Games console as a service

[ilwrath]

In another thread here, I mentioned speculation of Microsoft offering a cheaper XBox Live system for set-top use. It looks like that box will actually just be the current XBox 360.

Ars has the details. Looks like an XBox 360 with Kinect, for $99 if you agree to two years of Live service @ $15/month. Kind of an interesting pricing scheme. It works out as costing people more money, overall, but I expect Microsoft will see a pretty big pick up of sales to people who don't bother to do math, or don't want to pay the several hundred dollars for a big system up-front.

It'll be interesting to see if Sony does something similar, or if they continue to try to offer free on-line services.

 

[faethor]

The majority of Xbox360 use appears to be for non-gaming activity, such as watching TVs and Movies. We use it for this all the time and it's a great device.

I think this will be an interesting experiment. I do hope they include some sort of media providing in that service. For example one needs Live Gold to watch streaming Hulu and Netflix. But, one also has to pay Hulu and Netflix. I see $180/year a bit expensive considering one would need to pay Netflix too. Perhaps Microsoft will have their own Zune Streaming Media service available to use.

A big question is when? The sooner the better as they'll probably want to test the waters prior to the Xbox720 shipping. (No date there, estimates are Nov 2014.)

 

[Robert]

What's that, ~$460 altogether? Not exactly cheap.

 

[ilwrath]

What's that, ~$460 altogether? Not exactly cheap.

Indeed. I think the current base X360 Kinect bundle is $299.99 And 12 month Live cards are $59.99 So, if you purchased the same package, all upfront, it would be $420, if you didn't catch any sales (which typically happen several months of the year.)

But, I guess the question becomes, how many people are willing to pay a bit more, overall (or won't even realize they are paying more overall), to avoid that big $400 bill at the start? Honestly, I suspect it will do quite well.

The majority of Xbox360 use appears to be for non-gaming activity, such as watching TVs and Movies. We use it for this all the time and it's a great device.

It is a very good device for this. It's much preferred by my wife. I'd actually face a revolt if I cancelled my XBox Live account, now. Even though the BluRay player also does NetFlix, etc. (And the TiVo supposedly does this, but it works so badly, I wouldn't even call it a feature, at all.)

 

[faethor]

TiVO was good.

My 4 year old daughter can turn on the receiver, tv, 360 say Xbox Netflix, Play Strawberry Shortcake and get her movies going on her own. Tech is seriously at a point where all this stuff is so incredibly easy to use that luddites can get what they need.

Though not using TV Channels my kids get confused when they're at other people's homes and they need to turn a channel or their show just isn't on demand. (Or perhaps I may want to say I have spoiled brats.)