Microsoft reportedly acquires home automation company R2 Studios to bolster Xbox team

[Squilliam]

VGKing said:

Squilliam said:
This is exactly in line with what I expect from Microsoft's next generation efforts. It looks like they are really going to push the software and services side of things to the maximum.

But the Xbox 360 pretty much does anything you would it to do in terms of Netflix, Hulu..etc.
What possible feature could they add to make people upgrade?

Home automation: Controlling things like thermostats, appliances etc because the console is always at home and always plugged in to the network.

Distributed computing: Pushing content to mobile devices and pulling computing tasks as home to the console itself so for instance if you take pictures on your phone you can use the performance of the console to manipulate the media or say transcode video into other formats.

Media backups/home server: Have all your media on the consoles HDD with seamless over the cloud backups so you can access stored information anywhere and you have an assurance of having a backup. So the console can act as both a NAS and Cloud interface.

Education apps: Take advantage of the natural computing interface to teach children and adults and use the fact that the console itself is a trusted platform to 'prove' competency so when you learn something it can be meaningful to more than just yourself. So not only will you be able to say learn French, you can prove you learnt French so you can put it on your CV and if someone asks you for a certificate you can give it.

Improved media integration: Natural voice communication, meta searches etc to make it easier to find content you want to watch and play in 1080P high definition with better compression, H.265 promises twice the visual quality or half the bandwidth for the same quality but requires a lot more performance to use, final ratification January 2013.