Xbox 360 To Have IPTV, 10 Million Sold

The news from CES, from Bill Gates' keynote, is that the 360 will have IPTV rolled out in an update later this year. They've also now crossed the 10 Million units sold mark, spurred on by Gears of War in the U.S. and Blue Dragon in Japan. The implications of IPTV for the 360 (DVR on a 20 gig HD, essentially) are interesting, but are hardly the only news to come out of the event. Robbie Bach gave Gamespot an overview of Vista and 360-related announcements for the near future, and there's some great stuff in there. Likewise, Mr. Gates sat down for an interview with several journalists, including Dean Takahashi from the Mercury News and Brian Crecente from Kotaku. He gives some additional insight into the company's announcements at the CES event.

Comments

Sold?

[Gogo0]

Wasn't that 10 Million consoles shipped?

Re:Sold?

[The_Pariah]

Units shipped are units sold to retailers.

Re:Sold?

[Utopia]

No he said sold.

Re:Sold?

[DietFluffy]

http://www.vgcharts.org/

http://nexgenwars.com/

Re:Sold?

[Dr. Eggman]

Further Supplement from the Keynote:

7:32 - Video ended. "Games for Windows is a growing market. But of course, while leading platform, our 2nd is Xbox 360. We've become the leader in this next gen. We've sold 10.4 million consoles in 37 countries."

Emphasis mine. I wonder whether online sales were included in some of the parent's links; that might explain the discrepencies.

Re:Sold?

[cycinertia]

Ya, and that would make a big difference, how?

If the retailers bought that many units from Microsoft, they would be expected to sell to customers close to that number. Common sense: huge inventory -> huge cost

O no, conspiracies, the retailers teamed up with Microsoft so the retailers can just have a mountain of Xbox360s sitting in their warehouses.

Both vgcharts and nextgenwars can only go with their estimates, and Sony counts the units @ their own warehouse as "shipped".

Re:Sold?

[Gogo0]

Saying you sold X number of units is a public announcement of your market penetration.
When the number does not reflect actual market share, then its a meaningless number.

Would it be just as valid if MS had bought all the Xboxes from themselves? They would have been sold and then bought.

Re:Sold?

[Jerf]

Bloody hell, according to the VG charts the Wii is already halfway to the XBox360 penetration.

Nexgenwars has a higher number on the XBox360, and I wouldn't be suprised that's more accurate. But still.

Somebody in this discussion posted about the Wii passing the XBox 360 sometime near the middle of this year. Maybe it actually will. Wow.

I think that if the Wii takes #1, it's not likely to let go.

Re:Sold?

[Guppy06]

"If the retailers bought that many units from Microsoft, they would be expected to sell to customers close to that number."

No, the retailer only thinks they'll sell that many. Whether they really do sell all their inventory remains to be seen (e. g. UMD movies).

A console sold to a consumer represents a part of the console's installed base that game publishers can then try to sell to. A console "sold" to a retailer is only a gauge of what retailers think will be popular, and really shouldn't count for more than any other sort of market speculation, professional or otherwise.

Re:Sold?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that all anybody CAN state? It's not like every retailer is going to contact the manufacturer afterwards and say "hey, we sold 7 out of the 8 you shipped us". I guess they could estimate based on additional orders, ie. "we sent them 10 and they're asking for another 15, so we can assume they sold 10".

erm..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Okay, which press office submitted this? No body on Slashdot would address Bill Gates as "Mr. Gates", it's just not in our style at all.

Re:erm..

[DrEldarion]

Yeah, you're right. I nearly choked on my sandwich when I saw "Mr. Gates" rather than "the ultimate evil, Gate$".

US Only?

[JMZero]

It's a little frustrating to live in Canada sometimes. I understand that 360 owners in the US can already download movies and TV shows. Whether or not that service is great (or about to be replaced by this new thing or something) I'd like to try it. Canada is full of "early adopters" - I wish we merited a little more attention in terms of new features. I'm sure those in Europe/elsewhere have it worse. At very least, they could make this stuff a little clearer. Looking over the official sites (for the 360) it's hard to tell which features are actually available in your area.

(MS is hardly the only offender here - when will I be able to get TV shows off iTunes?)

Re:US Only?

[LWATCDR]

That is really odd. Since the US an Canada are so close in law I am surprised that they have these issues.

Of course before the free trade laws I had one of the dumbest discussion in my life with a Canadian official.

The government of Canada uses a piece of software I work on. Back before the Internet we used to ship them updates in the mail. Well one of the disks got stopped because of taxes!
The tax official wanted to know what the value of the disks was so they could charge the customer tax on the import.
Well the update was free but that wasn't good enough for them. I then asked them why they needed to charge the customer tax since the customer was the government of Canada! I mean they would be billing themselves... I never got the answer and they sent the disk back. That day we set up a BBS so they could download the updates from that day forward.

You got to love governments

Re:US Only?

[Jettamann]

I suspect that Canadians are not being left out of these early platform technologies from the US companies simply because of a single companies decisions (Microsoft in this case)..

