Xbox 360 owners should be excited about the announcements Microsoft made today at E3! A number of new games were shown, including Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, and Resident Evil 5 (interesting that the most anticipated games are all sequels). They announced a bunch of new downloadable games, and will finally make community-designed games available in the next update. They’re enabling “play from hard drive” functionality, and have added a few new display support options.
Other new features include the ability to browse Xbox Live Marketplace content on the web, and the Xbox Live Party System which enables up to eight friends to connect to watch a movie, play a game, or share photos. Related to that feature are the new avatars, an extension to gamertags akin to Nintendo’s Mii.
And then there’s the two biggest announcements of all: the dashboard is getting a makeover, and Live Gold members will soon have access to Netflix streaming. When I heard about the dashboard update I thought, “finally”:
“When people turn on their Xbox 360s this fall, they’ll get an entirely new interface and Dashboard, an entirely new Xbox through the magic of software,” said John Schappert, head of Live services.
Microsoft is a software company after all, it’s about time they take advantage of that to do some cool new things with the console.
When I heard about the Netflix streaming feature, I thought “cool”. I agreed right away with MG Siegler:
With one fell swoop, Microsoft may have dealt its strongest blow in the consumer market to Apple in years.
Then I realized I live in Canada.
Netflix only serves U.S. customers at the moment, and as far as I know plans to expand to Canada and the UK were shelved a long time ago. The amount of content on Xbox Live for Canadians is already far behind our American counterparts, and this announcement just means we’re even further behind. As Mathew Ingram says:
If what you like is anything made by the CBC and the occasional CTV show like Little Mosque on the Prairie, then you are probably going to be in heaven. Otherwise, you are out of luck.
Sad, but true. I’m excited for the new dashboard and other features, but once again disappointed that as a Canadian my access to media via the Internet is severely limited.
MasterMaq's Blog 
Spoof your IP?
Not good enough, assuming that would even work. You need to pay for these services, so you’d need to spoof the IP, have a US billing address, and hope that nothing changed after you went to all that trouble.
Sucks, I know. The 360 movie selection right now is abyzmal. Might as well as not even be on there. Why is this again?
too true…i guess they dont like canadian money! i would rent off of the marketplace more often but when it takes 40 min to DL a 720p kids show it kinda takes the convenience out of it and how often can i really watch strange brew? I bet it is our side of the deal that has screwed us, all that canadian content crap!!
Maybe us Canadian users should appeal to Microsoft for a price reduction for xbox live gold accounts on the basis that the services offered are sub par. Or maybe we should bug the CRTC to pay us to receive less benefits from our subscription. I know it won’t happen, but sitting on our hands won’t change it. F@#$ the CRTC, I don’t see what canadian business they are protecting as no other canadian business currently competes with netflix on xbox live. Why doesn’t Microsoft talk with Zip to get streaming for us that way?
Hello !
I’m new on this forum so I introduce me…
My name is Jason I’m 18 years old, I’m Deutsch.
I like: horses and dogs…
Nice to meet you