Pay per play Tetris to save Telewest, NTL

Mind-numbing block-dropping game, Tetris, is to hit UK digital TV subscribers from the summer.

YooMedia plc - formerly e-district.net - has signed a deal with The Tetris Company to market the pay-per-play interactive game to customers of cablecos Telewest and NTL.

Apparently, the "addictive nature and simple controls make Tetris a perfect fit for interactive TV".

Revenues will be split between YooMedia and The Tetris Company. Price per play for a game which has been widely cloned and is widely available for free has not as yet been disclosed. As we understand it, however, The Tetris Company has put some shoeleather into pursuing such clones. We can't check on recent progress on this as at time of writing tetris.com seemed to be somewhat down.

With news like this, it makes me thank my lucky stars I've still got analogue TV. ®