The Future of the Living Room

The future of the consumer home and the future of the living room is something Microsoft has been passionate about for more than a decade.

While there are transformative technologies in development that will create opportunities for you to engage and interact with your environment in the home in new ways, one of the biggest changes will come from a much more familiar place – the television. The main device in the living room will still be the main screen display (the TV) but not as we know it.

Microsoft has been active in the entertainment space for years and today delivers premium experiences directly to your living room through a combination of software and services.

The revolution of gaming consoles and services like Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE are changing the way we consume entertainment, play games and interact with friends directly from the conform of our living rooms through one device, replacing the traditional TV model.

In the UK you can watch movies and TV content through Sky and YouTube, listen to music through Zune, watch sports and even chat with friends on Facebook and Twitter! In fact an IAB gaming report shows 43% of console users now use their console to watch movies/TVs, 36% use them to buy products and 35% use them to access social networks.

What does this mean for advertisers?

The future of TV will be flexible, interactive and measureable; TV will work a lot like, well, the Web. Consoles like the Xbox platform offer advertisers the best of both worlds -- the interactivity and accountability of the Web and the reach and high definition impact of TV. 42 percent of Xbox LIVE Gold members in the US are watching an average of an hour of television and movies on their Xbox, every single day or more than 30 hours of digitally distributed television and movies a month. In a number of studies consumers have spent an average of 8 minutes interacting with a brand compared to 30 seconds on TV

Xbox’s vision around the future of the living room is to offer highly engaged experiences. You can connect with communities and interact with live votes while a TV show like XFactor is being viewed. This interaction also will also allow consumers to interact with ads.

Last June at Cannes, Xbox has also introduced Microsoft NUads – with NUads Xbox is cracking the code on interactive TV advertising. They’ve made implementation simple. All you need is a 30-second spot, a URL and a call to action, and you can have an interactive ad on the biggest screen in the house. We’ve made the user experience natural. What’s more natural than voice and gesture? NUads were demo’d at Cannes to give advertisers an opportunity to provide feedback prior to launch. Stay tuned for news of the launch of NuAds coming in 2012.

With all of this excitement and engagement around connected entertainment, let us know what YOU think the future of TV will offer.

Leena