Earlier today, Xbox announced that they are finalizing a partnership with Time Warner Cable to allow Xbox Live Gold users to stream live TV through their Xbox 360s. For the full announcement, click here. Obviously, this is the next transitional step towards the ultimate goal of funneling everything through your console in preparation for the Xbox One. The quick breakdown is that if you have an Xbox Live Gold account and a Time Warner Cable subscription, you will then be able to download the app to steam TWC content through your console. Once that is set up, you can then interact with your TV streaming via Kinect as well. Again, this is a preparatory/transitional step to get people accustomed to interacting with their TV before the Xbox One rolls out later this year.
I see this as being the first partnership of all the major cable providers. Now that this has been announced, Verizon and Comcast will do the same, if they haven’t been in negotiations already. I also fully expect Satellite providers to follow suit, and well as Google Fiber.
As for the level of TWC subscriptions required, I immediately reached out to Major Nelson via Twitter from my personal account and received an update from TWC_Help:
And from the TWC_Help themselves, we see that you’ll need “At least our standard cable package”. Obviously, if you want to stream ANYTHING, TWC or otherwise, you’re going to need a High Speed connection to begin with. But as per this convo, to be able to use the app you’ll also need to at least subscribe to their bottom tier TV package. While not the optimal solution, it will be cheaper than the Digital subscription I currently have.
Chances are, this is simply the beginning. I’m sure there will be plenty more updates and new apps to come out prior to the Next-Gen’s release. In the meantime, we’ll just site back and rock a little more Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep. I’ll be sure to post my first impressions of this soon!
Coffee and Cornchips 