Xbox One To Host World Cup Hub Destination Brazil: Personalize Experiences, Pick Your Favorite Teams And More

Planning on watching the World Cup this month? Microsoft wants to enhance the experience for Xbox One owners by giving them access to the international soccer competition on their Xbox One consoles via a new hub called Destination Brazil.

"What we're trying to really accomplish is a single destination that brings you the best way to experience these experiences with football — football or soccer, depending on the market you're in," Matthew Reid, senior product marketing manager at Microsoft for Xbox sports experiences, told Polygon last week.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil will run from June 12 to July 13. The app will launch June 12 on the Xbox One dashboard, serving as a destination for watching matches, game highlights, playing a soccer video game or staying up-to-date with real-life soccer stories.

Destination Brazil will be led by another app, Brazil Now, which will feature a reality series entitled “Every Street United,” part of Microsoft’s lineup of Xbox Originals programming.

“Brazil Now is a new app on Xbox One that brings you as close to the action in Brazil as possible without leaving your living room,” the Xbox blog stated on Monday. “You can personalize the app to your team, receive alerts and score updates for all the games, and watch the live games with real-time stats, scores and live experiences on Xbox Live.”

“While you are watching live matches on Xbox One, you’ll get real-time information updates, team and player stats, such as shots on goal, scorers, cards and possession, and action photos direct from the stadium to bring you closer to the action, all powered by Bing,” the post also said.

Brazil Now offers a more enhanced experienced for users even outside of live games. Data is fed to the app and integrated with the Xbox One’s OneGuide, which allows the app to know when World Cups games will be on TV. It will also provide notices on consoles about future matches and change your cable box to the correct channel when you want to watch.

You will also be able to personalize your settings. You can choose your favorite team and personalize Brazil Now by viewing all of your team’s upcoming tweets, information and matches. Users can also participate in interactive polls.

"What this delivers is an experience that you can then layer on top of the rights that you already have as a subscriber through your cable operator, or if you have an over-the-top partner," Reid continued. "Our real focus is the TV HDMI-out experience — we're trying to drive more adoption there — but it really is dependent on the end user's ability to have access and rights."

Destination Brazil will launch in Austria, Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, the U.S. and the U.K.