After watching the Microsoft announcement for the last hour, the first real announcement aside from all the new games and add-ons everyone already knew about – ESPN is coming to the XBox 360.

ESPN will be available on the “Community Channel,” which includes access to all major sports events (football, baseball, basketball, etc), and will include live streaming access to over 3500 sporting events in HD in the first year.

They also announced that the XBox will add layers of interactivity, including the ability to create XBox parties or answer live trivia questions, and it will not cost anything extra over the cost of an XBox live membership cost.

This is a major deal – the ability to watch live streaming sports anywhere but on a cable connection is almost impossible to find (at least, legitimately). It’s one of the first steps by Microsoft to truly supplant the need for a wired connection to a video content provider. So far in the conference, no announcement has been made regarding a partnership with Hulu, and since it’s coming towards the end of the conference, such an announcement seems unlikely.