Putting BBC Content on the Xbox LIVE
Post categories: Connected TV, innovation, stakeholders
| 18:18 UK time, Wednesday, 5 October 2011
I’m part of the Business Development team within the BBC’s Future Media division and work with partners in the media and technology space to keep the BBC at the forefront of innovation and do deals that get our ten online products, (such as iPlayer, and BBC News) onto mobile and IPTV platforms. This is part of our broad strategy to ensure that audiences have access to our online service, whenever and wherever they want and across all four screens (TV, mobile, tablet and desktop).
Within the BBC, our job is to deliver opportunities to work with lots of different platforms and technologies and as part of this work, we have today announced a deal with Microsoft. This will enable us to work closely with them and ultimately reach the considerable audience that Xbox LIVE has to offer (35 million members worldwide – although the focus of this deal is our UK audience).
This deal will mean that the BBC will feature on all of the major gaming platforms in the UK (Wii/PS3/Xbox) and will be a key service on Xbox LIVE.
The level of awareness around connected TVs is still growing, with much of the mainstream audience still exploring the expanded capabilities of their new internet connected TVs, DVD players and set-top boxes – this is partly why the scale of and familiarity with gaming consoles is so exciting – by our estimates, we think that Xbox in the UK has one of the biggest connected footprints and so it’s a great way to reach our audiences.
I look forward to letting you know in the future about other partnerships that we have been working on.
Cyrus Saihan is a Senior Business Development Manager in BBC Future Media
Comment number 1.
At 19:52 5th Oct 2011, FishFingers wrote:Will the content available match the PS3 and Wii versions of the service?
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Comment number 2.
At 20:08 5th Oct 2011, MarkG wrote:Will this be open to all UK Xbox owners, or will be be locked into Microsoft's subscription model? As surely having a service that is locked to Xbox Live Gold goes against everything the BBC stands for? I mean why pay for a BBC License fee AND Xbox Live....
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Comment number 3.
At 20:22 5th Oct 2011, lucas42 wrote:It seems a very inefficient use of the BBC's resources to have to do deals with each individual company and then have go about supporting their platforms.
What was wrong with the model used for TV and radio where the BBC makes its content available according to a standard, and then manufacturers can implement devices which support it? That way the BBC doesn't get accused of supporting certain companies more than others, and also manufacturers are free to innovate however they want.
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Comment number 4.
At 20:46 5th Oct 2011, Emperors Hand wrote:@ MarkG (comment #2)
It is my understanding from Microsofts press release, that only content marked with an *asterisk requires an XBL Gold subscription. BBC content is not one of these.
I therefore assume that BBC content will be free to all XBL customers, Gold or Silver.
https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/oct11/10-05XBTVPR.mspx
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Comment number 5.
At 10:23 6th Oct 2011, diegooriani wrote:About time.
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Comment number 6.
At 11:10 6th Oct 2011, MarkG wrote:Will it be HD like the PS3?
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Comment number 7.
At 13:59 6th Oct 2011, Ed Lyons wrote:This didn't happen sooner due to Microsoft insisting that it would be paid for or available only to Gold members. I guess they've finally relented.
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Comment number 8.
At 09:05 7th Oct 2011, powerPCuser wrote:It's a huge shame that the BBC are supporting new platforms but are then deciding to drop support for Power PC Apple Mac's just because they've decided the iPlayer can only now use the latest Adobe Flash Player. I know that you don't need the most bleeding edge Flash Player to be able to view/stream video and audio (Flash Player 7 can do this!) Shame on you BBC.
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Comment number 9.
At 10:33 7th Oct 2011, Ian McDonald wrote:@powerPCUser
Thank you for your comment about Flash Player support, but segues of the form "the BBC are doing [topic of post] but not doing [off-topic segue]" are off-topic for this post.
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Comment number 10.
At 16:53 7th Oct 2011, Cyrus Saihan wrote:@MarkG
Yes, this will be open to all Xbox owners in the UK as the BBC services on the platform will be made available in the Free tier on Xbox LIVE (as opposed to the Gold tier).
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Comment number 11.
At 16:51 9th Oct 2011, Green Soap wrote:Good stuff. And as I've complained before about the lack of 360 coverage, whoever managed to bang heads together to see sense, have the rest of the day off.
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Comment number 12.
At 11:19 11th Oct 2011, eyezaxe wrote:this is great news
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Comment number 13.
At 04:40 5th Dec 2011, Alex wrote:Question: Why is BBC not on the partners list anymore for XBOX UK? Has the deal fell through again? I agree that the service should be free to those who don't have a gold subscription on the Live service but come on! We want it!
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