I think it is because in Canada we don't have enough competition in the IP/Cable/Phone service provider market. Shaw,Rogers,Bell,MTS,etc, don't want to share their fat pipe when it comes to digital TV or any other TCP/IP related services..

It doesn't help when the Canadian market is 1/10th the size of the US market and also spread out over longer and larger distances between the dense market areas. The infrastructure costs and startup costs are much higher in canada.. and we also have this pesky CRTC regulating body that prohibits things.

The Canadian market IS slowly opening up in terms of these new services though.. a good example is Shaw Cable doing VOIP and MTS Phone offering Digital TV services. But the whole bundling of services to save money from a SINGLE provider ultimately slows the early availability of new technologies and services to consumers.

For example.. our cell phone services, packages, and pricing SUCKS big time compared to what's available in the USA.

What do other Canadians think about this? Am I totally wrong on this?

Heston from Winnipeg.

Re:US Only?

[ultramk]

Anyone living in Canada probably know this, but the biggest reason for the disparity in availability is the size of the market: Canada has only about 1/10th the population of the US, and 1/13th the GDP.

Considering that it's every bit as much work to set up all the licensing agreements, applicable contracts etc, it probably is so far down on the priority list that you'll be lucky if you ever get this stuff. This is why you've got the EU: all these small to medium population countries have gained real economic power by binding themselves into a single (more or less) economic entity. Kinda like Voltron, but with funny accents.

I would imagine the priority list is something like US, UK, Japan, the rest of the EU, South Korea... etc etc etc then Canada, right before Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

In other words, it's kind of like owning a Mac, and waiting to play the latest games on it. Sucks, huh?

M-

Re:US Only?

[mypalmike]

I liked your post so much, I paraphrased it as my new sig. Hope you don't mind.

Re:US Only?

[Guppy06]

The US doesn't have a federal law that requires content providers to have some minimum percentage of US-produced content. When you start talking about something substantially similar to providing television or radio shows, the US just has a lower legal overhead.

My Sirius satellite radio wasn't legal north of the border until they started piping in more CBC stuff.

Re:US Only?

[ultramk]

wow, i'm flattered.

M-

Re:US Only?

[elrous0]

Canada has a variety of laws regarding language translation (thanks to your Quebec friends), content restrictions on TV/movie production and hosting (services have to host so much Canadian content, productions must employ so many Canadian actors), etc. that it's hardly surprising companies like MS don't consider such a small population worth the hassle.

-Eric

Re:US Only?

[johneee]

You got to love governments

You don't know the half of it...

I work for the government of Ontario. When we purchase things, we are exempt from GST (federal tax) but have to pay PST (to ourselves). The Federal Government is PST exempt, but has to pay GST.

Off topic I know, but there you are.

Re:US Only?

[LWATCDR]

The Tax guy I talked to got a little ticked off at me when I called it taxterbation.

If it makes you feel any better the USMC wanted to buy the same program from us. When we got the bid it weighed 50 lbs.
We had to provide information on the ethnic make up of our staff, all ten of them along with a bunch of other information. Know I know why military grade hammers cost $50 each.

Re:US Only?

[chrish]

I think you're pretty much dead-on, but that's only part of the problem.

We've got slightly different copyright laws, and our own flavour of RIAA/MPAA for the content distributors to "negotiate" with before they can distribute digital media up here. Note how craptastic the Canadian iTunes store's selection is compared to the US one for another data point.

20GB?

[Nezzari]

With the announcement of DVR, a larger Hard Drive is practically confirmed. Microsoft has been on a roll lately as far as the Xbox 360 is concerned, I doubt they would forget something like that. They are probably waiting until the last moment to announce it to prevent a drop in sales.

Re:20GB?

[PrescriptionWarning]

if they're going to sell a 120GB hard drive, it better not cost six times the amount of the current 20GB addon ($100). I mean unless that 20GB drive is using flash memory, there's not point to pricing that high.

Re:20GB?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could also get the kit to hook up the hard drive to your computer. I saw one at Best Buy for $40. I have a 250gb hard drive on my computer so that would be plenty of room for anything I would dl.

But, how did they achieve these numbers?

[hirschma]

If the Xbox was so hot, then why was it being offered with a $100 rebate during the Xmas buying season?

Seems odd to me that a next-gen console, out for a few months, would be offering such incentives during the height of consumer insanity. Perhaps the plan was to get to 10mm shipped by any means necessary in order to achieve a "PR-mark", which would insure the next 10mm being sold. Or something like that.

Who sells at a BIGGER loss during supposedly peak demand in order to gain marketplace dominance? Sounds like a monopoly to me.

Re:But, how did they achieve these numbers?

[Sciros]

Micro Center has been offering a $100 rebate on Xbox 360 units since early Autumn, if not before that. I got my 360 premium system for $300 sometime in September I think. Anyway this was definitely not a case of increasing incentives in time for the holiday season or in response to a sudden desperate need to meet some projected numbers.

