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Microsoft’s newest partnerships for its Xbox Live launches on Tuesday with thousands of hours of content from HBO Go, Comcast’s Xfinity TV and Major League Baseball’s MLB.TV, all of it controllable through voice or gesture commands via its Kinect device.
The Xbox Live has been morphing into an everything-entertainment device, and a slew of partnerships from the likes of Lovefilm and Epix joined others like Netflix and Hulu Plus in December. The three partners joining Tuesday were expected some time this year.
On Monday, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer for its interactive entertainment business Yusuf Mehdi told The Hollywood Reporter that entertainment usage like TV, music and movies on the Xbox 360 has overtaken multiplayer games usage.
Mehdi said the three new apps launching Tuesday amount to “probably the biggest update yet” for Xbox Live.
Major League Baseball will supply 2,430 live games that will also be archived, along with all of last season’s games. HBO Go is bringing its entire catalogue, amounting to thousands of show episodes. And the partnership with Xfinity is “the first time that Comcast has brought its On-Demand content to a console,” according to Mehdi.
Microsoft says that 40 million people worldwide subscribe to Xbox Live at a price of up to $60 per year. Besides the subscription revenue, Xbox Live is building an advertising business.
A trailer for the HBO Go on Xbox Live is below.
