Culture

On the box: television comes to your games console

September 07, 2009
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I've been writing this month for Prospect on the remarkable success of British broadcasters BSkyB—and why their current ascendancy is due to more than their much-discussed ownership of live sports or their marketing of high definition television. Specifically, I'm interested in their move towards a little-considered area of the broadcasting market: the video games console. Thanks to a deal signed earlier this year, British owners of Microsoft's Xbox 360 consoles will shortly be able to access a version of Sky television directly through their machines. More and more people are starting to do something like this in broadcast media—the BBC's forthcoming Canvas platform will transform how people use Freeview television online, for instance. But what interests me is the skill with which Sky have positioned themselves as the dominant British media service for which people are willing to pay good money.

It's as much a question of perception as of technology. Yet, despite all the recent reporting of James Murdoch's assault on BBC news and the demise of services like Setanta, few people seem to have considered the positioning skills involved in maintaining a digital media brand that almost 10m British households subscribe to. These are skills that the video games industry, more than almost any other sector, has honed to a fine pitch and is continuing to evolve in its own fiercely competitive arena. You can expect the console to be the battleground for some titanic media struggles in coming decade—and Sky's early claim to this terrain suggests it's unlikely to lose its lead any time soon.

My article is now free to read in full here.