How Microsoft Made Xbox a Hit in the Living Room

Great piece over at NewTeeVee:

In case you missed it, the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live network are undergoing a rapid evolution into a media delivery power-house. This started back in 2007 when Microsoft first launched a movie download service for Xbox users. By the end of 2008, 15,000 hours of movies and TV shows were available with 2,000 hours of HD content. All this content seems to have struck a chord with Xbox Live members, who by the end of last year had downloaded over a half billion entertainment items. In December, Microsoft partnered with Netflix to bring all the streaming content available through the service to Xbox Live subscribers. Within three months of the announcement, 1 million Xbox Live members had activated the client and streamed 1.5 billion minutes of content.

So, why has the Xbox been so successful at connecting the TV to the Internet and delivering a great TV experience over broadband when so many others have failed? There are three main reasons for the success:

* No Extra Box under the TV – Consumers already had the Game Console connected to the TV to play games

* Internet Video was not the primary reason for connecting the box – For gamers, multi-player gaming was an essential part of the experience and was motivation enough to get them to go to the trouble of connecting the console to Internet

* Not competing with PayTV – Microsoft did not tell its customers to throw out their PayTV service. It just provided compelling content to customers on a convenient platform.

In brief, Microsoft made it easy for its customers to consume broadband media on their TV. And so they did.

via How Microsoft Made Xbox a Hit in the Living Room.