We are super thrifty around here, which for the purposes of this post means that we closed our cable account a couple of years ago. We figured that we have Netflix, Hulu is free, and most other shows we like are available online in some form or fashion. So we haven't really missed the cable.

Except for sports. There just isn't a great way to watch sports online (legally), so you kinda need either the over the air antenna to watch on your local stations, or you need the satellite or cable.

But with today's news out of E3, MicroSoft has us excited about a new development for our Xbox 360! MicroSoft announced that Xbox 360 has signed an exclusive deal with ESPN to provide live streams of sports via the Xbox Live format! This is seriously good news: once it's actual available, I can watch SportsCenter again. I'm hoping that this will also include some college football games and major league baseball. I do highly doubt that the NFL Monday Night games will be broadcast via the Xbox, or any of the NASCAR races, but as long as I can get the highlights from these sports, I think I'll be set!

So basically I get really the only channel I cared about on cable for free through my already being paid for $50 per year Xbox Live account! That's a great bargain to me!

If you don't have an Xbox 360, now might be the best time to get one of those as well. Since it was announced that a new Xbox Elite has been released today, the prices of the other Xbox 360's will almost certainly go down soon. Or you could just go for the new Elite model! Amazon has it available for sale right now, and will be shipped out to customers starting June 19th. The new Xbox Elite will be Project Natal--er Kinect ready, plus it has Wi-Fi built in (no more $99 add-on hardware), so it's really a great deal when you couple all you get (the above mentioned ESPN, Netflix streams, Last.fm streaming, Zune access, Twitter, Facebook, etc). Lots of good in the Xbox 360!

Let me know what you think about the latest news from MicroSoft in the comments below (if you know when the ESPN service starts, let me know)! Are you excited about ESPN or could you care less? Are you disappointed that more wasn't announced by MicroSoft, or was it a pretty good display of goods!

Brand New Xbox 360 Elite on Sale at Amazon