Microsoft announces that music, TV and films get more use than games on Xbox 360

by Ben Abbott at 5:17 pm on Wednesday, 28 March 2012

In a surprise announcement, Microsoft have revealed that watching movies, TV shows and listening to music is a more popular use of the Xbox 360 console than gaming.

Yusuf Mehdi, head of marketing and strategy for Xbox, said that households spent an average of 84 hours per month on Xbox LIVE playing games (up 30% from the previous year) and that a little over half of this time was actually used on movies, TV and music. This is a particularly interesting point when compared to the 150 hours households are reported to spend on average watching TV per month.

“What we’re seeing is that people are turning on the Xbox to play games and then keeping it on afterwards to get other types of entertainment,” Mehdi stated. This follows what most perceive as a push for the system to become an entertainment hub, highlighted by a new dashboard sporting an increasingly broad focus on a larger range of media. BBC iPlayer and HBO Go (in America) are the most recent additions to the console’s Xbox LIVE services, further highlighting an initiative that has been in development for some time.

Indeed, Otto Berkes (who assisted with the launch of the Xbox and is now senior vice president of HBO) claimed that the “original vision for the Xbox was for it to be the heart of connected digital entertainment and it has been amazing to watch the arc”.

Source: Los Angeles Times (via CVG)

- Ben Abbott

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