After last week’s announcement from Microsoft that they would be switching from a gaming to an entertainment strategy with their Xbox 360 console, the company has followed up with a press conference at the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) which showcased some major additions to Xbox Live scheduled to launch later this year.
Coming in the fall, Xbox Live subscribers will have access to YouTube, the Google-owned online video service which has undergone plenty of its own changes recently. With that access will come the site’s new additions of movie rentals and original programming.
The bigger, but thus far less detailed, news was the announcement by Microsoft’s Marc Whitten that Xbox 360 users would be gaining a TV service, also sometime this fall. While some European and Australian users have already experienced a taste of Xbox Live TV, the company will be expanding their offerings to “the US and around the world during the upcoming year.”
In addition to Live TV, Microsoft is partnering with UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) to bring live pay-per-view events to the 360, with an interactive feature to allow viewers to log who they think will win and compete for points with their friends.
Finally, if you ever get frustrated with the current search features available for the Xbox 360 interface and applications, you’ll likely be happy to hear that Microsoft is integrating a version of Bing with voice search capability. The promise is that you’ll simply be able to say what you are looking for, and Bing will search the library of all the content available on your Xbox and return the results in seconds.
“This is an incredible time of growth and innovation for our business leveraging technologies that see us, hear us and connect us all together,” said Don Mattrick, president of Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “This year by bringing together the power of Kinect for Xbox 360 and the intelligence of Bing, we are transforming how people enjoy entertainment.”
