Well, this was a poorly-kept secret. I and other sites reported that Hulu was coming to the Xbox 360, and then there was the news that Hulu was coming to the PlayStation 3. Today Hulu officially announced “Hulu Plus”, and it is of course coming to both consoles.
Hulu Plus is a subscription-based service where you can watch entire seasons of shows, including the episodes that aren’t currently available on the free version of the site. The disappointing thing about this news is that it seems that Hulu Plus will be the only way to access Hulu on your console of choice, meaning no free streaming for you.
The question I have about this is how it’s going to be implemented on consoles. PlayStation 3 has the PlayStation Plus launch, allowing access to premium options such as DLC and demos — Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold functions similarly, but until now, neither of them have bundled any kind of third-party service in their premium packages — unless you count Twitter and Facebook integration on the Xbox 360.
This would be a good opportunity for both Sony and Microsoft to add value to their respective subscription services, and allow access to Hulu Plus for all Xbox Live Gold subscribers and PlayStation Plus subscribers. It would certainly give incentive for people to sign up, but the logistics of that might be a little difficult.
More details about that are sure to come up soon. Hulu on the PlayStation 3 is currently listed as “Coming soon” (Update: apparently sometime in July), and Hulu on the Xbox 360 is currently listed as coming in “early 2011″. I’ll update this post if any more information becomes available.
Update: Hulu’s coming to the PS3 sometime in July. Major Nelson also confirmed the obvious, Hulu on Xbox 360 will require a Gold subscription.
Update 2: Major Nelson also said that the reason why it’s coming to Xbox 360 so much later is that it will be a “customized service” that ties into the Xbox community features. Sounds like he means inviting your friends to watch with you and stuff like that. So there you have it. No word from him about whether or not this will be included in Gold subscriptions or not. Still no confirmation that Hulu Plus will cost if you have a PlayStation Plus subscription, but I’ll keep digging.
Update 3: PS3 users will have to have a PlayStation Plus subscription to be able to stream Hulu Plus to their PS3. It also appears that in addition to having a PS+ subscription, you’re also going to have to have a Hulu Plus subscription.
Related posts:
- Hulu on PS3?
- Hulu on Xbox 360
- E3 2010: Microsoft Drops Price on Current 360 Models
- Red Dead Redemption Cheats Xbox 360 PS3
- Red Dead Redemption DLC Patched
