In my opinion, Microsoft's Xbox-related announcements at CES 2008 was absolutely craptastic. Although Microsoft promised everyone a big Xbox announcement, all I heard were things I really didn't care about. Disney and ABC shows on Xbox Live? Who cares? I can only play them on my Xbox, so what good does that do me? Xbox Live reached 10 million customers? Awesome, but I notice you didn't mention anything about the service's reliability.

The announcement that made me the most angry was the announcement that British Telecom will begin using Xbox 360s as "set-top boxes." So, THIS is your big announcement? My 360 will now operate as a cable box? Oh, boy! That's just swell! </sarcasm>

I can't help feeling that Microsoft is trying to push the 360 into something the console is not ready for. As far as I can tell, the Xbox 360 still has a ridiculously high failure rate. I don't blame Microsoft for wanting to expand the market for the console, but I feel like they should be concentrating on fixing the Xbox Live scalability issues or effectively reducing the failure rate of the console.

The failure rate of the console really makes me wonder why British Telecom would want to implement this in the first place. Personally, I'm not very fond of the idea that my cable box may red ring during Hannah Montana.

Okay, Microsoft, why should you stop at cable boxes? You clearly want to expand the market for the 360, so let's be clever and think of some other awesome uses for the 360.

Perhaps the 360 could be used as replacements for the vital machines in hospitals? Not only will your vitals be monitored by three cores of processing power, you can stay caught up on all of the hottest titles. That sounds pretty good, but I don't think I need to tell everyone how I'd feel if the doctor came back and told me my girlfriend RRoD'd during the night and won't be collecting any more achievements.

The 360 could potentially be used as a navigation computer on space shuttles. If the console red rings, simply attach it to the outside of the space shuttle and re-enter Earth's atmosphere. It's kind of like doing the towel trick, except the outside of the space shuttle doesn't quite reach the temperature of the inside of the towel.

I'm out of sarcasm, so it's time to wrap this rant up. Tell me, fellow Dtoid users, does this announcement irritate any of you, or can you think of other awesome, cutting-edge uses for the 360?