James Delahunty
4 Jan 2007 4:13
According to a report on Variety.com, the movie download service for the Xbox 360 is outperforming rival services like Amazon's Unbox service. It appears that consumers prefer ease of use over the broad availability of content offered by retail giant Amazon.
Since the Xbox 360 console is directly connected to TV sets, it leaves out the hassles of having to burn movies and other in-between processes that are necessary with downloaded movies. The availability of high definition copies of movies is even driving customers to download box office flops, with studios reporting a noticeable preference for HD versions of movies.
"If you look at our sales charts, movies like The Perfect Storm, Unforgiven and Swordfish are all doing disproportionately better than you would expect, and the only explanation is that they're available in HD," said Ross Honey, senior director for media at Microsoft's content and partner strategy group.
Apple is also trying to bridge the gap between PCs, Macs and your living room with the iTV gadget set to be launched within the next few weeks.
Source:
GamesIndustry.biz