Coming (back) soon to an Xbox near you?
MTV Multiplayer went straight to Netflix corp-comm dude Steve Swasey to get the real story. And what is that story?
"In the case of Xbox 360, a few hundred titles are temporarily unavailable to be streamed via the Xbox game console...Those titles are still available to be watched on subscribers’ computers and on TVs via other partner devices, and we hope they’ll be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly."
When asked if the license just coincidentally expired as Microsoft was adding Netflix support or Sony Pictures Entertainment specifically requested Xbox 360 streaming to be disabled, Swasey wouldn’t say.
"As watching instantly becomes a more prominent part of the Netflix service, our goal is to have all of our streaming content licensed for all of our partner devices," he said. "We’re doing well in this area, but it will take some time before we fully achieve that goal. Today, titles regularly come in and out of license and there is a natural ebb and flow to what we have on license at any given point in time."
Perhaps the stream of cash into Sony Pictures' coffers needs to make with less ebb and more flow before all this gets resolved. I'm just glad I happened to stream Super Size Me last weekend, before all this went down. Eat your veggies, kids!
No Netflix for Canada D':
It's not as if disallowing the streaming of their movies is going to convince people to switch over to the PS3 Netflix service . . . you know . . . cause there isn't one.
NXE kicks ass!
The problem is that Sony announced the PS3 as a 'mutlimedia' package from the getgo, and slapped on a ridiculous asking price to boot. On release, they hadn't mastered any of the basic features in each section (online play for gaming, DivX support for videos, etc), and as such it didn't feel so much like a multimedia system as much as Sony trying to one-up Microsoft out of the box. Microsoft, however, introduced the Xbox 360 as a gaming platform, having given its users a unique online and general gaming experience, and has slowly been upgrading it as time goes by to increasing user demand. They've managed to keep their users enticed to the system by taking their time and releasing the new features when ready, and not just shoving them out all at once. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that it's pretty damn contradictory for Microsoft to go down the multipurpose route, but they've handled it well, and at the end of the day, the main point of the system is still gaming.
Personally, I think it's quite selfish of Sony to remove their films from the service, and I can't really see how it makes business sense either. Surely Sony would be acquiring royalties from Netflix/Microsoft everytime a movie is watched? Hopefully they can sort it out before long, as the only people really being affected by all this are the consumers.