So, there was no "BIGGER" loss. It was the same as usual, Micro Center just increased its advertising during the holiday season, much like everyone else.

Re:But, how did they achieve these numbers?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Microsoft would never do something so dastardly.

Re:But, how did they achieve these numbers?

[tgd]

If MS had indeed dropped their manufacturing costs over $100 per unit in the last year, they're in no worse place offering $100 discounts than they were during the holidays last year, and hitting 10m is a big milestone.

Plus GoW is like Halo 2 was -- not only does it drive a 360 sale when someone wants to play it, it drivers further 360 AND GoW sales as those people's friends want in on the action. Getting lots of them out there, even if it means giving up your console profit for a month, makes a LOT of sense.

Re:But, how did they achieve these numbers?

[0xdeadbeef]

Who sells at a BIGGER loss during supposedly peak demand in order to gain marketplace dominance? Sounds like a monopoly to me.

Maybe they just felt like kicking Sony in the nuts during the PS3 launch?

I mean, sure, you'll hear people rationalize it with words like "increased production efficiency" and "sliding the demand curve", but I'm sure tweaking the Sony fanboy persecution complex was the most gratifying reason.

No mention of the "zephyr" 360?

[the computer guy nex]

I'll put $10 down on Microsoft releasing a "media center" edition of the 360, similar to their operating system version of Windows.

It will include a larger hard drive, universal remote, and possibly the HD-DVD player. The 65nm chips could be included also, but it should not have performance implications.

Whatever Microsoft does, they will be very careful not to alienate the 10+ million current 360 owners.

Re:No mention of the "zephyr" 360?

[CyberLord Seven]

I'm already alienated.

I have a 360. Last weekend I was playing with my nephew's Wii...awright, cut the laughing...and I was blown away by the fun we had with bowling and some racing game he had. I'm ready to go to Game Stop, EB Games, or wherever to trade in my relatively unused (I'm still playing the PS2) 360 for a Wii, a spare controller, two nunchucks, and a copy of the new Zelda game.

Re:No mention of the "zephyr" 360?

[HappySqurriel]

The 65nm chips could be included also, but it should not have performance implications.

I'm willing to bet the move towards the 65nm chip is entirely cost related. Microsoft should be able to produce more chips off of the same current cost, remove many cooling components and get a smaller power supply from a move like this; if they also integrate several of the smaller controller chips at the same time the cost reduction should be pretty dramatic.

It will include a larger hard drive, universal remote, and possibly the HD-DVD player.

Being that Microsoft already is making money on the XBox 360, and if I'm correct about the correct about the cost savings, I would say that the HD-DVD player is very likely. A larger hard-drive will (probably) not add too much in the way of cost to the system, and neither would a HDMI port, so Microsoft could (possibly) add a component which cost more than $100 to the system without impacting the price; they could include the cost saving changes in all models, add the HD-DVD to their new priemium and compete on features with the PS3 at a lower price and reduce the cost of their current Priemium to make an 'affordable' gaming system for people who only care about games.

Re:No mention of the "zephyr" 360?

[Guppy06]

"I'll put $10 down on Microsoft releasing a "media center" edition of the 360, similar to their operating system version of Windows."

That would cut into Windows/PC sales, their bread-and-butter. They want to sell you an Xbox 360 that utilizes the spiffy Media Center features of Windows Vista (which it does, out of the box), not replaces it. Anything else would be cannibalism on their part, not to mention piss off PC vendors.

Re:No mention of the "zephyr" 360?

[necro2607]

Dude, not only does the 360 already have a remote control, it already has a very "media center"-like system, and can easily include a larger hard drive since they are detatchable. Basically, there's no need whatsoever for an alternate version because the existing system allows for all of this already. :)

Re:No mention of the "zephyr" 360?

[Anonymous Coward]

Play it at your nephew's for a few more days. The novelty will wear off very quickly and then you're left with a last-gen system. Get Zelda for the GC if you're into that series. Hell, if you don't have a GC, you could buy one and that game for about 1/3 of the cost of a Wii alone.

Re:No mention of the "zephyr" 360?

[7Prime]

Last-gen, my ass. I was at a GameStop and they had Excite Truck on the Wii, and some Excite Truck rippoff on the PS3... I swear the graphics were virtually identical.

Now I own Excite Truck, I've never had so much fun playing a racing game! I can't wait until they release a Mario Kart for the Wii. I was so worried that the Wiimote was going to be a novelty, but after playing Twilight Princess for 75 hours and Excite Truck for another 20 or so, I'm completely sold on it.

Oh, and seriously... I haven't seen ANY games, on any systems, yet, that felt "net gen", even Gears Of War, while being an amazing game—compare 007 (N64) to Halo (XBox), THAT'S a generation leap—Halo to Gears of War is NOT. And I think that's a fair comparison to make. Generations traditionally alternate between "innovation" (NES and Playstation/N64/Saturn) and "perfection" (SNES/Genesis and GameCube/PS2/XBox), we just had a generation of perfectionism, it's time for innovation, and from everything I'm seeing, it would be silly to put any money on anyone BUT Nintendo for that, right now.

