Under the names of select providers nothing is mentioned about pricing but under the CinemaNow, Crackle, Manga Entertainment and other summaries you will find a brief line of text saying that they will be included in your Xbox Live Gold membership. The larger name brands such as HBO Go and Bravo, however, do not say this. This alludes to the fact that you will need to pay additional fees to access the content from these providers.
Is this a smart move for Microsoft? Only time will tell. We can only hope that this service will be cheaper than typical cable or satellite T.V. as incentive for upgrading memberships or paying extra to access the Xbox Live TV content. It would be wise of Microsoft to do this to actually hold it’s ground against the big boys of T.V. such as Time Warner Cable, Comcast and DirecTV.
Official release dates of the television service for the Xbox 360 have not been announced but it is expected to roll out in November or December of this, alongside the new Xbox 360 Dashboard update which was also recently announced.
Xbox Live TV is Microsoft’s vision of making the Xbox 360 a media powerhouse coming to life. Hopefully more content providers will get on board with this soon as I’m sure not everyone is excited about channels such as Bravo and YouTube. And what’s in the future? Will we see DVR capabilities or Pay Per View additions as well? Who knows.
This is truly an innovative step to take, though. No other gaming console has anything like this aside from the now standard Netflix and Hulu applications. Will this move push the Xbox 360 to the top of sales and dominate the gaming market once and for all? Or will this be a complete failure and drown in misery?
What are you thoughts and feelings of Microsoft adding television to the Xbox 360? Be sure to leave a comment below expressing your thoughts on the matter. We’re interested in knowing what everyone else is thinking about the Xbox Live TV service.
This is either going to a brilliant move by Microsoft, or a total flop. We’ll see in due time
It’ll be brilliant if they add more content and offer it for a competitive price. I don’t see either happening anytime soon but there’s still hope I suppose.