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Implications of IPTV-enabled Xbox 360?

You've watched or listened to the keynote, checked out the interface screenshots, watched the video, or simply heard about it through one of the 250+ news organizations that have already covered Microsoft's plans to add IPTV capability to the Xbox 360 in time for consumermas 2007.

So what?

What might this mean for the console wars? How will this change the game? We're not nearly as smart or creative as our collected readership (after all, Time made YOU the person of the year), so rather than rack our brains, we'll sift through yours and publish the best responses in a subsequent post.

Task: in your pithy best, share how you believe that this announcement might change the console war now underway, if at all.

Let's get a couple obvious ones out of the way first:

  • A larger hard drive is assured. Ain't no DVR going on with a measly 20GB hard drive.

  • Perhaps content partners might offer free Xbox 360s to consumers who purchase multi-month (or multi-year) IPTV service contracts, in much the same way that mobile phone service providers offer highly subsidized phones for customers who sign a one- or two-year service agreement.

  • Sony announces intent to match this functionality, but does as well copying Xbox IPTV as they've done copying Xbox Live.