Columbia Pictures (shhh! It’s Sony) Stops Netflix from streaming their movies and shows to the Xbox 360

Later today NXE is launching. I got in the preview a bit early and had the pleasure to play around with it. It’s really a very big improvement over the original 360 interface! I also tested and played around with the Netflix streaming, which is one of the highlights of the NXE launch. I’ve used the Roku Netflix Player in the past so it wasn’t anything too new, but 360’s interface is nicer. The 360 is also the first device to offer HD content streamed from Netflix.

So now, just a few hours before the official launch of the NXE, Columbia Pictures (owned by Sony) has blocked all their streamable content on Netflix from being able to be viewed on the XBox 360. You can still view all their content on the Roku Player, your Windows or Mac, just not the 360. It seems that some licensing issue has materialized just mere hours before the launch.

This whole situation annoys me to no end, and wether it was intentional as some childish scheme to try and hurt the Microsoft launch of the NXE on the 360, or just simply bad timing – it looks awfully bad for Sony.

Here is some coverage on some other sites: Kotaku, Engadget, Destructoid, Aeropause, Joystiq, Kombo