The BBC has announced that its popular iPlayer will be coming to the Nintendo Wii console soon marking the second time in recent weeks that the BBC has made partnerships for its service.
For those unaware, the iPlayer offers content from many of the BBC’s TV shows and radio stations.
“Working with Nintendo marks another exciting milestone for BBC iPlayer,” commented Erik Huggers, group controller for Future Media and Technology at the BBC.
“It underlines our commitment to reaching new audiences by making BBC iPlayer available on as many platforms as possible.
“The BBC’s catch-up TV service can now be accessed on an increasing number of different platforms - from the web and portable devices to gaming consoles. It will shortly be available on TV.”
The one hitch is that current Wii owners need to pay a fee to have the Internet Channel but the BBC noted that it is looking into way to making the iPlayer service completely free in the future.
“This exciting alliance with the BBC is yet another way in which Nintendo is looking to broaden the market for its products by offering compelling and relevant content to families,” added David Yarnton, general manager of Nintendo UK.
“BBC iPlayer on Wii will offer Wii owners another reason to turn their console on everyday and adds to the already established non gaming content on Wii that includes news and weather channels and an internet browser.”
Result for: gaming consoles
Analysts at Wedbush Morgan Securities have reported that there is the likely possibility that Netflix will strike a deal with Microsoft to stream movies through the Xbox 360.
The report came after the investment banking firm looked through comments made by Netflix management. If the report turns out to be true, the popular online rental service would be able to stream movie directly to million’s of consumer’s gaming consoles.
“As we have speculated in the past, we believe that one of Netflix’s partners is Microsoft. We arrive at this conclusion based upon Netflix management repeatedly mentioning ‘Internet enabled video game consoles’,” said a Wedbush Morgan statement.
“While there are three such consoles, only one - Microsoft’s Xbox 360 - has a sufficiently large installed base to make sense from a streaming partnership with Netflix.”
“The competitive advantage of such an alliance is clear: Netflix customers who are Xbox Live members will have the ability to stream online content through their Xbox 360s directly to their televisions. The ability to do so is available without the Xbox 360, but requires a measure of technological sophistication and a high tolerance for failure,” it added.
The “measure of technological sophistication” would most likely involve Roku’s new Netflix set-top box which allows users to stream movies to their TVs using Netflix’s Instant Watch feature.
In January, Netflix gave a survey to subscribers on whether they would like the possibility of having movies streamed to their consoles.
