Implications of IPTV-enabled Xbox 360?

As much as MS likes to version things and then upgrade them part of me thinks that an XBox 360 upgrade AFTER selling 10.4 million units might be more "PR pain" than they want to take. (Unless they had a REALLY, REALLY good (free) upgrade program (which I doubt))

You'll also note that they didn't mention any of this yesterday during the keynote. They DID however mention the Windows Home Media server. I would be willing to bet that they will provide thhe functionality through the XBox for recording TV shows, but will not upgrade the hardware itself. I bet they'll make the 360 play REALLY well with WHS, and use something like THAT to push a long-term DVR storage.

Why upgrade a current product thus mmaking 10.4 million people angry, when you can release a NEW product that 30% or more of those people will also buy? Keep the original customers happy, and make more money. Win-win.

~Ben

#30

You're contradicting yourself. First you claim that you only buy consoles for the games and that you don't want companies adding other features to the system that will dilute the gaming experience. You go on to claim that you have absolutely no loyalties to brands and but consoles simply for the gaming experience. However, you then go on to compare the PS3's price of $600 to the price of both the 360 and an HD-DVD drive.

If you really only cared about the games, why would you care about the HD-DVD drive?

On top of all this, I don't see how IPTV functionality interferes with the gaming experience on the 360 in any way at all. In fact, by any measurement, the 360 lineup is far better than the original Xbox was only one year out of the gate. Yet the original Xbox lacked all of these features, including Xbox Live, at that point which you claim to be diluting the gaming experience.

I really don't understand how people can complain when a company adds features to a product for free, that (in no way) interfere with the way the product already functioned.

#36

Actually, according to Engadget, the WHS does not work with media extenders (IE the 360), only Media Center PCs.

Jan,

What "Gubbins" would be required for IPTV recording? We're probably talking 6-8mbps, no more being copied off the network and onto the disk. I don't think thatjust recording IPTV is any more demanding than handling a fast download. That's when acting as a DVR. Playback and live viewing is a different matter, but in those cases, you have the box's undivided attention.

What I'm fairly certain won't happen is real-time transcoding of content to a lower bitrate. That would not play nice with games, for sure.

Am I missing something here? Whats the big deal? IPTV sounds pretty cool to me, I would love to have it. But why is everyone creaming there pants that they will be able to use the 360 as the box that controls it? I am all for not having another remote to another box, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. Lets not forget here, IPTV is about streaming TV....not about HD space. It is also a dedicated service...so if your 360 doesn't do it....the little box that comes with the service will.

Donnymandible

#39:
Yes, but they are also using wired controllers most of the time. Are they perhaps using core units?

#38:
Just because the 360 doesn't work yet with a technology that MS hasn't released don't mean it won't always work. That's what software upgrades are for.

I love it when people use M$ and say what a monopolistic bastard of a company they are. Let us not forget that the people who created M$ give more money back to the world then the next 20 charitable humans on the planet combined. Sony never gives dime back and is ridiculously in debt. That is the Japanese way.

As some others have said, I think the question is somewhat backwards. Rather than ‘how will IPTV change the console wars’ the larger implications will come from asking ‘how will IPTV coming to a console change the IPTV market?’ I think the redesign of the 360 is going to make it a much more attractive console, but I don’t see IPTV being anywhere near as important as the HDMI port or the potential to have a cooler, quieter system. This should be pretty big for IPTV though as a lot more people will suddenly have access to a capable device. I’m sure this will sway a few fence sitters and make the console more attractive to tech enthusiasts, but it’s not a system selling feature for most gamers and the general public, more of a cool bonus. It could become a system selling feature if it does well and IPTV becomes more wide spread, but right now this is a case of creating demand for IPTV by making it available on a device people already own or want for a different reason – games. Also, I don’t think Sony will really respond to this immediately. They probably will eventually, but right now Sony has a lot of other things to worry about first. It seems like the smartest thing for Sony to do would be to just watch and see if there is really money to be made by including IPTV functionality while focusing on fixing/improving other features of the PS3 and perhaps slowly developing a decent IPTV interface of their own in a low priority way.

