, before the broadcast of the series on January 21.

Starz Digital Media has partnered with social media gaming publisher 6waves to launch the “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” social game.

"Given its powerful characters and larger-than-life storylines, few television properties have as much potential for innovative social game play as does ‘Spartacus,’" said Marc DeBevoise, senior vice president, digital media, business development and strategy for Starz Media.

"We are excited to make our social media gaming debut and be one of the early networks to bring a branded TV property to the social gaming universe." 

- Performing searches of movies, TV series, cast members, and directors

– Retrieving catalog titles, including details about the title such as name, box art, director, cast, etc.

– Determining the subscriber’s relationship to a specific title, e.g, in queue, saved, available on DVD, etc.

– Managing and displaying queues for users

– Providing conveniences such as auto-completion of partial search terms typed by a user.

– Displaying a user’s ratings and reviews.

– Including functional Add and Play buttons in your web application.

Some have noted that developers are very likely to offer apps for the iPhone and Google Phone utilizing the Netflix API, letting users easily manipulate their queues while on the go. Netflix shares an example for potential use of the API, using the catalog/title resource to search through the catalog and display results within an application. They offered the following image to highlight this:

In other Netflix-related news, the company signed a deal with premium channel Starz in which it will contribute 2,500 movies, television shows and concerts to watch online through Netflix. This is pretty huge for the online viewing feature of Netflix, because so far its biggest knock has been the size of the catalog, particularly when compared with the entire DVD catalog of the company.

It also further highlights the online video revolution, and the potential for set-top boxes to move further into the norm. Like I said yesterday, we’re seeing strides in this department, nearly every day. This is only the latest example. The API release will only contribute to the integration of on demand online video when combined with Netflix’s streaming catalog which is provided to users via a separate queue.

Access to Starz’s movie service will be included with Netflix member’s current monthly subscription fee. Netflix members who have unlimited subscription plans, will have full and unlimited access to 2,500 movies from Starz. That includes access to the Starz TV network on their PCs and does not affect the number of DVDs members receive as part of their monthly plans.

Initially 1,000 Starz titles will be available at the Netflix Web site where they are accessible by clicking on the "Watch Instantly" tab on the Netflix member homepage. More titles will be added in the coming weeks.

Starz content features a variety of first-run movies, independent films, movie classics, extreme sports, concerts, anime, and Westerns.

"The coupling of Starz Play with our growing library of streaming content is an important step forward for both companies and for consumer choice," said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix.

"Our deal reflects the creative ways we are working with content partners to expand the profile and the number of choices our subscribers can watch instantly over the Internet, in addition to the 100,000 titles we offer on DVD through the mail."