The new campaign for Xbox 360 is focusing attention on the home entertainment options available through Microsoft’s system and new figures released today indicate that people are responding. I’ve been using the console for the last two months and found that it has become the first place I go to for online streaming, and that’s due to a couple of new additions to their offering.
With the recent launch of Netflix in the UK the Xbox 360 now has two mainstream movie streaming apps as part of its dashboard, and there’s a good range of content on both. The quality of the streams is slightly better on Netflix, though their organic menu system takes a little getting used to. The movies offered are still hit-and-miss but I’ve seen some excellent documentaries (The Interrupters in particular is worth a watch) and much more is promised.
Like the LOVEFiLM app the search is pretty cumbersome (voice search should be on the cards soon) but the new challenger to the UK movie streaming crown means that the customer is seeing the benefits of better films being placed online. Duncan Jones’ Moon and Source Code are both available on LOVEFiLM right now, while Netflix are adding new films to their service all the time with some excellent TV series (Arrested Development, Breaking Bad) available.
Where the Xbox is doing well is the range of options, with Sky, 4OD, Demand 5, blinkbox and more available through the console. These new apps, as well as the new dashboard update, has reportedly seen an increase of almost 50% in terms of people using the service, these figures are direct from Major Nelson (via C&VG and Thumb Culture) and the promise is that the focus on entertainment on Xbox will continue. What needs to happen to continue this trend is for the services offered to be as intuitive as possible, with the quality of programming and visual clairty improving as much as possible.
Find out more about Xbox live and the entertainment options available here and there’s an example of what’s coming up on E4 (available on 4OD) below.
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If you use your Xbox360 for more than games there’s a survey you can take here.
