Comments on: CNET: Would XBox Live subscription ‘kill’ iTunes?

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 07:53:41 +0000

Hahahaha CNET…

No, but seriously… there is a few things Apple can do to grow in the video market share, such as having videos being watched only a couple of times for a few bucks (such as the Amazon video deal), and offering IPTV. Combine those two with the Apple TV and this could be HUGE.

But Microsoft “kill” iTunes… that doesn’t sound likely. Isn’t there like 3 million XBoxes out there right now? But how many iPods??? And how many people use their XBoxes for media centers to begin with???

By: jbelkin

jbelkin — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 03:03:24 +0000

MS will have some success with LIVE but it will not translate into the “mass market” like the ipod/itunes combo:

The Xbox audience will never cross over into the mainstream.

The Xbox audience is willing to buy/rent some movies but it will never be a substantial portion because the geek audience is never satisfied with convenience.

Any MS hardware will annoy people in some manner (hell, the whole “must buy $5 worth of LIVE cribbit poomnts that can never be refunded is annoying already).

So, Live will have some success but beyond gaming - no.

By: Gideon

Gideon — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 23:03:08 +0000

I think MS needs to do a bit more than that, however. The steaming has to be opened up if they want to crack open the market - that means macs, other codecs, and most importantly - all windows os’s (from xp on, at least.)

Setting up the xbox to only work with a few of the versions of Vista and only Media Center XP was a stupid, ridiculous move on Microsofts part.

Also, and this is important - the xbox may have rentals, which is great, but their selection of media is HORRIBLE and there is no way to back up actual purchases.

But, on the plus side - high definition content is already available.