Sony throwing wrench in Netflix Xbox launch? (Updated)

By Jeremy Yerby | November 18, 2008

Those of us in the New Xbox Experience preview have been enjoying playing Netflix movies on our Xbox 360’s for a little while, and I was all nice and ready to write up a laundry list of praises. However, I (and others) noticed some movies disappear from my Instant Queue on the Xbox. I didn’t think anything of it at first since the product is still technically pre-launch, however, the sad truth is that it appears intentional.

All movies produced by Columbia Pictures, a wholly-owned Sony subsidiary, are, as Netflix puts it, “Not available on Xbox” as of today. This was not the case previously. This includes many of the most worthwhile movie on the service. I had a sinking feeling that something was going to spoil the party.

Read it and weep. More on this as it comes.

[UPDATE] Word from Netflix via the Netflix Blog.

Hello. Steve Swasey, here, Catherine Fisher’s colleague in Corporate Communications. Following up on Catherine’s post, a comment on title availability to watch instantly:

As watching instantly becomes a more prominent part of the Netflix service, our goal is to have all of our streaming content licensed for all of our partner devices. We’re doing well in this area, but it will take some time before we fully achieve that goal. Today, titles regularly come in and out of license and there is a natural ebb and flow to what we have on license at any given point in time. In the case of Xbox 360, a few hundred titles are temporarily unavailable to be streamed via the Xbox game console. Those titles are still available to be watched on subscribers’ computers and on TVs via other partner devices, and we hope they’ll be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly.

Sure, its a BS answer, but it at least brings some hope that this is just a temporary situation.