Watching Windows Weekly this week I think the most confusing thing about “Xbox Live TV” seems to be that people don’t know what it is called. Microsoft don’t mention a single name for this new service in their press release but I don’t think there should be confusion about that, I think actually that these various media services are coming to the Xbox through apps. Not a new panel on the Xbox screen or a new single service.
There are several reasons I think this, one is that there have long been rumours that Microsoft would allow developers to write apps for the Xbox using Silverlight. Another reason is the complexity of each media company’s payment requirements to access their media services that would require the individual companies to set their own tariffs. For example currently Sky allow users in the UK to access their content through Sky Player if they are already a subscriber of Sky and users are subscribers of Xbox Live Gold, however that model wont work for the BBC as users cannot pay for a service to access the BBC’s content, this contravenes the TV License in the UK.
The combination of apps coming to the Xbox and that each media company will offer different access options to their media make me think that each media service will be available on the Xbox 360 as an app. Oh and there is this image on Microsoft News Center which has the below description that clearly mentions “apps”.
This holiday customers will get more apps with movies, TV shows and sports from top providers such as ESPN, Netflix, Syfy and YouTube. Customers can choose from a selection of entertainment apps from premium content providers like HBO GO, which provides unlimited access to over 1,400 of your favorite HBO shows, including HBO original series, hit movies, sports, comedy and more.
This image clearly shows that to access HBO GO you go to that app where I think assume you can watch past programs. Not being in the US I don’t know if HBO GO also offers live TV, but if it does I imagine that the app will offer that functionality too. Equally I imagine that the new UI on the Xbox doesn’t just work by siloing content into apps, I imagine that once an app is installed parts of it can be accessed from other parts of the Xbox UI. Therefore by going to the “video hub” you can access HBO GO content via the app and equally (if HBO GO offers live TV) users can access the the live TV from the “TV hub”.
In fact if you look at the below picture of the “video hub” you can see that YouTube is accessible there too, but from the above image we know that it’s an app.
So that perhaps explains how all this new media content will arrive on the Xbox 360 but doesn’t explain why Microsoft didn’t explicitly say in their press release that these would be media apps. Perhaps then Microsoft have more to announce about apps on the Xbox 360.
It’s thought that, alongside the rumour of apps on the Xbox 360, people will soon be able to write a single app for Windows 8 and only make a few changes to allow that same app to run on Windows Phone 7, we have been shown that this works at BUILD. We also know that games can be written for the Xbox 360 and with only a small amount of tweaking with the code that same game can run on Windows Phone 7. So why is not possible that Microsoft could soon allow developers to write a single app and have that run, with minor tweaks in the code, on all three platforms; Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox.
I imagine that Microsoft have a significant announcement to make over the coming months that will come from the Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox teams to announce a new way for developers to create a single app and have it run on the entire Microsoft ecosystem. Maybe it wont be until we hear more about Windows 8, perhaps at CES. These media content apps could well be a way of testing how well these apps work on the Xbox before allowing developers to write apps.
Microsoft has been reluctant to talk about what is powering these new media services on the Xbox 360 and even when Mary Jo Foley asked directly if it was Silverlight she got a “no comment”. This make me wonder even more if Microsoft want to do a big reveal about this and don’t want to let anything slip.
I also wonder how Xbox on Windows 8 will work, they could be exactly the same apps on Windows 8 as we see now.
What do you think about this idea?
