Watch all red carpet interviews from Streaming Media West in San Jose.
My brother Michael bought a Sony Playstation today, on black Friday, at our local Game Stop. We are playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 right now while I write this. It’s very satisfying.
Let’s call it “background research” on game consoles as the center of a TV Everywhere experience.
Microsoft, of course, has the Xbox. Mark Whitten, GM of Xbox Live, gave the opening keynote at Streaming Media West.
Mark’s vision of the digital home starts with our ability to socialize around all the content coming into our living room, whether it is the Super Bowl audience playing backseat coach, or Desparate Housewives audience chattering away about plot twists.
Content producers can create many to many relationships around the viewing experience, rather than one way broadcasts. For example, with American Idol, I can interact with the show, such as by voting for a winner, and chatter away with my friends, even seeing real time which friends are voting for which contestants. The experience will move from an exclusively sit back / passive observer experience to an active, participatory experience.
When people turn on their system, they can see which of their friends are online, what show they are watching and connect with them in real time. Xbox live has connected 20 million televisions and people together. People can chat with each other using headsets while watching the show.
Xbox announced last week that it has integrated with Facebook so a user can connect with both their facebook and Xbox friends and have meaningful social interactions around the content they are consuming.
Mark’s goal is “The entertainment you want with the people you care about wherever you are. It’s easy to find and discover my friends, the content that matters and to interact with the content and friends in meaningful ways.”
By creating the social layer around the content, and turning audiences into community, shows form longer term relationships with their audiences.
Xbox Live integrated with Netflix last year. The Zune video marketplace has content from all the studios. It can stream at 1080p straight to a consumers Xbox attached to a flat screen TV. And it doens’t take 3 minutes to load. The movie starts instantaneously.
Content companies are building subscription, pay-per-view and ad-supported models on the Xbox platform.
Hopefully content companies will start to develop new programming from scratch and build in, from the start, the level of interactivity that two way services and platforms such as the Xbox can deliver.