Re:No mention of the "zephyr" 360?

[ookaze]

There are no way near any 10+ millions 360 owners. MS has sold 10+ millions XB360 to retailers, what normal people call "shipped".
Actual number of XB360 owners is lower (8-9 millions).

the selection is paltry and slow to d/l

[maynard]

OK. So I have a 360, and I've used xbox live to try some of the iptv content available. Content is split between 480p EDTV and 720p HDTV. An HD movie is about 6GB large and cannot be streamed real time. Further, there are access restrictions for viewing, plus a one time fee paid in Microsoft Points (thanks for creating your own private currency, Microsoft... that helps).

Anyway, the difference in available content between OTA, Cable, or Satellite vs. Xbox live is so large as to be laughable. Right now, iptv on the 360 is a toy. And I doubt that will change over the course of this console's lifespan, due to licensing and distribution agreements the media conglomerates have made with television networks.

Re:the selection is paltry and slow to d/l

[Itchyeyes]

People seem to be taking a very pessimistic view of IPTV and downloadable video, considering how young the technologies are. True, the Xbox Live offerings are pretty sparse, but the service is less then two months old. Of course cable TV has more options, they've been around for 3 decades now. However, I also pay extortion-like rates for those offerings, 95% of which I don't want or need. Announcements like this are encouraging to me, because I can envision a day not far off when they will provide viable alternatives to cable TV and bring some much needed competition to the cable companies monopolistic business practices.

Re:the selection is paltry and slow to d/l

[Slothy]

You're not talking about IPTV, you're talking about their Video Marketplace. IPTV is very very different, it's delivering normal cable tv over a network. The point of their unveiling yesterday was to try to sell phone companies on buying into it. It's not a direct-to-consumer product, it's something AT&T and the others would offer customers if they wanted to.

Re:the selection is paltry and slow to d/l

[maynard]

I don't see the difference. Though I do recognize that this service might be delivered to the home by cable and dsl providers, I still don't see how this will impact the 360 dramatically. Nor do I believe that it is a wise use of bandwidth... television is a one to many service; the internet works best as a bidirectional feed one to one.

But I did mistake iptv for Microsoft's xbox live offerings. No cookie for me.

Re:the selection is paltry and slow to d/l

[Slothy]

Ah, there's a big difference. It's the difference between being able to buy TV shows on iTunes and turning on your TV.

Since MS wants to offer this through AT&T and the like, it would be "Cable TV from AT&T", and their local servers are sending it down the DSL pipes that you are paying for from them. So there is no central broadcasting point that's sending it to everyone, it's more like Usenet. Additionally, consumers won't even really know that it's "IPTV" as opposed to "Whatever protocol you guys used to use to send me my cable tv". It's just TV. And now AT&T can sell cable tv along with their dsl.

Re:the selection is paltry and slow to d/l

[Itchyeyes]

I'm curious how this sits in respect to Net Neutrality. Using AT&T as an example (since they currently have Net Neutrality restrictions imposed by the FCC) why would Microsoft partner with them for IPTV? If it's to ensure larger bandwidth that could not be obtained over the network normally, wouldn't this be in violation of Net Neutrality? If there's no speed benefit to partnering with AT&T why offer the service through them at all? Why not make the service open to anyone who wants to sign up? It all seems rather pointless and unnecessarily complicated to me (as does just about anything involving digital media these days).

Re:the selection is paltry and slow to d/l

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, well, IPTV is NOT the same as what's offered on XBox live right now. Right now it's like a small movie rental store. IPTV means you have your full channel line up that's avalible on Cable and the ability to watch all those shows, on a pay-per-show payment basis.

Re:the selection is paltry and slow to d/l

[Emetophobe]

Further, there are access restrictions for viewing, plus a one time fee paid in Microsoft Points (thanks for creating your own private currency, Microsoft... that helps).

To be fair, Nintendo has Wii Points. So what's so bad about Microsoft Points, or is it just because it's Microsoft?

N'Sync was one the insteresting announcements

[Utopia]

at CES.

http://bink.nu/Article9226.bink

Consider Me, "Joe Average"

[Petersko]

If the Xbox was so hot, then why was it being offered with a $100 rebate during the Xmas buying season?

So I'm considering waiting for a PS3. The Blu-Ray aspect is semi-enticing, as I have an HDTV widescreen TV, and I'm mildly interested in Gran Turismo HD. I'm not a fanboy of either variety.

Then along comes Gears of War, and I'm suddenly reconsidering my decision. And then, boxing day, I discover I can get an XBOX360 for $100 less than before, with 'Ghost Recon', 'Live Arcade' and 'The Outfit' included.

The result? I now own an XBOX360, two additional controllers, and the following titles:

Madden '07
Gears of War
Burnout Revenge
PGR2
Ghost Recon
The Outfit
Tiger Woods '07
Live Arcade
Need For Speed Carbon
Test Drive Unlimited

So what did they gain from dropping the price for Christmas? Clearly my business.

