November 22 brings us downloadable content – TV and movies – from CBS, Warner Brothers, and a few others. You download the preview then pay for the movie. Rentals you can hold onto, unwatched, for two weeks, and then have 24 hours to finish it before it goes poof. You can also “purchase” content that will sit on your drive. Pricing is fairly nebulous at this point, but it looks like movies will cost something between 320 and 1920 credits. Cool? Sure. A winner-take-all, home-movie-watching proposition? Not so much. But it’s definitely a start.
EDIT: Ah, feature creep. I’m starting to get wistful for the days when my gaming system only played games. The same way many people hate convergence of their DAPs, cameras and cell phones, I hate this desire to crap up gaming consoles with miscellaneous features that have nothing to do with gaming. But who am I to stand in the way of progress? –JG
Looks nice, but it’s too expensive, if you’re competing with iTunes (and in my mind they are), you need to match their price, or at least get close. $3.00 for a regular episode and $4.00 for Hi Def is too much when you get some some of the same episodes from iTunes for $2.00
BUT
If they integrate the Zune with the 360 like they could (and should) I can see myself buying some shows on the 360, hooking my Zune into the USB port and downloading the new episodes, and vice-versa.
Give me an iTunes-like podcast center on XBLM that can sync to a Zune and I’ll replace my 30GB iPod video in a heartbeat.
Sorry to ramble everyone, I’m just very excited about the Zune/360 possibilities.
I don’t care about the TV shows but I’m very excited about the movie rental. Who needs to pay a grand for Blue Ray when you can just get a HD movie right from the 360?
By the way, you have to love the whining about Microsoft actually *adding* value to a very expensive piece of equipment. Call it feature creep if you want, but there were plenty of people who thought the 360 was well worth its price before. The more features that Microsoft “creeps” into it just makes it that much of a better value for those customers. Microsoft should be applauded.
I’ve got to keep this going. Apple thinks this streaming technology is worth $300 (iTV). That’s the price of the Core 360.
Of course a core owner would still need to purchase a hard drive……
Sorry. I’ll stop.
bfos, I totally agree.
The 360 is well worth the price just as a gaming system. I love hooking up my iPod and kicking off a playlist (though it will only play 100 songs, I know) while I play 18 holes in Tiger Woods ‘07.
Adding things like this only add value to something that (in my eyes) was valuable enough. Plus is definitely adds to the significant other approval factor :-)
My point is that deep integration with the Zune should be something that Microsoft really tries to focus on as they attempt to stay afloat in two very competitive markets.
I was refering to the posters “complaint” about all of the features that keep getting added to game consoles.
I agree about the Zune integration. I’d actually be supprised if they weren’t fully integrated. Especially considering that so many of the big players that were invovled with getting the 360 out the door are also on the team getting the Zune out the door.