The fight for your living room

If anyone has purchased a next-gen gaming system in the past three years or so, they have discovered one overriding principle in the experience.

The Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 have higher inspirations than simply playing games or occasionally firing up a DVD when your stand alone player goes up in flames.

They're jockeying to be the air traffic controller of your entire living room.

Microsoft is starting to drum up more noise for their revamped Xbox Live content, which honestly makes it look like a Wii knockoff.

Most interesting to me, Microsoft has entered into a partnership to stream the instantly viewable movies to the Xbox 360 and straight through to your TV. Taking the laptop/VGA piece out of the equation sounds great.

The constant annexation does not.

I'm already uncomfortable with the isolation that's build into my iPod, so as Microsoft keeps making footholds, I'm a little uneasy with this.

Sure, it works out well for me as an Xbox owner, but if I'd gone the PS3 route, I'm out in the cold right now. It's not a stretch to see proprietary hardware, software and cabling taking the whole system down in short order.

I'm really torn on this one. On the one hand, I can't stand system-specific lockdowns that force people to buy only one hardware line.

On the other, this looks pretty cool and I'm a little excited to see what else is included in the next wave of technology. I'm guessing Microsoft wouldn't agree to any partnership with Netflix that leaves them a gap to stream video to the other consoles as well.

(Image from: TheTechHerald.com)