A couple of days ago, I pulled together an analysis of the New Media’s reaction to the Xbox’s VOD service for a customer. While I can’t show you the whole thing, I thought a watered down version would be interesting as well. By the way, my personal opinion is that while this a big PR event for Microsoft, it will not have any immediate impact. People don’t trust Microsoft (like me) and it seems there are immediate convenience issues that will preclude owners of an Xbox from using it (download time and space constraints). The HD compatibility thing is pretty cool though.
Anyway, on to the piece:
Conclusions
This is was arguably the biggest story in the blogosphere for the 7th, and many bloggers gave credit to Microsoft for being first to market with a Video On Demand service instead of Apple, especially since it supports HD as well.
Not all commentary was positive, however. Many, like influential tech blog GigaOm, did not consider this an instant success for Microsoft, and they voiced concerns over the capacity of the Xbox 360, the speed of downloads, and the marketing of this service.
Relevant/ Interesting Links
Engadget has screen shots.
Interesting comments by the New Media:
Thomas Hawk on what this means for Apple: “And meanwhile Apple still flounders around having made no meaningful commitment to HDTV and instead is going to try and sell you the iDongle. But if the iDongle doesn’t do HDTV and the XBox does, then the iDongle is dead in the water.”
Blackfriars’ Marketing on the marketing weakness of Xbox Live Video: “However, as regular readers know, technology rarely creates commercial success without smart marketing, and some of the marketing positioning of this service seems flawed. My bet is that the XBox hard drive size is a near fatal constraint on the popularity of the service, since it can only store 10 TV shows or three movies at a time.”
Michael Gartenberg on future implications for iTunes: “It’s not a direct competitor to iTunes for now. But, there’s no doubt that XBox, as a conncted device that’s hooked up a to the TV will be important for Microsoft as a core endpoint in the digital home. Look for larger drive capacities as well as integration with Zune and the PC in the not too distant future.”
GigaOm on wether Microsoft can overcome its past: That’s not to mention Microsoft’s past history with digital rights management extremism4 with the Xbox, already onerous when it comes to ripping music files, which will surely grow even more strict, when the MPAA brings its attorneys into play. A service that isn’t as seamless as ITunes (of for that matter, YouTube), is destined to failure.”
Other Sources:
Hacking Netflix
Paid Content.org
Paul Thurrott
IP Democracy
