Microsoft reportedly planning to remove Xbox Live Gold subscription requirement for Netflix, Hulu

[Himanshu Arora]

Good news for Xbox 360 and Xbox One users: Microsoft is finally planning to lift the requirement for a paid Xbox Live Gold subscription to access Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming media apps, according to ArsTechnica.

There's a caveat, though. The report notes that Microsoft may put other services behind the paywall to make up for this shift, though it's not yet clear whether that includes existing services or upcoming content.

The move is said to be directly linked to a changing of the Xbox guard after Don Mattrick, former President of Interactive Entertainment at Microsoft, left the company and joined Zynga as CEO.

The company is also facing pressure from rivals like Sony and Nintendo, who have never charged a fee for access to streaming media apps on their systems. On the other hand, popular media boxes like Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV have also been pushing the software giant to follow suit.

There is no word yet on when this will be made official, but given the fact that we are around a month away from June's E3 games expo, Microsoft could use the platform to reveal more about this. Keep in mind this is purely conjecture at this point. The company's keynote is scheduled for June 9.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/56734-microsoft-reportedly-planning-to-remove-xbox-live-gold-subscription-requirement-for-netflix-hulu.html

 

[Burty117]

Question is, why on earth was this a requirement in the first place?!

 

[Guest]

They should remove the one that choose to put the requirement.

 

[m4a4]

Question is, why on earth was this a requirement in the first place?!

Because it goes through MS's servers, and those aren't cheap. So at this point they might make it free, but they'll make up for the loss somewhere else...

 

[Burty117]

Because it goes through MS's servers, and those aren't cheap. So at this point they might make it free, but they'll make up for the loss somewhere else...

But why? Why does it go through there servers and not directly to Netflix's servers?

 

[Guest]

But why? Why does it go through there servers and not directly to Netflix's servers?

Bureaucracy.

 

[m4a4]

But why? Why does it go through there servers and not directly to Netflix's servers?

My guess would be security reasons. XBL is locked down pretty tight...

 

[Vrmithrax]

Question is, why on earth was this a requirement in the first place?!

Money. Money is why. I mean, why do things like every other Netflix-enabled system out there, when you can force it to route through your own server to make your users to pay you for the privilege? So what if they already paid out a good chunk of money for your hardware, pay premium prices for your licensed games, and are already paying a subscription fee for the other services? This is money we're talking about! There's never enough coming in from our sucker... I mean, customers...

Realistically, it seems like their Live Gold subscriptions weren't the cash cow MS wanted them to be, so they did whatever they could to force people to buy the service. Anyone surprised by greedy **** moves from Microsoft these days really isn't paying attention.

 

[Guest]

Realistically, it seems like their Live Gold subscriptions weren't the cash cow MS wanted them to be, so they did whatever they could to force people to buy the service. Anyone surprised by greedy **** moves from Microsoft these days really isn't paying attention.

Microsoft, Google, Apple, Sony, what's the difference? They are all greedy as hell. Its called being a business, and being IN business. You should maybe look up value creation and acquisition strategies next time you're in a place of learning. You might find it illuminating, or in your case shocking, as you have a very rose tinted view of the business world.