Netflix Watch Now coming to Xbox 360
Announced today at E3: the Microsoft Xbox 360 video game console will soon feature Watch Now movies from Netflix. The standard Netflix subscription applies.
This is good news. No additional purchase required for those with an Xbox 360 already. This will come with a software upgrade later this year when Microsoft revamps the Dashboard.
Also available through the new Dashboard is “Live party” where you can have up to eight people in a chat at a time. With Netflix you can start a movie and it can stream to all members of the party simultaneously. No word on if all users must have Netflix for this to work.
The video quality is identical to the Roku standalone player. This means it’s highly compressed standard-definition. Netflix claims to be transitioning to HD, but I wouldn’t expect that until middle of next year.
Keep in mind: the 20GB Xbox 360 Pro is on sale for $299 until supplies run out.
Image sourced from: Gizmodo
This is great news for Xbox 360 owners, but damn, I’m going to be pretty pissed if a similar feature isn’t offered for the PS3.
From the Microsoft press release, it seems to be Xbox 360 exclusive. 🙁
That’s what it says, “Xbox 360 will be the only game system that lets users instantly watch movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix.”
Not sure why this couldn’t easily be added to the Wii or the PS3.
If you recall, there was the announcement about a specially formatted DVD for the PS3 to watch Netflix movies.
Ahhh, that’s right. I forgot about the special disc. That’s awesome! So the “no additional fee” might be referring to the fact that you need to purchase the PS3 disc for $3. Ok, now I’m calming down… Hopefully Sony announces this officially soon. 🙂