The Xbox 360 is the last of the major gaming platforms to receive the BBC iPlayer. Xbox 360 users now have access to the iPlayer service, and importantly there is no requirement to have a paid Xbox Live Gold subscription.
The implementation of iPlayer on the Xbox adds gesture recognition and voice commands to the service for those with the Kinect add-on. There is also the news that the service will be launching on Sky later this year.
"Xbox is hugely successful in the UK. Given the BBC’s goal to reach its entire audience, I’m particularly excited that the BBC will be bringing iPlayer to all Xbox users at no extra cost as part of Xbox LIVE’s free membership.” “As we continue our work to make BBC iPlayer as simple as possible, we’re also excited to experiment with natural user interfaces made possible with Kinect, including voice and gesture control. We believe it’s early days for these experiences, but see a great future working with partners such as Microsoft on innovations like these."
Daniel Danker, BBC General Manager, Programmes & On-Demand
While iPlayer originally launched on personal computers, the rise of the TV platform, with iPlayer on games consoles, Smart TVs and connected set-top boxes mean that over a quarter of all requests were played back via a TV, which amounts to some 433 million requests.
About time, my on demand system is nearly complete (only FTTC to come next month).