Xbox update reveals ambitious TV on demand strategy
Monday, December 5, 2011 at 12:59PM
Updated on Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 4:00PM by
Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Microsoft is dead set on making an impact on the home entertainment market with the latest XBox 360 update which is coming tomorrow November 6, that brings enhanced Kinect motion and voice control as well as a variety of streaming apps.
What is most interesting about the new Xbox Dashboard, aside from unifiying the look and feel of Xbox with the rest of Microsoft's user interfaces, is that it Xbox is now running apps in order to enable access to streaming content from 3rd party publishers. Seems like Microsoft made the transition from streaming device to app enabled set top box ahead of Apple which many believe will eventually run iOS apps.
News isn't too good for Canadian XBox TV owners as we're missing out on most of the initial offerings coming to the US. This will hopefully change moving forward. Still, there's something to look forward to if you're a fan of Rogers on Demand, Astral Media Disney, Crackle, MSN, Real Sports, UFC and TMZ which represent the rich cross section of content making its wat to Canadian Xbox devices by 2012.
Press release from Microsoft is below.