Why in heavens name would I buy the PS3? Certainly not for the lousy launch lineup.

Re:Consider Me, "Joe Average"

[vluk]

My sentiments exactly. I recently acquired an hdtv at one of my works. Having a bit of money aside for some products to put on it, I bought a Component cable for my Wii, noticed very little improvement, but some. Then I look at a flyer at my work. 399.88 for X360 pro with PGR3. I hate racing games so I let it slide, but it did catch my attention. Then some clients came in and wanted to buy this for their child. I go in the storage room to pick it up and to my surprise, the inventory didn't list these in full detail. They had more than just PGR3 thrown in. It came with GRAW and Xbox Live unplugged and PGR came with 3 months of gold and something like 1200points. I quickly set one aside and purchased it. The next day some friends come over and mention Gears of War. At this point I figured I should probably get this so we can have a nice coop evening passing the controllers around. It was fun. Now I'm just addicted to Geometry wars and can't get the pacifist achievement for the life of me.

Re:Consider Me, "Joe Average"

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my third achievement. I'm trying (and failing) to get Survived 500,000 right now. I barely got 500,000 as it is. Luckily, several of the achievements are pretty closely tied together. If you can live long enough to get the 10x multiplier, you probably will have nine lives by that point, or you will in very, very short order (same thing for bombs), and you've probably survived 500,000 by a pretty long shot. Once you have 10x, the distance between 500,000 and 1M is really short.

Re:Consider Me, "Joe Average"

[necro2607]

Same deal here, picked up a 360 for $100 off, picked up a few games, extra controller, and have been playing regularly since. Nintendo lost my sale due to the fact that I haven't been able to get a Wii even though I've been trying to for a month now (including calling stores every day - sorry, I'm not willing to wait overnight weeks after launch, I have a full time job and a life to live). There's one sale Nintendo lost and Microsoft gained.

Re:Consider Me, "Joe Average"

[dkone]

Either you got a bunch of racing titles as part of a bundle or you like them. If it is the later, give Project Gotham Racing a try. I know the title is lame. You are not racing in the bat mobile, it is a very good title.

DK

Re:Consider Me, "Joe Average"

[Lost Engineer]

You can download HD movies on XBL now. Granted the selection is very limited, but it should improve. You could say the same thing about Blu Ray dics, however. XBL movies are only for rentals, though, so they're not good for collectors.

Live working through Vista as well.

[pdxaaron]

There was a ton more announced than what is listed in the headline...

From http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/07/live-from-the-b ill-gates-keynote/

6:20 (PST) - The connection is spotty as hell, but Ryan and I are here at the Bill Gates keynote, which should be starting shortly. Stay tuned for updates -- at least barring a failure of our EV-DO lifeline.

6:22 - They're asking us to take our seats

6:25 - Over the PA: "Ladies and gentlemen, the keynote is beginning in five minutes."

6:33 - Eight minutes later: "Ladies and gentlemen, the keynote will begin in two minutes." See, even Microsoft's keynotes can't launch on time... We kid, we kid!

6:36 - Lights are dimming, looks like we're about to get going. It's starting. A visual history of CES is playing on the giant monitors next to the stage.

6:39 - Gary Shapiro, President of the CEA is on stage. He's giving the usual spiel about all the industry leaders who are speaking this year.

6:41 - "It is my great privilege to introduce Bill Gates as a featured speaker."

6:44 - They're showing highlights from past Gates keynotes - this is the 10th year he's spoken.

6:47 - Another video, this one showing hip young people using Microsoft technology. Zunes a-squirting!

6:49 - Bill Gates is walking out on stage. "Good evening, I've always loved coming back from Xmas to go right into the most manic environment ever. Are you going to keep giving the keynote, but not sure about after that, might be talking more about infectious diseases."

6:50 - "It's amazing to see the progress over the course of the year. The digital decade is truly happening. 65% of homes have digital cameras. More broadband penetration. 40% of homes have multiple computers."

Portable devices proliferating, growing part of the PC market, connections with WiFi and 3G, getting information wherever you go."

6:52 - "What are some the metrics we have here. Devices with high fidelity. Six megapixel cameras and up. high definition screens that make you drool. Now it connects up to high def cable, PC, games. All taking advantage of that capability. Network bandwidth has gone up. Processors opening memory capacity up to 64bit."

Graphics revolution let's us represent reality on screen. Seeing in games, VR, presentation richness that all these great devices deliver. It's really quite phenomenal. Storage space, people are talking terabytes, or even petabytes of storage."

6:53 - "We have amazing hardware, love walking the floor, who has the biggest LCD, the biggest hard disk. But we need to deliver on promise of digital decade. Delivering means more than just great hardware. CE defined as much broader industry."

