Among the lackluster announcements and demos for the bevy of Kinect games and other Microsoft first person shooters, came the news that ESPN is entering into a partnership with Xbox Live to deliver on-demand and streaming sports events to the 360 platform, which, to me, was the best news to come out this morning. Being one of the only reasons I hold onto a basic cable plan, ESPN being free to gold subscribers provides a reasonable incentive for me to show Comcast to the door. (Ed. Note: At least, if they don’t provide your internet connection that is.)
While I will probably never watch a live or on-demand event with any of my friends over Live, as demonstrated by ESPN analysts Trey Wingo and Josh Elliot, the lure of over 3,500 sports events with many in HD is enough to get me excited; lets just hope that the recent trend of showing Women’s Softball on ESPN does not extend to this new service. The ability to browse game scores in real time while using the service makes the ESPN bottom line look like an antique as it eliminates the aggravating wait times. I’d love to see these updates as a usable feature available during normal gameplay as well, but I won’t get my hopes up (I love baseball, but sometimes a box score is all I need). The usual Kinect controller-less interface is in full effect, but I somehow think I’ll find myself sticking with a few simple button presses in lieu of looking like someone ready for the loony bin as I wave frantically at my tv.
What ESPN and Microsoft are proposing delivers the final piece of the entertainment pie with music, movies, television, and social networking already covered, and I am hopeful that when it launches that it will be everything as promised, because I really hate sending a piece of my paycheck off to Comcast every month.
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