Microsoft E3 announcements for 360 Options

[impala454]

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2...ntStreamPR.mspx

LOS ANGELES — July 14, 2008 — An exciting new home theater experience is coming to living rooms this holiday season. At the E3 Media and Business Summit, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) and Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX), the world’s largest online movie rental service, today unveiled an exclusive partnership to offer consumers the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix to the television via the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system. Xbox 360 will be the only game system that lets users instantly watch movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix. This movie watching innovation will be available to Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also Netflix subscribers and will let those users enjoy streaming movies from Netflix on Xbox LIVE at no additional cost.

This could be huge for both companies. It might also blow the newer boxes like roku and others right outta the water.

MS also announced a complete software overhaul. not sure what I think yet, looks kinda wii like.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/14/microso...-new-dashboard/

either way, a couple of pretty interesting announcements.

[impala454]

I wouldn't exactly say the same thing as it's a pay to rent/buy service vs a pay per month unlimited service, and 85 available vs 10,000. I dunno why the hell someone would purchase a movie over the PS3 for $15 though. What is interesting is it seems this wasn't ever announced and it's already out... wonder if they had it under wraps and wasn't ready, then quickly pushed it out after the MS announcement...