6:55 - "An enviroment where people want to do things across multiple devices with many different people. Delivering on connected experiences, where people are productive, where they're mobile, playing games, that's key element that's missing. For Microsoft, it's a big big milestone, foundational products are moving into the marketplace. First of that is Vista, lots of hard work. Most important release of Windows ever, highest quality, we've ever done."

6:56 - "Vista and the PC continue to have a central role, all these devices have to work together. Vista is a big project, rather than talk about features, rather talk about what we've been through."

6:57 - "Process we've been through, Beta 2., out to 2 million people, RC out to 5 million, in depth went in and interviewed people in seven different countries. Biggest investment ever into a piece of software, by the far the most used piece of software, any improvements can save time and enable people to do amazing things."

With Office, new UI, connect up to Office Live services, richness improved by UI. Features users couldn't find, now they can find. New UI was a risk, but it's worke

Re:Live working through Vista as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the link would have sufficed. Engadget isn't going to get slashdotted.

Re:Live working through Vista as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

6:22 - They're asking us to take our seats

Didn't see that one coming!

That's not IPTV

[hudsonhawk]

That's video on demand.

IPTV is essentially cable over the internet. You flip channels, record programs, pause live TV, etc.

Re:That's not IPTV

[Itchyeyes]

While there are obvious technical differences, the average user isn't going to know the difference between IPTV, downloadable video, VOD, or probably even your basic DVR. In the end, they all basically do the same thing, let me watch what I want to when I want to. In the end it just boils down to which solution, or combination of them, is the most cost effective and hassle free for the type of content I want.

Re:That's not IPTV

[ilyaaohell]

The average user of the Xbox 360 will understand the difference between watching a form of streaming television content and downloading specific videos when they get a chance to experience both.

In general, I would assume that most people who buy a next-generation console are quite a bit more knowledgeable about technology than you give them credit for.

Re:That's not IPTV

[Itchyeyes]

While owners of game consoles might be more tech savy than your average sampling of the general population, I don't think it's that much of an increase. Consider that movie licensed game and sports games are the biggest sellers, while true gems often languish on store shelves. While tech savy does not necessarily translate to good taste in games, I take these sales trends to indicate two things. First, people are generally uninformed about their game purchase. Second, the game market extends a lot further than the "hardcore" crowd that would be more likely associated with being tech savy.

While the high initial cost of the 360 and PS3 mean that they're being purchased by mostly early adopters right now, as prices begin to fall you will see more and more average (and less tech savy people) buying these consoles.

This may be a masterstroke on the part of MS

[goldcd]

IPTV is starting to ramp up as more networks switch/unbundle up to IPTV. All those IPTV customers need to buy set-top boxes and hook these up to their router somehow. A 360 with a wifi dongle isn't excessively expensive, take off the cost of the STB that it's replacing, take off a bit for the numbers the networks will shift, take off the undoubtedly good reduction MS will give to get their box into MILLIONS of living rooms.
Few people have mentioned that 20Gig isn't enough got PVR. Well it isn't and Zephyr will fix that a bit. However anybody who has connected their 360 to a MCE machine will know it just works as a thin client - my TV tuner is in the PC, my HD is in the PC, but I can record, pause blah blah from the 360. No reason the same technique couldn't be used here - either stream IPTV from your PC to the 360 for display, archive off to the PC as needed or just pipe the paused/recorded content to a handy MCE/Vista machine on the network.

Re:This may be a masterstroke on the part of MS

[pdxaaron]

They did kind of talk about this with the Home Server offering. Basically they talked about being able to add storage and have it available from any machine in your home network, and even the ability to move content from one machine to another (xbox to Home Server to... ewwww Zune.

From the keynote:
Windows Home Server for homes with multiple PCs, Xboxs, want storage available at all times. Coming out 2nd half of this year. "Features: automated backup, connectivity to all PCs, Zune, Xbox, and remote connectivity, if you're somewhere else, can come in and get files in secure way. No complexity. If you want to grow capacity, just plug new storage in, lots of expandability, software automatically detects it. Can get terabytes of data on this device."
-----------------

If this can be done easily and SECURELY, this would absolutely rock. However this is Microsoft we are talking about, so I'm not so sure about this one...

Re:This may be a masterstroke on the part of MS

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the parent poster, and would go as far to say my 360 would have little value to me without the wifi connector and a copy of MCE os. Works greats.

Nicer if my 360 was quieter

[amigabill]

The fan in my Xbox 360 makes it unsuitable for a cable box IMHO. While I hear some don't have a fan, mine does, and the thing freakin screams when playing a DVD, which can be distracting. None of my other stuff is that loud, not the original Xbox, not the PS2, not my MythTV box which has a lot more goodies in it...

Re:Nicer if my 360 was quieter

[Sizzlean]

Thats the DVD drive making that noise. The fans make very little noise.

Re:Nicer if my 360 was quieter

[necro2607]

It's actually not the fan that's so loud, it's the disc drive. Play any of the downloadable game demos and you'll notice the system is very quiet as it usually is. Pop in your Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged dvd and notice how even playing something as simple as Bejeweled, the machine is frustratingly loud. By the way, yes, it annoys the hell out of me as well. Why doesn't the drive slow down when the disc isn't in heavy use???! Serious design flaw, in my opinion.

