Report: Xbox Entertainment greenlights global street soccer video series
Hoping to tap into the "world's most popular sport" market, Microsoft has revealed plans for an upcoming, Xbox-based video series focused on the global popularity of street soccer.
The series, dubbed "Every Street United," comes courtesy of Mandalay Sports Media, a production company specializing in capturing the inherent drama of sport on film. Each of the series' eight episodes will spend half an hour focused on athletes from around the world. Details are still being nailed down, but Deadline describes the series' stated purpose as a quest to find "the greatest undiscovered local street soccer players." Despite this, Deadline claims that each episode will also feature a link to video games (though this is said to be relatively indirect).
This move should come as little surprise to anyone following Microsoft's nascent push into the world of filmed content. In September, corporate vice president Phil Spencer expressed great interest in bringing sports programming to the Xbox, claiming that Microsoft would be "expanding what we do in sports to bring more international sports into the mix."
There's currently no word on when or how Every Street United might debut, but it seems likely that Microsoft would want to use the lure of soccer to compel prospective customers toward picking up an Xbox One.
