Sony throws wrench into Netflix/Xbox deal?
If tomorrow, when the New Xbox Experience launches, you can’t get certain movies from Netflix to stream on your Xbox 360, don’t blame Microsoft; blame Sony.
Steve Swasey, Netflix’s Director of Corporate Communications, confirmed this rumor with the following PR-friendly explanation: Today, titles regularly come in and out of license and there is a natural ebb and flow to what we have on license at any given point in time. In the case of Xbox 360, a few hundred titles are temporarily unavailable to be streamed via the Xbox game console.
What the Netflix spokesperson didn’t say is that there’s a common pattern with these “temporarily unavailable” movies; they all seem to be films from Sony’s subsidiaries (Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, etc.). Although the Netflix spokesman won’t confirm such pattern, users who got the NXE earlier claim so. An additional comment from the Netflix representative suggests this is indeed a problem exclusive to the Xbox 360 platform:
Those titles are still available to be watched on subscribers’ computers and on TVs via other partner devices, and we hope they’ll be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly.
Time will tell if Sony is indeed blocking its films from streaming on the Xbox 360, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise.