By I just love it when consoles and services fight it out to outdo themselves. Whenever this happens the only real winner is the buyer, you, me, whoever else.
The case in question is a competition between movie streaming services such as Netflix and VUDU, even between PS3 and Xbox.
This time, Microsoft’s Xbox is getting a bump in the multimedia section. After hearing from PS3 readying VUDU the people behind Xbox got together with Netflix and came up with something special.
Xbox users will soon be able to subscribe to Netflix with a streaming only plan. Previously, anybody who wanted Netflix streaming was pretty much forced to buy the DVD option with the package.
Netflix
Speaking of Netflix’s DVD package for Xbox that gets a slight price bump. So if you feel that you want to stick to Netflix’s DVD and streaming package you had best be ready to pay a little bit more.
The average increase throughout the DVD + streaming packages equates roughly to $1 per extra DVD included. For example the Unlimited plan with 3 DVDs out at a time used to cost $16.99 and will soon be $19.99.
Let’s draw the line and do the sums; Netflix came up with a movie streaming plan to compete with VUDU’s PS3 offering. That’s good. In the process they upped the price of nearly all of their DVD plans. That’s not so good.
But, as I said before, the only one who has something to gain out of such competitions is the customer. PlayStation 3 users also get access to Netflix so the battle is not only between platforms but between actual streaming services as well.
