Microsoft Corp. this week announced plans to roll out the next generation of TV entertainment on Xbox Live, the online entertainment service for Xbox 360. Nearly 40 world-leading TV and entertainment providers will begin rolling out entertainment services to the console this holiday, in more than 20 countries. Essentially, the Xbox Live is set to become a worldwide TV-service.

A total of 50 world-leading TV and entertainment partners have joined Xbox 360 & Xbox Live to transform TV entertainment. Xbox Live currently has 35 million members worldwide who spend 2.1 billion hours a month on the service, which saw three times the growth in video consumption last year. The renewed Xbox Live will enable watching favorite TV shows with family members on the same couch, all through Xbox Live. It will be possible to effortlessly switch from games to music to Live TV and more, simply by telling the Xbox 360 the wishes provided that the owner has Kinect controller (the new Xbox dashboard will also support different kinds of input).

The TV entertainment partners list includes Bravo, Comcast, HBO GO, Verizon FiOS and Syfy in the U.S.; BBC in the U.K., Telefónica in Spain; Rogers On Demand in Canada; Televisa in Mexico; ZDF in Germany; and MediaSet in Italy,. The Xbox Live members will now have access to both live and recorded content. The lineup of Xbox Love TV and video entertainment partners already includes AT&T, Netflix and Hulu Plus in the U.S., Telus in Canada, BSkyB in the U.K., Canal+ in France, Vodafone Portugal, VimpelCom in Russia, and Foxtel in Australia. The number will increase as Microsoft is in negotiations.

While the target is not officially said, it looks pretty much bold: acquire all possible TV-channels across the globe into Xbox Live. There will be natural legal, technical, financial problems to integrate all the world’s channels into Xbox Live. But once it is done, it will change the TV globally.

The Xbox Live TV ecosystem will potentially be available for all Xbox Live TV-enabled devices, which eventually will include Windows Phone-based smartphones, personal computers and tablets running Windows 8 operating system. In years from now, the Xbox Live TV may have a billion of subscribers.

“Today’s announcement is a major step toward realizing our vision to bring you all the entertainment you want, shared with the people you care about, made easy. Combining the world’s leading TV and entertainment providers with the power of Kinect for Xbox 360 and the intelligence of Bing voice search will make TV and entertainment more personal, social and effortless,” said Don Mattrick, president of the interactive entertainment business at Microsoft.

Tags: Microsoft, HDTV, Xbox, Xbox Live