Xbox marketing shifting focus to become 'an entertainment brand'
Xbox will become more than a gaming brand, a VP reveals. With 40% of all Xbox activity being "non-game," Microsoft will market the platform "more as an entertainment brand this year."
It's no secret that for most of its two-console life cycle, Xbox has primarily attracted hardcore gamers. But through initiatives like Kinect, and its early partnership with Netflix, Xbox is reaching a much broader audience. In a recent blog, Frank Shaw, Microsoft VP of Corporate Communications, discussed the company's intent on making Xbox much more than just a gaming device. "Xbox = entertainment" is the new mantra, and a new campaign will echo that sentiment. "You’ll see Xbox marketed more as an entertainment brand this year," Shaw notes.
With more than 10 million Kinects sold so far, and newfound success with casual gamers, it shouldn't be surprising that the Xbox is becoming increasingly a non-gaming platform. In fact, Shaw notes that 40 percent of all Xbox activity is "non-game," with an average of 30 hours of monthly video playback per system. Expanding its focus beyond gaming is precisely why "you’ve seen us invest in partnerships with ESPN, Netflix and Hulu. That is why we’ve baked social directly into the experience with Xbox Live."
Shaw promises that next week's E3 conference will reveal "how far we’ve come." It's likely we'll see new video partnerships and new ways of using Kinect. And as exciting as that might be, we're hopeful Microsoft doesn't forget the real reason we're paying attention: we want great games.
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Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Xbox marketing shifting focus to become 'an entertainment brand'.
Xbox will become more than a gaming brand, a VP reveals. With 40% of all Xbox activity being "non-game," Microsoft will market the platform "more as an entertainment brand this year."-
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As long as they let me watch BBC iplayer on my 360 rather than not allowing me because the BBC wants people to be able to watch it for free on the 360 since UK citizens have already paid for it via TV license regadless of sivler vs gold membership (my sentances need more work this late at night). Hay who knows maybe I'll get to watch LoveFilms (Netflix) too and maybe even stream a greater variety of formats like .mkv, I'll just go sleep and dream shall I?
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You can play .mkv on your xbox.
http://support.divx.com/faq/view/supportFAQen107/video_tutorials_-_other?id=6
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A sign of health for the brand, that things are comfortable enough for it diversify. Live is still their crown jewel and will define Xbox more than anything else. Hardware comes and goes but Microsoft got the first mover advantage with Live and they just need to keep that edge and extend it to other devices while adding features like cloud/server side processing and storage. I say next generation Xbox and Xbox Live rollout in 2013.
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As much as I enjoy my 360 and my XBL sub and watching netflix on it I honestly can't see myself buying any kind of device for $300 as an entertainment unit with the limitations of a 360. I mean, the DVD player doesn't do any SD>HD scaling worth mentioning. It doesn't have blu-ray. The codecs are still somewhat limited in terms of streaming them via Media Center. There's also a lot of services not accessible on a 360 and won't be until MS adds them.
In the end it comes down to this simple question: Is there anything other than gaming worth doing on a 360 that can't be done better on a HTPC? 360 needs blu-ray and 7.2 before actually being something of value seeing as in order to use the entertainment capacities of the platform you also have to sub to XBL. That $60 annual could be put towards a higher quality mobo or soundcard on an HTPC. Then again, people who buy consoles tend to be tech illiterate so, w/e, I'm probably fully biased due to not being the target audience.-
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I am also one of those PC gamers as well. But I also have 100 people on my flist and only around 3-4 of them have the technical 'expertise' to trigger ports, do a tracert, research the input lag on hdtvs let alone build a PC from scratch. So, they do 'tend' to be tech illiterate and trying to dispute this by pointing out the small group of users who the statement did not apply to isn't really making any kind of point.
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"I mean, the DVD player doesn't do any SD>HD scaling worth mentioning"
I've had the opposite experience. From what I've seen, the XBOX upscaler is excellent. Granted, the last time I did a detailed comparison, it was against the ps2 which had no scaling. However, there was a very noticeable difference, so there is at least some decent scaling going on. I haven't compared it against a standalone upscaling DVD player, but I have done some quick comparisons of the XBOX 360 vs the PS3 and they look pretty close in terms of upscaling.
The problem with XBOX 360 is that the upscaler is only enabled with certain connectors. The Compoonent connections will disable the upscaling due to some stupid DRM type rule, so I went out and got the VGA adapter which somehow works around that restriction. I haven't tested it with HDMI since I already have the VGA adapter, so your your mileage may vary. However, if you have an old XBOX and are using the component connector then that would explain your issue.
This covers it: http://forums.highdefdigest.com/hd-dvd-video-game-consoles/30659-xbox-360-upscaling.html
Looks like HDMI is supposed to upscale the same as the VGA adapter, so if you're using HDMI and still not satisfied then you must have something with an excellent upscaler to compare it to. -
guess what, i use my 360 to stream dvd rips from my computer to my tv. i could certainly buy something else but i don't "require" blu ray at this time, so it's working great. i bought it to play games and hey i can stream video to it! works just fine for me for right now, and i bet for a lot of people
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With streaming, the need for BluRay will diminish in the marketplace as time goes on and few people have a 5.1 system let alone 7.2. Those with 5.1 and beyond are not going to be using a console as their primary playback device (PS3 included). The phrase "good enough" gets bandied about a lot in console vs PC debates and it can be used here in the context of entertainment and media playback devices.
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No, but there's a huge difference in how everything sounds. Surround audio isn't just for directional sounds like explosions or things flying by front to back- it can also make scenes with just dialogue or subtle ambient audio a lot better. When I switch back to stereo for streaming- even on basic TV shows- the difference is huge.
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Actually, I think you might have it backwards. Everything I've seen about Blu-Ray sales is along the lines of what MSFT predicted a couple years ago. In short "Um, where's our volume?" The jump from DVD to Blu-Ray has been a much bigger obstacle for most people than was originally predicted, and with streaming HD now a viable option, Blu Ray has problems.
And don't get me wrong. I have quite a few Blu-Ray discs and I can't argue that the quality is not better than most streaming HD, but it's just not enough to get me to buy a movie unless I LOVE it. In fact, most of my Blu-Ray stuff is for the kids, because the packages offered a digital copy, a DVD copy and a Blu-Ray copy. Part of the reason people don't move away from DVD is because they have portable DVD players for their kids, after all.
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