Re:Nicer if my 360 was quieter

[superstick58]

Oh good. I had some musings on whether the noisy drive was a defect. At least now I know I'm not crazy. I am still a little disappointed though.

Next step

[Anonymous Coward]

So...who's got some useful information? Like, a company that actually has an intention to roll out IPTV service with or without some crippled hardware?

I mean, the XBOX 360 isn't really the platform that I envision to be the leader in this market segment. The IPTV functionality of the XBOX 360 is a gee whiz kind of tinker toy, but it won't ever amount to more than that because the 360 is locked down. To implement IPTV effectively, you've got to let consumers throw their own hardware (and money) at the issue of local storage of programming that you've flagged to be downloaded and watched (at some point).

Until content providers understand that they can't control everything and that they've got to give consumers some level of trust (after all, the consumers are the ones who are paying the bills, right?), then we'll never get IPTV to take off.

The sooner that content providers take a hint from ISP's and start moving in that direction (hell, why not outsource some of it to those ISP's?), the sooner we (the consumers) will stop thinking of the content providers as frustratingly evil assholes who sell something to us and turn around and accuse us of stealing it at the same time.

it's funny that you think you could DVR IPTV

[teh_chrizzle]

seeing as how this is the same company that let you rip CD's to the original XBOX harddrive but couldn't do anything else with the resulting files. plus, seeing as how TV over the internets is different than real TV (it's over the internets after all!) and DVR is a tool that criminals use to "steal" TV (remove advertisments)... well you don't have to be a fortune teller to see the restrictions coming.

it's very entertaining that people think that just because you can get a TV show from the internet to appear on a device that has a harddrive that you are therefore able to store the TV show on said hard drive and view it at your leisure. i doubt seriously that the 360's IPTV will afford you the kind freedoms that you are so accustomed to with digital TV... especially when you take into consideration the rather large amount of hollywood semen that MS had to swallow in order to move forward with it's crop of media offerings.

Don't playa hate, congratulate!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got the 360, Gears, Live Gold, and I'm a developer (not for Microsoft), so I've had Vista for a little bit now, and I have to say, I keep hearing a lot of nay-saying, but it's pretty damned slick, it's integrated and for the most part it works rather well...by "it" I mean the 360 (on 65" 1080i) for both games and media center...it automagically picked up my media that I shared through vistas new local area media sharing and allows me to play all my stuff through the xbox (with the normal wireless controller, no way I'm spending $125 on a remote control). I have 3 complaints...

#1 Divx movies do not stream to the 360 without some 3rd party add-ons to media center edition...unfortunately they're geared towards xp media center 2005 edition, not vista...the installer for what is touted as the best (MCEEncoder?)won't install on vista because it claims I don't have .net 1.0 (hello? I have 3.0 biatch) I have yet to get this working and it sounds like my options are: convert all my movies to an acceptable format (thats way too much porn), or find an on-the-fly conversion streamer that installs on vista (all 3rd party and ghetto at first glance)...alas I have yet to be able to watch porn, only my buddy's wedding :(

#2 Did I mention the remote control is is a Buck Twenty Five? You've GOT to be shitting me. Not only is that ridiculous, it's IR only, sure you can probably program it to run your stereo, but it should work via radio to interact with the 360, from what I hear it does not...not really inspiring me to shell out $125.

#3 I can't link it to my Comcast DVR and playback my media from there...I know it's a stretch. This new solution is great and all, if it works good, I haven't converted my income to Microsoft Money yet, so I couldn't tell ya.

Anyhow, I'm totally impressed, I LOVE the way media extender works (except for porn so far), the games and graphics kick ass, and if Zune was more of an origami device that extended games from the 360 to a vista umpc...cream dream.

Re:Don't playa hate, congratulate!

[Anonymous Coward]

I LOVED upgrading from watching porn on the PC to streaming it to my hdtv. Most clips stream without a conversion- the short ones that are in .mpg or .wmv Alas, the divx format is not supported so for dvds i have to convert with Videora Xbox360 Converter.

Re:Don't playa hate, congratulate!

[PygmySurfer]

#2 Did I mention the remote control is is a Buck Twenty Five? You've GOT to be shitting me. Not only is that ridiculous, it's IR only, sure you can probably program it to run your stereo, but it should work via radio to interact with the 360, from what I hear it does not...not really inspiring me to shell out $125.

The MS remote is $30, not $125. You must be thinking of the Logitech Harmony, which is a rip off.

Re:Don't playa hate, congratulate!

[lukas84]

#1

Transcode 360 is available for Vista here: http://runtime360.com/2006/12/12/new-blood-and-tra nscode-360-for-vista-released/

Works so far. It isn't perfect to (seeking is a bitch, but it works somewhat). If you just watch & pause, there are no problems.

