It’s official, Verizon is teaming up with Microsoft to provide live TV on the Xbox, a first for the console. The rumors were accurate. It appears that the service will work like this: Verizon FIOS TV and Internet subscribers who have Xbox Live will be able to download a Verizon app designed specifically for the Xbox. Yes, it has Kinect functionality. The app will provide users with as-yet-ill-defined “collection” of content in HD right through their Xboxes.

This is a first for the Xbox — and consoles as a whole — and represents a step in a new direction for consoles that are trying harder and harder to market themselves as out-and-out media devices and not just expensive, shiny boxes for man-children with disposable incomes who like to get yelled at by unbelievably foul-mouthed 10-year-olds while playing Modern Warfare. Not that that depiction is right, but it does exist to some extent. Having TV content will make the Xbox more like a DVR (or VCR for you neanderthals) and hopefully open up its market. Of course, this all leads to one big, looming question. Why?

There’s always buzz about when the next PlayStation or Xbox is going to come out, or who’s going to win the next presidential election, but have you ever thought about how many more PlayStations, Xboxes or presidential elections you’re going to see before you bite the dust? Well, whether or not you have, this original Geekosystem infographic will tell you. By doing a little research, a couple of maths and ignoring a massive number of potential variables like premature death, bankruptcy, game-changing inventions, and the end of the world, I came up with 12 things that you will see before you die. Get ready to get pumped for the PlayStation 11.

Reminder: The Earth Is Falling Away From the Sun (Discover)

Hideous Gaming Disasters of 2010s (GamesRadar)

A Panoramic View of Mars (Fotoausflug.de)

Verily, Thor Spoilers Doth Abound in Great Number (Comic Book Movie)

This Toaster is An Xbox, Your Argument is Invalid (Destructoid)

A Clarification on Discussing Geek Sexism (Geek Feminism)

What We Might Have Had This Year, if Not For Copyright Law (Gizmodo)

(pic by smapte, via Geeks Are Sexy.)

If you want to find someone doing that kind of volume you’ve got to look outside the game business. At, say, Apple, which is pushing games on the iPhone and iPod touch. Apple sold more 14.1 million iPhones alone during the quarter ending in September. “Do I think that in the near term they can hurt us more than Microsoft?” Fils-Aime says. “Absolutely.”

–Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime on the relative threats presented to his company by Microsoft’s XBox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 as compared with casual gaming on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. Fils-Aime says Apple is the bigger threat, although he unsurprisingly gives the edge to Nintendo in the end.

(via Forbes; h/t Elder Geek. title Apple-unsanctioned app via iPhone in Canada)

With the release of Sony’s PlayStation Move and Microsoft’s Kinect looming on the horizon, it’s worth looking at the history of competition within the industry to see the potential impact the two devices may have.

Most gaming generations have hot topics, memorable controversies and stiff competition: However, from this gamer’s point of view, most generations haven’t been as interesting as this current one due to the increasingly high stakes.

(Context.)

So here’s the problem with using a highly unorthodox method of sharing review copy for your highly anticipated new edition of a historically popular franchise with reviewers, namely, putting it up for sale on your online store for anyone who has the proper code.

The problem is: it is very likely that people will find a way to trick your servers and subsequently obtain and leak the game.

Apparently Microsoft hadn’t figured that out exactly when it put Halo: Reach on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Apparently he did it by expressing his love for the franchise in the most unlikely of places: The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The View.

He was on the shows more than a year ago, promoting a movie, but while he was on Ellen he gifted his host with an Xbox and a copy of Fallout 3, saying:

I played this video game so often that I injured my hand so severely that I had to go to a hand doctor and get injections in my hand because I love this video game so much.

Apparently all that dedication (and subsequent publication of said dedication) paid off, because he’ll be voicing Benny, the head of the Geckos family in Fallout: New Vegas.

Read on...

The long-rumored potential deal between ESPN and Microsoft’s XBox 360 to stream sporting events on the console is official.

The deal will bring 3500 sporting events to the XBox (with most in HD), accessible live or on demand. The feature offers extras like instant fan polling and trivia questions during games if desired. Plus, if you’re an XBox Live gold subscriber (about $50/year), you’ll get this feature at no additional cost.

Read more at SportsGrid.

If the hordes of circus performers failed to alert you at E3 last night, Microsoft’s Project Natal has been renamed Kinect. It’s to be a controller-free controller of sorts, plugging directly into the XBox 360 and allowing players to game via the motion-tracking dual cameras. It is to be capable of tracking “48 points of movement on the human body. It has the ability to recognize faces and voices.” While Microsoft was hazy on release specifics, MCV reports that Kinect will be available (somewhere) come November.

Not much detail on Kinect launch titles yet, either, but here’s what we know: