Last week during Microsoft's financial analyst meeting, company CEO
Steve Ballmer said that the upcoming Xbox TV platform will launch this
holiday season. He indicated its release while previewing the service in
front of a captive audience, but refrained from offering specifics like
the actual release date, content partners, pricing and the available
content at launch.
Instead, Ballmer told the audience that
Microsoft would be working alongside "dozens of hundreds of additional
video content providers." And in addition to video on-demand, the new
platform will also provide live TV spanning news, sports, and numerous
popular channels. The service will be similar what Microsoft has already
done overseas with Sky TV in the United Kingdom, Canal Plus in France,
and FoxTel in Australia.
But the key factor in making Xbox TV
succeed where other attempts have failed will be Kinect, Microsoft’s
motion-sensing device. "Having all of that content is right on, it's
fantastic, but it brings a new challenge with it," Ballmer said.
"Certainly we all know the frustrations of using guides and menus and
controllers, and we think a better way to do all of this is simply to
bring Bing and voice to Xbox. You say it, Xbox finds it."
CNN
reports that a Microsoft employee demonstrated Xbox TV using Kinect by
shouting "Xbox, Bing 'The Office.'" The TV immediately pulled up all
available seasons of NBC's hit comedy TV show for on-demand viewing. The
employee then announced an additional voice search that was supposed to
allow users to navigate to a particular season or episode. That
particular command failed.
"It's a good thing that's shipping for Christmas," Ballmer mused.
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