Machiavellian said:
The reason the Cable Apps are coming because MS has partnerships with those companies. In other words they have signed contracts which usually involves money changing hands for services. @2: They have, not sure if you keep up with such info but MS has been going on about their support for awhile. Here is a statement from them in November. I shorten it but if you want the full message as well as all the apps coming within the next few months you can go to this site. http://www.comingsoon.net/news/gamenews.php?id=111179 Something truly unique we’re doing with Xbox One is bringing together your favorite TV channels and entertainment app channels into one screen. Xbox One is also the only games and entertainment system that enables HDMI pass through. You can create your own personal Favorites in OneGuide – the Xbox One electronic program guide – so you can quickly and easily choose what you want to watch, whether it’s a TV channel like CBS, NBC or ESPN, or something inside an app like Xbox Video, Hulu Plus or the NFL on Xbox One. You can even add your personal photos and videos from the SkyDrive app to your OneGuide Favorites. Its not that the market is weak or flawed its the fact that it cost a lot of money to operate in that space and also make a profit. The market is huge and the cable companies are the top dogs in the industry. They pay huge amounts of money to content providers to provide the content. To think that Sony can run in the same space and not have to pay the same price is being naive. One person talked about Sony making a deal with Viacon and thus getting their channels. Why do you think bundling exist. Its because these big content providers sell to the cable companies all of those stations as a package deal thus its cost effective for the cable companies to do the same and bundle channels to the consumer. Do you think Sony will be able to split out the channels from Viacon and allow users to just pick the one they want for a cheaper price. I am very doubtful this will happen. It would mean that Sony could pontentiall lose money on each subscription to their service and thats the last thing Sony need is to be losing money. There is no magic bullet in this space because of the price of entry. MS, Apple and Google have tried and MS sold their business. Apple has been trying for awhile and so has Google. Sony is not an internet provider so what do you think if someone decides to go with their IPTV solution but they have Time Warner cable internet service. Running an IPTV service will kill that person download cap thus getting them throttled. Now your IPTV is a choppy mess. Last but not least, people seem to think that Sony can change the industry but they are the industry. Meaning that they are part of the reason why the industry is the way it is. If MS, Apple and Google could not change the system, I am finding it very hard to see how Sony who isn't in the same league money wise as those companies can do the same. |
That doesn't specifically mean that those apps are coming mostly because it doesn't specifically say that more web based TV apps are on the way. But even if they do it still isn't really the same as what Sony is planning.
The market is certainly weak. Pay-TV companies are losing 10's (and sometimes 100's) of thousands of subscribers a quarter. For instance, Comcast who is the largest Cable provider in the country lost 348,000 subscribers in the first 3 quarters of 2013. On the flipside, internet subs are up for pretty much everyone.
The industry is in trouble. Things have been going south since 2008 and have not rebounded with the economy. The losses continue to accelerate and content providers know this and are looking for ways to stop the decline. Sony offers them a new way to get there content into viewers homes. But in order for it to work it can't just be another cable service. They can't just push out a carbon copy of a normal cable system and expect things to be fine so it's totally reasonable to expect them to offer channels in a new way or at a better price. At the very least it would also give consumers a choice instead of being stuck with just one or two options when picking a cable company.
As far as data caps go that's going to be an issue for anyone using Netflicks or Hulu aswell but it hasn't stopped them from gaining huge numbers of subscribers.
The market has also changed a lot since MS or Apple tried to get involved and so has the available technology. Google is still trying to get into TV and is actually taking a similar approach to Sony so far. Although they don't appear to be having the same success as they currently don't have any deals in place.
There are still a ton of questions we don't have the answers to and there are plenty of obsticals that need to be overcome. But if Sony has figured it out than they certainly have the userbase and the know-how to make it into something big.
Bet with Adamblaziken:
I bet that on launch the Nintendo Switch will have no built in in-game voice chat. He bets that it will. The winner gets six months of avatar control over the other user.