Just three short years after the CES 2007 announcement that Microsoft’s Mediaroom software would turn your Xbox 360 into an IPTV set-top box, Microsoft is finally ready to deliver on that promise (and no, the 2008 BT rollout doesn’t count). “I’m happy to announce that later this year AT&T will also enable subscribers to U-verse to enjoy [the new Mediaroom 2.0] service on their Xbox 360 consoles,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told his keynote audience. This was in addition to U-verse support for Windows 7 and Windows Mobile, though the details on all three platforms end there.
We’ll be digging for more details at CES this week, but this is certainly promising news for the country’s 2 million U-verse subscribers (and the “more than 20 million living units” that the service is purportedly available in).
During its CES 2010 keynote, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach announced 30 arcade titles will be available in the Xbox Game Room when the service launches this spring for the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows Live.
Hours following a leaked interview featuring Robbie Bach, Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a virtual arcade room for Xbox Avatars via this trailer unveiled at CES 2010. The Xbox Game Room is slated to hit the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows Live this spring, allowing players to visit a virtual room filled with classic arcade titles. According to the video, users will be able to customize their arcade rooms (presumably for Microsoft funny money) and challenge friends to a plethora of original arcade versions of games such as Centipede, Outlaw, and Star Raiders.
The news that Game Room will also launch for Games For Windows Live raises the question, will the service see Avatars added in the near future? As the upcoming arcade is centered around entertainment for your virtual identity, we’d hope the service would see an interface upgrade bringing it closer to the Xbox’s current NXE, rather than locking our poor Avatars up inside of an executable program.
While Microsoft’s CES announcement that Xbox Live “is now an active community of over 20 million people” is somewhat blunted by Sony’s claim of 38 million PlayStation Network accounts (though if our dozens of collective PSN accounts are any indication, some of us have more than one), Redmond did have some other numbers to share regarding Xbox and Xbox Live during tonight’s CES keynote. First, “Nearly 10 million people have logged into Xbox Live’s nongaming applications” including “Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm, Sky, Canal and Zune.” We’ll do the math for you: that’s 50% of the Xbox Live audience, and those are all paying Gold users.
More numbers: “Between Christmas and New Years Day, Xbox Live experienced its busiest week ever, adding a new member every second and a record of more than 2.2 million concurrent members online.” And not a network failure in sight! Congrats, Microsoft! Lastly, “there are now over 39 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world,” “more than 500 million games have been sold” and “$20 billion spent in retail.” Feel free to bookmark this post for frequent consultation in your comment debates.
It’s oh-so enticing: you find a copy of a brand new game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a pirate site and the temptation to download it is too strong.
Well, that temptation may have cost up to 1 million users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live the ability to use that service. According to a report in InformationWeek, Microsoft has banned as many as a million players from Xbox Live for altering their consoles in order to play pirated versions of games.
This week, Activision’s new Call of Duty was released, and InformationWeek speculated that because pirated versions of the game appeared on various sharing sites in advance of the release, the game’s developer may have exhorted Microsoft to enact the bans.
“Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with digital rights management technologies designed to detect pirated software,” InformationWeek wrote, “but some players have successfully ‘modded,’ or modified, their machines to circumvent DRM protections.”
Even if someone has been banned, their Xbox will still play offline games, InformationWeek said. But it’s not at all clear if the bans are permanent or if Microsoft will allow those who have been booted from Xbox Live to return at some point down the line. Click here to read more.. »
