Video Marketplace and International Markets

Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace

Video Marketplace and International Markets

WRH Canuck 12-13-2006, 1:48 AM

On the forum, there have been many, many posts by Xbox Live users around the world asking why they don't have access to Video Marketplace now and/or when will they have access. Consequently, I thought I would create one post to try and address these questions.

First, we very much appreciate the interest and enthusiasm form everyone around the world about video marketplace. The decision to only launch this in the US was made deliberately with a number of sound business reasons. They are:

  • While MSFT is a big company, but we don't have unlimited resources to do whatever we want, we have to prioritize where and how we do things.
  • The US is the biggest market, I think you would all agree that makes it a priority
  • Most US content that is licensed digitially is produced and distributed by the same company - think about South Park, Comedy Central produces and distributes it - this makes it MUCH easier to license it because it is the same company and they aren't going to fight about who gets the proceeds from the digital sale
  • Almost all US content distributed abroad is distributed by local companies that are seperate from the producing company, increasing the complexities and basically requiring that the producer and the internatioanl distributor amend their deal before they can do something with us.
  • Securing local content would deal with that, but then you have the fact that we only have so many people working on this and the time and resources it takes to do 1 deal with a US partner for 700 hours of content for the US market is about the same as it would take to do a deal with a local partner with probably less content for a much smaller market - so the math clearly points you to focusing on US first.
  • Lastly, there are more infrastructure requirements you need to have in place to do international well and we felt it better to get everything straight in the US before we add complexity with other markets and languages.

With all this said, we are looking at what, when and how we might roll Video Marketplace in other markets. We are not ready at this juncture to talk about any specifics. We can appreciate that this is frustating while you are dying to download some HD movies, but I think you would agree that it is better for us to tell you once, when we are certain, then to tell you something now and then something different later.

Thanks again for everyone's interest and passion around Video Marketplace, we do appreciate it and we are taking note of it.