#2 The remote isn't 125 US$. I really do wonder where you looked, or at what product you looked.
See here: http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Universal-Media-Rem ote/dp/B000B6MLSM/ref=acc_access_vg_ai_7_title/103 -0982751-6499833

25 US$. Expensive, but okay.

#3 Yes, kinda sucks. Have the same problem.

Re:Don't playa hate, congratulate!

[scharwenka]

For #1, check out TVersity (free). There's a decent step-by-step here.

I've had it running on my setup (xbox 360 wired in, Vista RTM on a laptop connected wirelessly) for a while now... works flawlessly for streaming audio, pictures, video... if you've got the codecs, TVersity will stream it.

It replaces the Media Player-based media sharing... not sure how it will affect your MCE setup.

Microsoft didn't offer that rebate

[hudsonhawk]

Microcenter offered that rebate.

They launched a new gaming store inside their store, and were using the rebate offer to lure new customers into the store. It seemed to be working too, I certainly wouldn't have known about the store if not for the rebate (my brother-in-law had me pick one up for him).

This has nothing to do with net neutrality

[hudsonhawk]

(This may be a double-post, sorry if it is; my other post got eaten)

This has nothing to do with net neutrality. It would be a service offered by AT&T, using MS technology. It would be no different than how Comcast uses its bandwidth to offer digital cable programming and VOIP to their customers.

IPTV ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Xbox 360 to have IPTV"

Since when does a state agency like PBS affiliate Iowa Public Television (IPTV)
provide content to a commecial enterprise like Microsoft?

Link: http://www.iptv.org/ (Copyright 1995 - 2007)

". . . Welcome to IPTV Online, the home of comprehensive companion Web sites for national and local television programs and specials, as well as original Web content and real-time learning adventures. With more than 5,000 pages of content to explore, visitors to IPTV Online can delve further into the subjects they most enjoy--from news to history and the arts to science and technology. "

". . . By merging online and television media, IPTV Online is pioneering the creation and distribution of interactive programming to advance education, culture and citizenship."

Yep, that's "IPTV"!

" . . . The Information available on IPTV's Web sites may include intellectual property that is protected under the copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws of the United States and/or other countries ("Intellectual Property Laws"). Such Intellectual Property Laws generally prohibit the unauthorized reproduction, distribution or exhibition of all text, photographic and graphic (art and electronic) images, music, sound samplings and other protected materials. The violation of applicable Intellectual Property Laws may give rise to civil and/or criminal penalties. "

Well legalities have not stop Microsoft before . . .

Just goes to show a liitle acronym research might be in order . . .

Re:IPTV ?

[amliebsch]

Since you took the time to copy and paste legal provisions, I thought you might as well know why MS probably has nothing to worry about.

1. As a general rule, you can't copyright an acronym. Trademark would be the applicable law. But...

2. There's no indication that MS (or anybody) plans to use "IPTV" as a trademark for a commercial service. Instead, it's a simple acronym for a type of technology, like "RAID". Furthermore...

3. Even if they were planning to trademark it, there's no indication that Iowa Public Television has already trademarked "IPTV."

Brian Crecente a Journalist?

[gamer4Life]

Try "Blogger". Linking to web sites doesn't count as journalism.

Unsurprisingly, Kotaku.com is one of the most anti-Sony/pro-Microsoft gaming sites out there.

Windows Home Server

[westlake]

a little more on Windows Home Server:

1 First to market will be from HP. 1.8GHx Sempron. Four Drive Bays. Four USB Ports, 10"x5"x9."
2 Software based on Windows Server 2003. No sales to end users.
3 "Smart" automated backups of all Windows systems on the network. Remote access through free WindowsLiveInternet address.
4 Stream media to the XBox 360 and (any?) Windows device.
5 Appears as SMB file server to other operating systems.
6 Open a drawer to an unused bay, snap in a drive, no need to power down. (Hot-swappable RAID configurations?)
7 Should be in stores around September.

Microsoft, HP Unveil Windows Home Server

LOL, telling the truth is "Flamebait"...

[Anonymous Coward]

And what makes it even funnier is that the above story uses "shipped" when refering to Sony's PS3.

Nope, no agenda or biases here on slashdot what so ever.... Considering the number "games" Microsoft has played as well, you can't really trust either of them.

I Do Love Racing Games

[Petersko]

Either you got a bunch of racing titles as part of a bundle or you like them. If it is the later, give Project Gotham Racing a try. I know the title is lame. You are not racing in the bat mobile, it is a very good title.

I bought them. I dearly wish there were a Rallisport Challenge sequel coming out, but alas... the original developers don't own the title.

PGR2 (in my list) should actually be PGR3 (Project Gotham Racing 3). Being a launch title and consequently since reduced in price, I definitely had to get it.

New 360 with HDMI and Larger HDD

[aplusjimages]

The 20GB HDD won't be an issue with PCTV when the new Xbox360 roles out with HDMI and a 120GB HDD. Thanks M$ for screwing your current xbox customers. There better be a good trade-in deal.