With E3 in full swing Microsoft was first out of the gate with announcements of new, cool stuff. At a special event yesterday the Redmond Giant revealed its Xbox 360 is now the world’s top selling gaming console, beating out the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii.
In addition, the company announced new features for the Kinect motion-sensing controller and will be incorporating voice-commands into popular games like Madden 13 and FIFA 13, which will allow gamers to call plays with simple commands. “This will be the biggest year for games on Xbox,” corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios, Phil Spencer said. “Last year we added over 200 million new movies, television shows and videos on Xbox Live. Over the next year we plan to double the content you can find on Xbox.”
During the event Microsoft also revealed its Xbox Music service for the Xbox 360, Windows Phone and Windows 8 platforms. Details are still scarce on this service but Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi promised the service will feature a library of over 30 million tracks. Not bad.
Microsoft also announced Xbox SmartGlass for Windows PCs and mobile devices including Apple’s iPhone and iPad. The app acts as a remote control and allows users to interact with and view games and videos on their consoles.
SmartGlass will also be able to serve as a secondary screen that provides additional content, whether it be from a video or a game on the 360, to the user’s PC or smartphone. Obviously, we’ll need to see this one in action in order to determine its real value, if any. Although, at least from the demo, it does look kinda cool.
Microsoft’s full press release is after the break.
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