My Xbox 360 hasn’t gotten too much mileage beyond video games yet. There is a lot of video content available for me to download. But I just haven’t gotten around to it. But Microsoft believes that it can entice Xbox 360 owners to use their consoles as entertainment hubs.
The latest effort is a story in the New York Times that says Microsoft has drafted veteran Hollywood producer Peter Safran to produce original shows that will debut on the Xbox 360’s Xbox Live online gaming service. Already, gamers can download movies and TV shows to their game consoles. Safran’s work will be distributed first to the online service.
As the story mentions, Microsoft has had a sad history pouring money into its own original programming for the web. After spending $100 million a decade ago, it had almost nothing to show for it. But the company says that it has more deals to come.
This is not to say there is no good entertainment on the Xbox Live gaming service. Gamers love the previews of games that Microsoft releases on the site. And there are short originals such as hilarious Red vs. Blue, which are animated films that use the Halo game characters and are part of a game film genre known as “machinima.” I guess it’s time to upgrade that little Xbox 360 20-gigabyte hard disk, which can only store a handful of films. Safran is probably going to up the ante on the entertainment values for videos available on Microsoft’s online service.
