Xbox announcements from E3

Xbox announcements from E3

Xbox announcements from E3. Microsoft Xbox @ E3 announcements. It’s been a big day today for Microsoft, being the first to kick off E3 2011 with their media briefing this morning. A lot of gaming news had been announced for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Kinect, Xbox LIVE, and Windows Phone, and it’s almost too hard to catch them all. In case you’ve missed some of the news, below we’ll provide a summary recap of all the Xbox-related announcements made today:


New Xbox Dashboard

The new Xbox Dashboard, coming holiday season this year, features the metro-look that we’ve seen on the recent Windows 8 immersive UI demo, including Live Tiles. According to Major Nelson’s blog post, the new Xbox Dashboard will be:

Simpler. Cleaner. Easier to navigate. With the addition of new entertainment content on Xbox LIVE and our commitment to continuously improving the overall Xbox experience, we’ve updated the dashboard with a new look and feel that makes it even more open, inviting and intuitive to navigate. All of your favorite content is categorized in a way that is easy to browse and find what you’re looking for, plus you can use voice anywhere in the dashboard to effortlessly navigate and get to what you want.

Xbox LIVE TV

Microsoft also announced that Live TV will also be coming to Xbox 360 soon, as we have reported earlier. It seems like the deals might not have been signed yet, as Microsoft will be providing more details later in the coming months:

Over the past two years, Microsoft has joined with some of the world’s largest TV operators to bring live television to Xbox LIVE in the United Kingdom with Sky TV, in France with Canal+ and in Australia with FOXTEL. Now, Microsoft has announced its commitment to expand access to live television programming on Xbox 360 to more providers in the United States and around the world during the upcoming year. Consumers will enjoy news, sports and their favorite local channels, all just a voice command away, on Xbox 360.

YouTube and UFC on Xbox

In addition to on-demand videos from Hulu Plus, Netflix and Zune, Microsoft will also be adding YouTube integration on Xbox 360 in Fall 2011, bringing "web original" content to your TV. Just like the other services, YouTube will be fully supported by Kinect’s motion sensing and voice technologies.

Also, Microsoft will also be partnering with UFC to bring live pay-per-view matches to your Xbox 360 this Fall. Like Netflix, ESPN and Hulu Plus, this feature will be available for Xbox LIVE Gold Members only, and it will also bring classic fights, interviews and exclusive behind-the-scenes clips in an all-new interactive way.

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