Xbox 360 – the non-gamer years?

The first signs that the market was about to loosen up was the announcement of Sky ‘teaming up’ with Microsoft to put the popular Sky Player content onto the Xbox, ahead of all other competitors. This would not only bring the last 7 days of satellite television content to the forefront to Xbox Live Gold users, but also live TV content and full-length movies (similar to the Netflix service in the US). Upon launch on October 27th 2009, the service would see an ‘unexpected’ number of users flock to watch TV on their Xbox.

Late last month, after many complaints about the poor user experience given by iPlayer through the Wii’s Internet Channel, the BBC and Nintendo launched the BBC iPlayer Channel which brought full-screen iPlayer video to a games console for the first time. By making it a standalone program, the user experience improved dramatically – albeit at a still relatively poor picture quality

Getting iPlayer onto the Xbox 360 could help MS break into the entertainment market

compared to the PC version. And so, it appears the market for iPlayer on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 as full products is supposedly on its way, judging by recent reports.

However, this comes to the current issue: the Xbox 360 policy is the bare minimum in online content for standard subscription-free users (entitled ‘Silver account holders’). Usually, all Silver members can hope for is some promotional content and game high-score leaderboards. More premium content such as online multiplayer, promotional deals, Sky Player and other added-value content is withheld for ‘Xbox Live Gold’ account-holders.  As such, when the BBC approached them with a more open offer, Microsoft balked at having to offer free video content to ‘Silver’ members.

What’s wrong with this picture?

At the end of the day, the problem rests solely with Microsoft. You can’t blame the BBC for wanting to avoid this ‘subscription only’ route – the service is free to use on every other system, so why make it a ‘paid-only’ option on the Xbox? Even on subscription-based TV services, such as Sky and Virgin Media, the BBC channels are free-to-view by anybody with the right equipment. It makes perfect sense that the BBC would want everybody in the UK to be able to get access to it without added cost to the consumer.

There’s no logical sense for Microsoft to make BBC iPlayer ‘Gold only’ – people won’t think ‘hey, I want to watch BBC iPlayer, so I’ll pay extra for the privilege of watching it on my Xbox’. Many Xbox owners own a computer capable of viewing iPlayer, or have access to one, and as such people would more likely live without it than pay extra. Also, it pushes the user to rival systems that DO have iPlayer, something Microsoft would do best to avoid.

In fact, it would be more beneficial for Microsoft to open it for all users, both Silver and Gold, as it would engage the user into the concept of using the Xbox 360 as an entertainment platform. Whilst it was clever of Microsoft to market the Xbox 360 as a pure games console in the past, they have now reached a near complete market saturation in its core gamer demographic. Therefore, they should try should try and push it into the non-gamers’ realm in order to beat it’s competitors to the entertainment throne.

Whilst Sky Player has pushed the envelope a little in terms of attracting users, it still puts people off by forcing users into subscriptions for both Sky (at a minimum of £15 a month) and Xbox Live (at £4.99 a month, or £39.99 for 12 months). However, by promoting the use of the Xbox for on-demand content (such as offering free iPlayer), users would use their consoles for greater periods per day, would feel more at ease purchasing and viewing content, and even engage non-gamers to use the Xbox for more casual titles such as Lips, Xbox Live Arcade games and, eventually, persuading users to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold.

On an interesting side note: the PS3, which Sony Computer Entertainment has pushed in advertisements as an ‘everything device’ is seen by many non-gamers as a cheap BluRay player rather than an entertainment platform, denting the remuneration that SCE was expecting (through the licensing and retail of games) to bolster the greater-than-build-cost pricing of their console.  This has likely been the catalyst for Sony to move away from their free usage model of their Xbox Live equivalent product, PlayStation Network, into a two-tier subscription model.

In conclusion, I feel that Microsoft would be best off giving the BBC what they want, because it would give Microsoft a grander user base (and thus greater potential profits) than by locking it behind a ‘pay wall’ through Xbox Live Gold. And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.

What’s your opinion on this? Leave your messages in the comments!

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.

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