As many of you have already heard, it was announced that soon, XBox 360 owners will be able to utilize the Xbox Live community to download various movie and TV content directly to their Xbox hard drives for viewing on their TVs. At first, I thought this was a great idea… not so much anymore. But before I get ahead of myself, here is the basic idea from Cinematical:
Beginning on November 22 (its one year anniversary) XBox 360 will be the first console in history to offer downloads of not only standard-def programming, but also hi-def as well. Some of the programming being offered by Microsoft initially with this deal includes the feature films The Matrix, Superman Returns, Batman Forever, Mission Impossible 3, Nacho Libre and Jackass: The Movie. Some of the TV shows initially being offered include Aqua Teen Hunger Force Jerico and CSI
Ok, that all sounds great and wonderful right? I thought so at first… but I’ve been developing real doubts about it that others (such as Cinematical) have also expressed. Here are some of the reasons I don’t think this is really going to amount to much:
1) Downloading HD content is going to take forever (same could be said for any method of downloading HD content), and as we all know, avid gamers have limited patience.
2) Price – They still haven’t mentioned at all how much downloading one of these movie or TV shows is going to cost. I’m guessing it won’t be cheap… but we’ll have to wait and see. I think if they were going to come in with an attractive price point they would have mentioned in in the press release. The fact that they didn’t makes me suspicious.
3) Apple already had 100 million people with iTunes on their computers ready and positioned to start selling online video content. Xbox has about 1.5 million units out there. Not exactly the biggest market pool to draw from.
4) When people are buying a GAME system… they’re getting it for the GAMES. I really don’t think this new “feature” will make anyone buy an Xbox that wasn’t already going to buy it. But I may be wrong about that.
So what do you think? Will the ability to download a movie (from a small list of available titles) or a TV, for an undisclosed price, be enough to make you choose an Xbox 360 over wither the Playstation 3 or the Nintendo Wii?
