The iPlayer on Xbox 360, and why Microsoft is in the wrong
By Rich Jeffery – Part 1
So, after over a year of talks, iPlayer on Xbox 360 has been put ‘indefinitely on hold’, because they still can’t agree on how and when people should access it. Essentially, it all boils down to the BBC wanting everyone (with a TV license, preferably) to be able to watch BBC iPlayer from the comfort of wherever they want (after all, they are trying to push it on every single platform imaginable), and Microsoft wanting to push people to subscribe to their online gaming service, Xbox Live Gold, in order to watch it. But why is this stalemate such a ridiculous argument? Well, first, let’s go through the past.
The BBC and Microsoft are at 'loggerheads' over getting iPlayer onto the Xbox 360
The discussion about getting iPlayer onto the Xbox has been going on in the public eye since April 2008, when the BBC adapted the iPlayer so that it could run on the Wii’s Internet Channel (a web browser featuring a slightly antiquated version of the software that powers the iPlayer, Adobe Flash). At the time, Erik Huggers proclaimed that iPlayer on the Xbox was just not going to happen, citing that they weren’t happy they couldn’t use their own ‘look and feel’ for the iPlayer.
The BBC wanted to keep the same style and design that is present on both the online and desktop versions of iPlayer, However, both Microsoft and Sony wouldn’t budge on the idea, as they wanted to integrate iPlayer into their respective frontends – two designs that really don’t match iPlayer’s chunky pink-and-black interface. For PS3 users, such arguments weren’t a big issue: they could just watch it via the web browser. Even if it wasn’t the most ideal situation, it was still something.
However, as Microsoft had decided it wasn’t going to offer a web browser on the Xbox, any web content would have to be repackaged into the frontend for users to see it. This meant that, until Microsoft and iPlayer buckled on their design stance, there was going to be a stalemate.
Adding a web browser (outside of the Windows Media Center version) to the Xbox would never be an option – and rightly so: the concept of using the web via the television – either in the rich experience you would get on a PC or in a ‘lesser experience’ offering internet services in a couch surfing scenario – is a tried, tested and completely failed idea for many – see the Bush IBX-100, Sky’s Open… service or Sega Dreamcast’s DreamKey for examples of the best possible implementations of the web ‘experience’ via the TV set.
Continue to part two, where we delve into the latest pitfall that MS and the BBC have found themselves in and what they could do to save it.
