[quote name='cancerman1120']This is why MS does all the stuff we hate. The general public eat this up.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged...mart-smartglass-stays-mum-xbox-195703731.html
The part that make me cringe.
"But despite showing off flashy demos of big-name upcoming releases like Halo 4, Madden, and Call of Duty,
the best of the buzz went to a brand-new system that promises — yet again — to change the way you interact with your TV."
Really? Where was this buzz exactly? It was not in the conference room or on the chat boards.[/QUOTE]
yes, because 50 people on a messageboard is the pulse of the buying public...
Microsoft knows what the public wants...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/06/04/microsoft-xbox-is-winning-the-living-room-war-heres-why/
the following are only excerpts:
Cookie Monster wants a snack. Sure, he could have a handful of you-know-whats, but even a Muppet has to watch his waistline. So he decides to grab something healthful. “Maybe if me jump up and down, me can shake fruit out of this tree,” the fuzzy blue monster says to his television viewers. “Okay. Help me jump!”
Muppets have always broken the fourth wall. But for the first time, Cookie can actually tell if kids are responding. When they do, his googly eyes shake wildly and leaves fall from the tree. “Oh boy, oh boy,” Cookie cheers. If the child refuses to budge, he invites his fuchsia friend Telly on-screen to do the jumping instead.
This is Kinect Sesame Street TV, a fully interactive version of the award-winning educational program that goes on sale exclusively for Microsoft’s Xbox game console in September.
Parents can buy the disc wherever videogames are sold, except to Microsoft this is not a videogame—it’s a TV show you can play. Also on the disc is a version of “Elmo’s World” that films you with the Kinect camera and puts you on-screen with Elmo in real time. It’s fun for kids, but this is a serious salvo in the fight with Sony, Apple, Google and a dozen other players to control your family television.
This spring, for the first time, subscribers to Xbox’s Live online service in the U.S. spent more time consuming video and music than multiplayer games. Globally, the hours spent on Xbox Live have grown 30% year over year, including gaming and entertainment, while video consumption has risen 140%.
In some ways the Xbox is emerging as an alternative for those who want to cut the cable cord. On-demand movies and TV? Xbox can stream more than 200,000 high-definition titles. Premium channels? Game of Thrones rages on via HBO Go on Xbox. Live sports? Xbox has ESPN, every regular-season Major League Baseball game and Ultimate Fighting.
In effect, the Xbox is Microsoft’s profitable Trojan Horse. The console’s latest version, the Xbox 360, is the top seller in the U.S. Worldwide, since the 360 debuted in November 2005, customers have snapped up 67 million units, generating $56 billion at retail. Its sales still outgrow those of all other rivals.
Plenty of companies do sell rival boxes to deliver online video to the TV: Cisco, Google, Apple, TiVo, Sony, Roku. But none of them does what Xbox can do. Because it was born to play games, has the hands-free Kinect controller and sports a hefty hard drive, the Xbox is the strongest player in interactive television. Forrester analyst James McQuivey says that only about half of the people who rush out to get Net-connected TVs even bother to connect them to the Internet at all. In fact, Ballmer is working to persuade the big pay-TV players—Comcast and Verizon are already Xbox partners—to allow their customers the choice of an Xbox over a cable set-top.
In level two of Living Room domination, you come out of hiding and start blowing things up. At the annual E3 videogame industry trade show on June 4 Microsoft made a series of announcements designed to widen its lead in the entertainment space, such as 24/7 live programming from all ESPN channels (it used to be only selected events and highlights), including Monday Night Football; Xbox SmartGlass, a technology that extends the Xbox experience to computers, phones and tablets; and a Nike interactive workout program.
Nike threw its weight behind Xbox after seeing the hands-free capabilities of the Kinect camera in action. The new “Nike+ Kinect Training” product watches users while they perform a series of exercises and analyzes their movements. If it notices you’re struggling with push-ups, it might add more arm exercises to the workout. If it sees you have a bum knee, it might reduce the number of jumping jacks and squats. “Kinect gives us the ability to tailor the program for different people,” says Stefan Olander, vice president of digital sport for Nike.
After only a decade, Microsoft, a software company, has built a stronger hardware product than anyone else has in the space. And a new console, nicknamed Xbox 720, is expected to be unveiled next year with lots of media-centric features. If the Xbox division keeps growing as it has, it will account for far more than the 7% of Microsoft it does today.