Details are sketchy, but rumor has it that Disney, the parent company of the ESPN networks, is planning to stream live sports via XBOX Live.  According to the short article that I read, it will be similar to the ESPN360 service that is currently available online.  As an avid sports fan, ESPN is one of the major reasons that I still have cable at all.  If this plan comes to fruition, I will almost definitely kiss my cable bill goodbye.  Between Hulu, Netflix, and this, my entertainment needs will be satisfied.

During my morning Gizmodo read, I came across a post where John Shappert, VP of Interactive Entertainment at Microsoft has stated that he thinks that they’re less than halfway done with the 360. I realize that Project Natal is a huge step for the console, but less than 50%? Come on. The original XBOX was released in 2001 and was discontinued in 2006. That’s 5 years for you math majors out there. This November will mark the 4th birthday for the 360, which would make one think that an XBOX 720 (or maybe XBOX Natal) could be coming next year. Apparently not. Don’t get me wrong, I think that this is a good thing. Maybe the poor sales performance of the PS3 to date has the console makers reevaluating their strategies. Why sink an outrageous sum of money into research and development of a completely new console when it will take you a few years just to break even (or even longer if you are Sony). It makes much more sense to stretch the life of the current generation, and spend those R&D bucks on innovations like NXE, Natal, and anything else they may have up their sleeves, which aren’t nearly as expensive to develop. Another reason why I hope this is true is because I don’t feel like dropping a few hundred bucks more on a new console. If things like Natal are as good as advertised, they’ll get my money. I have a lot of games for my 360, and I hope that it continues to adorn my entertainment center for years to come (with only GREEN lights). Full article is over at Gizmodo.

Ok, so I am jumping the gun and not listing details. This is definitely a developing story, so I’ll be back with more if someone else doesn’t beat me to it. Microsoft has unveiled the 306’s motion control unit, and there is no Wii-mote required. The few shots that I have seen are pretty sweet. This could be A LOT of fun.

**UPDATE**
OK, so the new motion control setup is called Project Natal, which I think is kind of a strange name, but whatever. Rather than using a controller like the Wii setup, this unit can detect your motions. You can kick, jump, move, etc, and it get translated into the game. At first look, this is utterly amazing. However, although seeing is believing, I want to really SEE it. How much of the demo is Hollywood smoke and mirrors. Another super-cool feature is that when the camera sees your face, it can automatically sign you into Live. I am not ready to declare the Wii dead, but this defilitely takes a lot of wind out of their sails. Now let’s see what Sony’s counter is…..other than the PSP Go.

In what I consider a welcome move, Microsoft is going to start calling out cheaters. Now mind you, this isn’t cheaters who place a mic up to a speaker to get an achievement, but rather people who knowingly manipulate a game to excel over others. For a little while now, Microsoft has adopted a policy of resetting a cheater’s gamerscore to 0 in order to discourage cheating. After evaluating this policy, it has been determined that it wasn’t working as well as they had thought, and thus the new policy was born. With the new policy, if someone is found to be cheating, glitching, profile switching, etc, then their gamerscore will be set to 0 as before, but now their gamercard will also be labeled with a “Cheater” tag. We’ll see how this one works out. The article that I read did not list any more specifics, like how long you will be branded as a cheater. I personally don’t care if I was labeled a cheater (I don’t cheat), but with a gamerscore that has yet to top 5000, I don’t have much to lose. Any thoughts on this one?

It seems like the world may get motion control for the XBOX 360 after all. Techflash is reporting that Microsoft and CXO J “Don’t call me Jay” Allard have applied for a patent for a “magic wand”, which is purported to be the said motion control device for the 360. Here’s an interesting tidbit……the patent application was originally filed in November of 2007, which is a year after the Wii was released. So while the world has been moaning about how Microsoft and Sony were behind the game on motion control, it looks like at least one of those two started working once they saw the success of the Wii. The question that remains is “is this it?”. Only time will tell.