The Xbox s Kinect accessory comes with cameras and microphones and can see and hear the kids as they watch and play.
This spring, for the first time, subscribers to Xbox s Live online service in the U.S. spent more time consuming video and music than multiplayer games.
It was the further versatility of Bill's box that perhaps pointed to the Xbox's strength as a multimedia device.
It manufactures products like Amazon's Kindle, Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation, among many other consumer electronics.
That's an eon in the warp-speed tech industry, and the company faces a drastically altered landscape as it enters a new round of battles with its top competitors: Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Wii (and, now, the Wii U).
It has the potential to beat both Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's broadband PlayStation networks in the race to dominate online gaming.
's social networking phenomenon MySpace and online videogame services like Microsoft 's Xbox Live, U.S. Internet carriers saw usage increase up to 90% in the past year, Nortel estimates.
By November 2007, Xbox Live s fifth anniversary, the service had over 8 million subscribers.
Furthermore, as Microsoft showed off the Xbox's new entertainment dashboard, Kinect has applications far beyond games.
Since getting outed just head of Microsoft's big reveal, Xbox 360's SmartGlass has been under wraps.
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The problem, of course, is that the contributions of Microsoft's Xbox 360 to the company's Entertainment and Devices division remain modest.
Other people are praying you'll deliver Microsoft 's Xbox 360, Apple Computer 's iPod nano, or a doll and outfit from the American Girl store.
Microsoft risks losing potential game users and damaging its relationship with existing game software suppliers if it doesn't cut the Xbox's price, Deutsche Securities' Takashi Oya said.
The favorite is Nvidia, chip designer for Xbox's well-regarded graphics.
Though not commenting on the date of the event, Microsoft did mention that it would be focusing more on the Xbox's role as a set-top entertainment center going forward.
Starting Sunday, Sept. 20, you can buy Backspacer on the Pearl Jam Web site, on iTunes, on Xbox's Rock Band game, as a Verizon ringtone or at Target.
Early reports positioned the service as the Xbox's answer to AirPlay, a description that proved fairly apt, though Microsoft certainly went a ways toward fleshing that perception out during a demo at its event.
ENGADGET: Xbox SmartGlass: did Microsoft just render the Wii U controller obsolete?
This dominance in the used-game category, coupled with the launch of the current generation of videogame hardware, such as Nintendo's Wii and DS, Microsoft 's Xbox 360, and Sony 's Playstation 3 and PSP systems, has resulted in outstanding growth since the acquisition.
Wii U has to make the case to turn to it rather than a set-top box connected TV, competing games console - Xbox's extensive range of TV partners makes it a formidable competitor in this respect - and even a tablet or smartphone.
It runs both Xbox's gaming interface and the Windows Media Centre Edition, and it can, connected to a TV in the lounge, or the bedroom, pull HD video, including live, streamed, pre-downloaded, copy-protected, digital rights managed video from your PC onto your TV.
The PS3 has been outsold by Microsoft's Xbox 360 for 20 months running in the US - the world's biggest games market, according to data from NPD.
As we learned when the console was initially announced, the Wii U's "proprietary high-density optical discs" hold up to 25GB of data -- equivalent with that of Sony's single-layer Blu-ray format on the PlayStation 3, and much larger than the Xbox 360's dual-layer DVD format.
ENGADGET: Take a very, very close look at the round-edged Wii U proprietary discs
In the company's second Xbox 360 controller -- the Sabertooth -- Razer's focusing on the tournament gaming crowd rather than simply outfitting its Onza with "Tournament Edition" specs.
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The real future of book and media could be in Microsoft's Xbox, Jayson says.
You can even slap a miniature QWERTY keyboard onto Microsoft 's Xbox 360 controllers.
Microsoft's Xbox console, launched a year after the PS2, has sold 6.5 million units worldwide.
In the end, Microsoft's Xbox 360 hit its target launch in November 2005, becoming its own success.
Social games are less complex than those played on consoles like Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Sony PlayStation 3.
Beyond simple controller or media remote input, Flixster's Xbox 360 app employs Kinect for gesture and voice-based navigation.
In contrast with the Dell and the Mac, Microsoft's Xbox 360 uses an even quicker, three-core IBM chip.
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