Xbox users are growing fast and they are growing up which in this context may be more important to advertisers.

Late 2007 the Extended Media Centre which hooks up to your Xbox 360 console will begin delivering iPTV through tradition telecom providers such as AT&T in the USA. Deutsche Telecom, Swisscom and Britsh Telecom are also said to have jumped on the Microsoft bandwagon. Valley View reporter Chris Nuttall reports in the Financial Times that “Microsoft’s announcement at the CES that by enabling a new medium for new players, this offering was of potentially more consequence than all the other announcements at the show this year.

He also states that ” While it makes perfect sense for companies from different sectors to converge on these new opportunities, it spells confusion for the consumer faced with so much more choice, differing technologies and connection methods for Ip TV and Video on Demand”.

In my opinion offering IP tv through the Xbox 360 makes perfect commercial sense. There are already more than 10 million Xbox 360 users in more than 37 countries. It will make it easier for you to enjoy games as well as your favourites TV channels from the same set up box. Over 5 million Xbox live community members will be connected allowing them to invite friends to play games, share content and talk over IP.

The Xbox 360 console enables telephone companies to use the set up box to rival those of existing cable and satellite TV companies which will sting current players in this market especially on a localized level such as Europe.

What does this mean for advertisers? Nothing much yet and it will depend what content is on offer. I do not believe this will be important for European advertisers until way into 2008 but it doesn’t hurt to keep in touch with the number of Xbox consoles being sold worldwide. In the meantime we will be keeping our eye out for competitors which I guess will be easy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 10:47 am and is filed under Anything else, DTV, Telecom, Video, VoiP, Voice, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.