Microsoft’s Don Mattrick was not pulling any punches this morning when he described Xbox Live’s growing marketplace business to E3 attendees. He cited a PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast, right off the bat, which declared games to be the top entertainment sales leader, predicted to do more business than movies, music, DVD sales, or anything else. Microsoft, he went on to say, was poised to enjoy the largest slice of that pie, with an install base outstripping both Wii and PlayStation 3, $2.2 billion in software sales, and a new Xbox Live member signing up “every 5 seconds.” Mattrick spelled out the future in no uncertain terms: “I’m so confident in our momentum, and our bright future, that I’m willing to declare here today that Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide this generation than PlayStation 3.” Bold words indeed — and Mattrick had a number of announcements to make to back them up.
Going hand-in-hand with the new Xbox interface, or “experience,” Mattrick had some new partnerships to unveil for the Xbox Video Marketplace. Already, said Mattrick, the Xbox video library boasts 10,000 shows and movies, making it the largest on-demand video service in the world — exceeding any satellite service, according to him. Joining the fray for the coming year will be NBC and Universal Studios, each of whom will add a number of top series and franchises to the line-up. They’ll also be bringing along some of their subsidiary properties, including USA and Sci-Fi. Guys, you need to start watching Monk. Seriously. MGM and Constantin Film will also be joining the fray, adding a wealth of entertainment options to the growing service.
The big news, though, was a new partnership with Netflix. Netflix, which has offered its members the ability to stream movies for a while now as an included part of their membership, is now partnering up with Xbox Live to offer the same capability through the home console, at no extra cost. If you’ve got Netflix and you’ve got Live, you’re all set.
I happen to be thrilled about this. My biggest problem about movie watching is that I hate to watch movies alone, but I very rarely manage to form a gathering in my home on anything more than a day’s notice — which isn’t enough time to get a Netflix (Netflick?) delivered. Being able to stream a movie on demand solves the set-up problem, but then you’re doing it via the PC — not exactly the best appliance to try and gather a group around. What we have now, in essence, is an on-demand video service that I’m already paying for, and it works on a high-definition device that’s attached to my TV in front of my couch. This is a recipe for win; serves 4-8. Calories vary based on your brand of popcorn.
0 Comments For This Post
1 Trackbacks For This Post
July 14th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
[...] press conference revealed a veritable stockpile of bird dung exciting titles for core gamers and a few key partnerships that may make the Xbox 360 your media center of choice, vice president of Xbox LIVE John Schappert [...]
Leave a Reply