Announced at the Microsoft CES press event, Netflix and Hulu Plus with Kinect support will be coming soon to the Xbox 360. The new features were stated as rolling out sometime during this coming spring. Although Hulu Plus, the premium service of the web based film and television content provider, has appeared on the Playstation 3, when it comes later this year it will be making it’s inaugural appearance on the Xbox platform. Similar to the Zune Market interface, swiping motions and voice recognition will both be used to navigate through the menus of both Netflix and Hulu Plus.
Although these announcements may be lacking to the core, it represents another step in the Kinect’s predominant ‘capture the casual’ marketing credo. Now in addition to the commercials showing families playing various Kinect games, Microsoft will now be able to add in the splash image of a family choosing a film for movie night or catching up on last season of 30 Rock.
Thankfully, it seems as if the suits at Microsoft (unlike those who seem to control peripheral development at Nintendo) are still putting a focus on furthering and maintaining the Kinect’s growing userbase. The newly announced Avatar Kinect, which looks to be some sort of visual chatroom that is navigated with a player’s Avatar (Playstation Home?), also makes it clear that Microsoft is not going to abandon the platform anytime soon.
These software announcements come on the heels of the news that Kinect has shipped 8 million units over the 60-day period following it’s release this fall. In addition to exceeding the revised Kinect launch sales expectations (Which went from 3 million to 5 million prior to it’s release), Microsoft also announced that the holiday season had seen Xbox 360 console sales surpass 50 million units, and the number of Xbox Live members increase to over 30 million users worldwide.
Popularity: unranked [?]
