Sports fans will love the new ESPN Xbox experience, which just became available as an update for Xbox Live Gold subscribers who are using a participating cable, satellite or internet service from ESPN3 (list). We just gave it a spin and snapped a few photos.
Like before, you can watch games in HD, but the biggest new feature lets you watch two live games at once, side-by-side, with full DVR controls for each. Or, watch a highlight and a game, or a navigate a scoreboard alongside a game (below).
During college football Saturdays, this will come very handy. The scoreboard also comes with the familiar Showdown game, which pits your predictions against others on Xbox Live.
There’s a new “mini-guide” which allows you to scroll through live games, clips and live scoreboards. You can also set up your own favorite sports, leagues and teams, customizing the guide (below). And it’s all Xbox Kinect-ready, so you can use your hands or (like I prefer) use voice controls.
In short, it’s very cool — easily the best single-screen sports experience to date, but there are two drawbacks. First, live games aren’t quite as crisp at 1080i HD, and fast-action can sometimes skip a frame. Second, this app makes us hungry for more live games. ESPN3 has some big gaps, namely pro sports such as the NFL. But we understand the ever-challenging and expensive world of sports licensing (for example, I’m betting the NFL network would like to create an Xbox app, too.)
While it’s not in this update, ESPN has said it plans to bring social viewing features to the app — which in our humble opinion, has tremendous potential. Can’t wait.