Microsoft and ESPN announced this week that a major update is coming to ESPN on Xbox Live on August 25. Adding to thousands of live events, replays and highlights from ESPN3.com (including more than 400 regular season college football games, 31 bowl games and at least 50 exclusive games), ESPN on Xbox Live is being overhauled with a new user-friendly redesign and refined voice control through Kinect, along with new features and deeper levels of personalization.

The new features in the August 25 update include (according to Microsoft, not us):

- My Sports – ESPN on Xbox LIVE now allows you to choose your favorite sports and teams and designate these channels as “My Sports,” so you can jump directly into the games and content you care most about. ESPN on Xbox LIVE will automatically provide you with a personalized daily feed of news and highlights based on “My Sports,” catching you up on only the teams and sports you care most about.

- Mini Guide – The Mini Guide gives you a preview and quick access to all the sports content you care about right at the bottom of the screen. Saturday is all about college football, and now the best fans don’t have to miss anything. Is another game tied up late in the fourth? Instantly switch to that game. Halftime? Play the earlier highlights.

- Split Screen – Because true sports fans want to watch more than one game at a time, ESPN on Xbox LIVE is adding Split Screen, allowing you to watch two events at once. Watch live events on both screens or a live event on one while you catch up on news and highlights on the other. You can even control both screens independently, pausing and rewinding each separately so you never miss a second of the action.

- Voice Control with Kinect ™ - Focus on your team instead of looking for the remote. Navigate through the Content Guide, skip to the next highlight, or play, pause, and rewind that big play…all with the sound of your voice and the magic of Kinect ™.

- Scoreboard – ESPN on Xbox LIVE is also adding a live college football scoreboard that you can jump to any time. You can even use Split Screen to watch the big game on one side of your screen while the live scoreboard occupies the other, keeping you up on all the action from around college football.

- Reminders – Too many big games to keep track of in your head? Not to worry – ESPN on Xbox LIVE now lets you tag games and set reminders so you never miss a moment.

- Live Alerts – With new live alerts, ESPN on Xbox LIVE will keep you posted on score changes from around college football, even if you’re not keeping a close eye on the scoreboard.

- ESPN BottomLine – The addition of the ESPN BottomLine to ESPN on Xbox LIVE keeps you in the know with breaking news and score updates from around the world of sports.

For more information on ESPN on Xbox Live, check out www.xbox.com/espn .