Free iPlayer launches on Xbox 360

The BBC has completed the roll out of iPlayer across all games consoles – with today’s launch of the service for Xbox 360.

This means the BBC content service is now available on Wii, PS3 and 360.

On 360, the app comes with Kinect-ready voice and gesture functions.

It’s taken some time for iPlayer to make it to the 360, however, as the BBC and Microsoft worked out how to add the service as free for all users.

Previously the former wasn’t comfortable with the fact that Microsoft kept all streaming services behind the Xbox Live Gold paywall – although that policy changed with the recent dashboard revamp.

At a morning briefing yesterday, the BBC said the move pushes iPlayer to a much wider audience, and also grows its ‘TV device’ viewership, which already (through other consoles and iTV boxes) made 433 million program requests last year.

The BBC projects that by 2015, over 50 per cent of requests to stream content from the service will be via TV devices such games consoles.