In the fierce competition for your console loyalty, Sony has been at the forefront for some time in regards to multimedia like video and music. Now Microsoft is fighting back with their own subscription-based music service. The major difference is that this is monthly fee for unlimited consumption as opposed to buying the music outright.
At a recent conference talking about the Skype purchase, it was stated that an Xbox Music service would be ready for autumn and it would have some 11 million songs. It was originally announced at the E3 press conference but only that there would be that many songs.
There have also been rumors that Microsoft is working on a subscription-based video service as well and are one of the companies looking to purchase Hulu presently.
Combined, the two new services could replace or be intergrated into the Zune system which many gamers have found bulky and hard to use on the Xbox 360 given that it was fashioned as a sort of bolt on.
The new Music service is said to be fully integrated with Kinect and will allow for voice search. Ideally, that would also be the case for any new video service from them as well since some interfaces, like Netflix, are not very ergonomic and waste more time than they save.
Kinect is Key to Success?
From all of the current details that have been released about Xbox Music, which is not all that much (11 million songs, autumn 2011, Kinect voice support) it seems that the key differentiator is the Kinect control.
This could be the ultimate control scheme for the whole of XBLA eventually and could really give it a boost in regards to audience expansion. 
By allowing for voice control, you don’t even need a controller to navigate millions of songs or thousands of videos. You should also, ideally, be able to play, pause, rewind, FF with the Kinect either with the wave of a hand or with a command like: Xbox Fast Forward one minute.
It brings a whole new meaning to total control.
Of course, don’t expect that you’ll be able to skip over commercials with those features. They’ll be sure to not allow that, after all that will be one of their major revenue streams, especially since they just announced an all new ad format for the Xbox LIVE.
The fact that they’ve got their own search engine, bing, which is supposed to start taking voice commands via the console, it’s no wonder that they’re going to milk the Kinect for all they can and we applaud that. Making the interface easier to use will definitely allow more people to interact.