#38: Actually WHS *will* stream to Extenders, including the 360:

http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/01/07/exclusive-windows-home-server-in-detail/

"You will even be able to access your files over the internet (don’t worry, everything is protected), and the killer feature: Home Server streams to the Xbox 360 and other Media Center Extenders."

#29: How is Microsoft taking away your ability to play games? You have a lot of anger here but I fail to see how the ability to watch TV via your 360 means you can no longer play Gears of War?

I fail to see how that will dilute the game playing experience? Even if the 360 records IPTV in the background it will probably use the bandwidth & CPU that is normally reserved for downloading Arcade content in the background.

If your game experience doesn't change, if games run exactly as they did before, if there is only one new menu item on a blade you probably never go to, how has your experience as a gamer changed?

Seems obvious that MS could solve the storage problems created by IPTV / a growing market for music and movie downloads through the 360 in two ways. One, stream the downloads to an additional PC - exactly the clunky approach they're trying to get away from.
Or more elegantly, by selling an external hard drive add on, similar in form factor to external 360 HD-DVD.

Given the current and ever falling price of hard drives, and economies of scale, MS could easily partner with Maxtor or the like to offer a 500gig drive for around €150 and if necessary a terabyte drive for € 300. They could even repackage an existing product like Western Digital's My Book range. Either volume option would soak up most users storage needs for paid downloads and IPTV.

Later in Q4 2007 or early 2008 the current 360 bundles could be replaced or augmented with an updated box including both internal HD-DVD and expanded hard disk drives, perhaps in a reduced form factor.

xbox 360 is MS's big trojan horse. this combined with windows is gonna take over your life.

forget about iPod, zune with it's windows integration it's going to make you forget about iPod

If it takes you four days to download a movie on your Xbox 360, then you need to change Internet providers! I can have a movie ready to watch in less than an hour and I'm on DSL.

I'm all for IPTV. Anything that challenges Comcast is OK with me.

It is very easy for people to say Sony will just offer the same IPTV service, but you are forgetting the actual content does not come from Microsoft or Sony. MS already have huge deals in place in the big markets with companies that are already well into delivering this product. Are the likes of BT ever going to offer the service via the PS3 when they have such close deals with MS, it's very likely MS have a lot in place which would never allow Sony to get in so easily since MS code will be doing the back end and front end processing.

CableTV providers unite and file a lawsuit against Microsoft.

Imagine if Microsoft released a HD-DVD-R drive for the Xbox360 (Obviously the content will only play if the same XboxLive account is used to view the content).

The major TELECOMS are required to upgrade their data pipes (a series of tubes, right??) in order to support the new demand for bandwidth.

P2P is incorporated into the Xbox360 to reduce the load on Microsoft's servers (you don't have any control over it though, because it will only give you content to which you have subscribed).

A new edition of the Xbox360 is released called Xbox360MCE which is designed primarily to play/record media and NOT play games. It has a simpler CPU (only 1 core vice 3) and less RAM (would 128MB be enough?). The price is the same as the gaming version though, but it has a much larger HDD, and comes with a built-in HD-DVD drive.

A LOT of bad information/guesses here.

There is no way Sony will match Microsoft's IPTV service. It's been in development for 3 years, involves both console (client) components and rather massive and difficult to develop server components installed by the Telco (AT&T, BT, etc). Add in MS's existing deals with Telco's, and the fact that Sony hasn't even hinted at developing a similar product, and they aren't just going to suddenly announce a firmware update! Duh.

As to the impact on the Console Wars, it all depends on how well IPTV does. If MS can manage to make it work, and the Telco's can manage to get it out broadly (and yes, it is HD) enough, it could end up with a few more million 360 consoles sold worldwide. Possibly more, you never know. But that won't happen for at least a year or two, possibly more, so I would have to say the impact on this gen Console war will be late at best, and non existant at worst.