Microsoft talks Sky

This morning Microsoft announced an exclusive partnership with Sky to bring the broadcaster’s content to Xbox 360. Not only will you be able to watch live Premier League Football, but movies and Ross Kemp too. But how will it work? How much will it cost? And what’s Ross Kemp doing in Afghanistan anyway? We sat down with Xbox LIVE product unit manager Jerry Johnson to get answers.

VideoGamer.com: I already have Sky HD at home. Why would I watch Sky through my Xbox 360?

Jerry Johnson: Look at the community features and some of the things Xbox LIVE is built on. You’re also a gamer, you also play with your friends, I would assume you probably have a pretty full friends list right now…

VideoGamer.com: It’s getting there.

JJ: Yeah! The opportunity to actually start to enjoy some of this content as a community, as a group, begin to party up with seven of your other mates, get in and enjoy sports, enjoy this content together, we think is something that is a value proposition. Sky Player really offers two different value propositions. For those that don’t currently, or can’t, or choose not to have a satellite dish, it gives them an opportunity to get Sky Player without the dish, without the direct to home service. But at the same time for users that do have the direct to home service, using the Sky Player is another way to enjoy the content that you love in a bonus way. In another room perhaps, on the go.

When you think about the Xbox, for me I’ve got a HD box sitting in my living room as well, I still have an Xbox in my bedroom. It’s going to be nice that I can do video on demand, I can go into my bedroom and I can do these things in my bedroom, as well as if I want to enjoy the convenience and the ability to get together with a group of friends and enjoy a football game together, egg them on, have voice contact and not have to have a phone sitting in my lap texting them while I’m watching the football match. I can do that right there even in my living room on my Xbox if I choose to.

VideoGamer.com: Sky content on 360 will be standard definition. I have HD Sky, and I enjoy watching football in HD, so I might not want to downgrade and watch it in standard definition on my HD-enabled TV.

JJ: The focus of both of our teams in this partnership is to offer choice to the consumer. Right now when we think about what gets delivered through Sky Player, it’s standard def broadcast, it’s close to DVD quality. Continuing to evaluate how that changes over time, how broadband penetration changes and listening to our customers and what they ask for, we’ll continue to evaluate things like that.

VideoGamer.com: So Sky HD content through the Xbox may be something for the future?

JJ: We’re always open. We’re launching something in autumn, which I look at as our V1 of this product, and I think that the relationship we have with the Sky team is something that isn’t just about launch. It’s about what we continue to do as we move forward with the experience for our users.

VideoGamer.com: Am I right in understanding that being able to form a party and watching Sky content will be limited to Premier League football?

JJ: Right now we’re evaluating all the different types of content experiences that would make sense. We use Premier League football as an example for the demo today just because it is something we believe is very unique to the partnership with Sky. It’s something we think we could lead with here that would be trend-setting and groundbreaking from a global perspective for the Xbox LIVE platform.

VideoGamer.com: Is it guaranteed that the party system will be open to Premier League football?

JJ: Premier League football will be part of the content that will be streamed on the console. The demo today lays out a road map of the direction we want to go in with things.

VideoGamer.com: Do you know what kind of quality the stream will be?

JJ: Right now we are going to be leveraging the Sky Player service, so the quality of the content that’s currently being delivered when streaming to the PC will be the same technology that we deliver in the stream into the console.

VideoGamer.com: If you don’t have a Sky subscription but you do have an Xbox 360, what is the process that you go through to sign up?

JJ: We’re not talking about commercial terms as far as what is the subscription services and these sorts of things, but what it’ll be is if you have an Xbox you’ll be able to go up and create a Sky account and you’ll link that Sky account to your Xbox account and from that point forward you’ll be able to enjoy the content. The goal right now is to give you the ability to browse content, get samples of the experience and understand more about it before going through that process. You can imagine a very similar to, not to draw too many comparisons, with the way Netflix was implemented inside the US, as far as the ability to get that experience, be able to browse it, understand a little bit about it, create a relationship with both the partners, both Xbox and Sky and go ahead.

VideoGamer.com: Is the idea to be able to sign up through your Xbox without having to do anything else, of will you have to call someone or go on a website on your PC as well?

JJ: The goal is if you have a Sky subscription we want to make it simple for you from the Xbox to link those two accounts together. If you already have a membership you can. Right now with Netflix for example you can join the account but you need to go to the web to do that joining. We’re trying to eliminate that step as part of the implementation we’re putting in right now, but there still could be the need to have to go over to another site to facilitate some of the things, whether it’s related to payment or account creation. We’re working through those details right now. There will be more on that and details on the user experience as we get closer to launch.

VideoGamer.com: I know you’re not talking packages or pricing right now, but will I have to pay anything extra if I already have a Sky subscription.

JJ: We’re not talking about any of the commercial terms today. We’re just focusing on the user experience.

VideoGamer.com: You can download movies to your laptop via Sky Player and watch them when you want. Might downloads be offered through Xbox LIVE eventually or will it remain stream only?

JJ: Right now for launch we’re very focuses on bringing the best streaming experience that’s based on demand.

VideoGamer.com: Apart from watching live football in a party, why should existing Sky customers sign up?

JJ: One of the things that we’ve built the value around Xbox LIVE is about the community, is about the 20 million users that you connect to, your list of friends, your mates that you interact with on a regular basis. How can you start to bring that to that user, that person who’s used to interacting with their friends? How do you tie something in besides Halo or Call of Duty? We think there is an exciting experience and a fun experience to have there, and we think that it will be compelling. We’ve got pretty positive responses. We’ve shown it to some other gamers and some other people in the community. As soon as they see the interactive sports experience it’s like, the first thing we hear is, wow I won’t have to text on my phone!

VideoGamer.com: That, for me is the most compelling thing about the service. It’s not something that we’ve been able to do before through a console.

JJ: As we start to introduce more types of friendly competitive type aspects that lay on top of that experience, things like predictive play and some of the other things where if you had a group of eight players together, what other type of things can you do that would actually continue to drive that social interaction? Things that are just natural, like if you were in a bar, how you would interact while you were in a pub watching the game? We believe that there’s a lot of opportunity.

VideoGamer.com: When I’m in the pub watching the football we often have impromptu bets about who might score first and when.

JJ: That’s the kind of friendly stuff that we believe could be part of this. Of course, we’re not introducing betting! But just like any form of competition, there’s hardcore competition and then there’s the kind of competition that’s friendly, that drives social interaction, that’s the thing that we really have the power to do, just take you and your seven mates, while you’re watching the game, what are the natural things you want to do? Even though you’re not sitting on the same couch or on a bar stool next to each other, you’re connected via the service. It’s great to watch commentary, Soccer AM, all the different programmes, the type of content that Sky brings, you don’t have to squint that hard to see the type of community and bringing people together around that, the power of what we could create.

Sky Player is set to launch on Xbox LIVE this autumn.