You’ve gotta give Google and Hasbro credit for their marketing savvy. The Internet giant and toy company are teaming up to launch “Monopoly City Streets,” an expanded online version of the board game, tomorrow.

Billed as the “biggest live game of Monopoly in history,” the promotion will let you ‘buy’ any street in the world and build houses, hotels or skyscrapers on them. The game is basically the same you grew up playing, but you’ll have a wider selection of buildings to choose from. (Want a football stadium on Rodeo Drive? Go for it!)

The Daily Mail notes that chance cards will let you opt to build prisons or landfills on opponents’ streets, making the game a bit more cutthroat.

Players will start with $3 million virtual dollars – with street prices ranging from $231,000 for Downing Street in London to $2 million for Pennsylvania Ave in Washington D.C.

Signups should begin tomorrow at the game’s official Web site.

It’s probably too early in the process for this to be some sort of viral marketing campaign for Ridley Scott’s planned big screen version of the board game. But it’s an intriguing way to raise brand awareness – and to show the product can transcend its board game roots.

Netflix has a hit with its streaming video service – and it may be looking to seal its dominance.

MultiChannel News, citing unnamed industry executives, reports the company plans to offer its “Watch Instantly” service on both the Apple iPhone (and iPod Touch) and Nintendo Wii. In both cases, the service would likely be streamed over local Wi-Fi connections – meaning you won’t be able to use AT&T’s 3G network to watch films on the go.

Netflix declined to comment on the story.

Netflix currently offers over 12,000 films and tv shows via the service (and will soon be adding ABC’s hit series “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy”. What began as a streaming service that only targeted computer monitors has rapidly expanded, with the company now streaming its service onto Microsoft’s Xbox, Tivo’s DVRs, Blu-Ray players from LF and Samsung, several Internet-enabled television sets and Roku’s $99 Digital Media Player.

It’s the Xbox relationship that has been working particularly well for Netflix. In the first three months of the two companies’ relationship, 1 million Xbox Live members downloaded and activated the Netflix application to their video game system. In those same three months, users watched 1.5 billion minutes of streaming movies and tv shows.

Blockbuster, meanwhile, has not found the same traction for its OnDemand streaming movie service. That company did, however, recently struck a deal with Samsung to be a part of its Web-enabled TVs and Blu-Ray players starting this fall.

It’s a little bit video games, a little bit Internet, all 21st century storytelling.

That’s the idea of Fourth Wall, the interactive “event” company formed by three of the founders of 42 Entertainment, makers of Microsoft’s famous “I Love Bees” alternate reality game to promote “Halo.”

All of their projects so far have been marketing campaigns for films like “Eagle Eye” (above right) and “Watchmen” (below left) and the short-lived NBC TV show “Kings.”

But they’re aggressively looking to start producing their own original content and are starting to connect with partners for just that purpose.

The Fourth Wall guys are currently working with “Wanted” director Timur Bekmambetov to develop a multi-media project called “Nano.”

“Their art form is like research and development for new and exciting products,” Bekmambetov said of their collaboration, “helping me to find a way to combine film language and the game world and install them in our real world by using film language in the game world to create an alternative reality.”

I sat down with the Fourth Wall team – chief designer Elan Lee, chief creative Sean Stewart, and president and executive producer Jim Stewartson (That's Stewart and Stewartson working on the "Eagle Eye" project on the bottom left) – at the Game Developers Conference in late March to talk about their company, their goals and their new form of storytelling.

Ben Fritz: Tell me a little bit about what Fourth Wall is and how you guys got started.

Elan Lee: Well, with these two fine gentlemen and two other friends, we founded 42 Entertainment, that created what was sort of known as the world’s first alternate reality games.

We really started to get our feet wet in what this new form of storytelling could be. How it works, how you engage with an audience, what to means to tell stories on the Internet.

When we did that for a few years, we decided if ever there was a time to start a company that is solely devoted to continuing that evolution, to taking that next step in a new form storytelling, this is that time, because we've got some much knowledge and so much experience.

Jim Stewartson: The other way that we like to put that is the Internet -- and by Internet I mean your cell phone and your email and everything -- the entire electronic sphere around you wants to tell stories, just like the movie camera wanted to tell stories.

BF: In a different way than you were doing at your previous company?

JS: We spent many years throwing essentially rock concerts. Very large, real-time, elaborate
experiences that were really cool and really fun for the people who were involved with them.