Microsoft cools Xbox 360 iPlayer talk

The chances of BBC’s popular iPlayer appearing on Xbox 360 appear slimmer than ever today after Microsoft’s Senior Regional Director for Northern Europe Neil Thompson claimed that the company would have to find a way of differentiating its offer from the competition to make the proposition viable.

I think the way we look at the services we have with our TV services, we’re very happy with what we’re doing with Sky,” he told OXM.

What we really want to do is ensure that we can differentiate and bring new things and that’s about really looking at the services we have and saying ‘how can we improve those and make those even more interactive and more differentiated?’

iPlayer is available on a lot of platforms, people connect to that content in a lot of ways today and it’s like ‘where would we add value to that particular property at this point?’ and we think we can probably add value in other areas [such as Kinect] at the moment.”

The iPlayer has been a popular addition to the online offerings of Wii and PS3, and Sony’s machine will play host to a bespoke version of BBC’s iPlayer 3 later this year.

It had previously been suggested that the iPlayer will not be heading to Xbox Live as Microsoft has demanded it form part of Xbox Live’s paid-for Gold service – a move that would be in direct contrast to the Beeb’s public service remit.