If you have a silver (free) Xbox Live account, you won't be able to stream movies from Netflix account when the "New Xbox Experience" drops this fall.
Netflix is such a casual service and a paid subscription is already required for Xbox users to access the service through their 360. But a paid Xbox Live Gold subscription is needed on top of that. Why would Microsoft limit who can access this cool feature?
I asked Microsoft about this decision at E3, but they couldn't give me a clear answer. When they came to San Francisco two weeks ago with the updated dashboard, I got one.
"I think it's about adding value to the gold membership," said Xbox director of marketing Albert Penello. "I mean, obviously, the partnership there -- it's a lot of bandwidth. Obviously, there's the cost of the licensing on the Netflix side, so…you're not really paying for the movie. On silver, you have to pay for the TV show or movie that you download. Here, you don't, so the relationship in gold kind of takes care of that funny business."
It doesn't sound like they're budging on this one. For Netflix access, gold-level service is required. Then again, just yesterday, Netflix said it costs $1 extra per month to rent Blu-ray movies from them.
At least in this scenario, if you're a gold member, you're not being charged extra.