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This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
It’s been a rough couple of days for gamers who also love to binge their favorite TV shows with their consoles: At the beginning of the week, Netflix began informing PlayStation 3 owners with an onscreen message that it would discontinue support for its PS3 app after March 2nd. And today, Hulu is pulling the plug on its app for Nintendo’s original Switch.
Netflix’s decision to discontinue its PS3 app, which was first spotted by multiple Reddit users, is particularly noteworthy: The console used to be at the forefront of Netflix’s living room tech efforts, only to eventually be outflanked by the growing popularity of more modern and capable smart TVs and streaming devices.
Netflix first launched an app for Sony’s PlayStation 3 in late 2009, with a twist: Instead of shipping a downloadable app for the device, the company initially distributed discs with its app to its members.
Netflix eventually began distributing its app through the PlayStation Store, and quickly became a hit. By 2012, the PS3 was the most popular streaming device among its customer base. “PS3 is our largest TV-connected platform in terms of Netflix viewing, and this year, at times, even surpassed the PC in hours of Netflix enjoyment to become our number one platform overall,” said then-CEO Reed Hastings at the time.
But the game console wasn’t just a boon for Netflix’s streaming hours. It also quickly became a key part of Netflix’s app development strategy. On other platforms, Netflix had to ship a new app version every time it changed anything about the app’s features or design. The PlayStation app, on the other hand, was based on HTML5, which allowed Netflix to swap out individual components and test features and design choices with subsets of its audience on the fly. This quickly turned the PS3 into a cornerstone of Netflix’s A/B-testing strategy.
“PS3 is a natural fit for Netflix in terms of developing and first deploying our most advanced features,” Hastings said in 2012. “We can transparently update our application with new features on a daily basis.”
As a result, PS3 owners also got to see many Netflix features before those features arrived on Roku and other streamers. This included casting support, which Netflix debuted on the PS3 close to a year before Google launched its own Chromecast streaming adapter.
Netflix isn’t the only streaming venture that owes a debt to game consoles: In 2002, enthusiasts built the Xbox Media Player to watch videos they had downloaded from the internet or ripped from DVDs on Microsoft’s original Xbox. The project soon became known as XBMC, or the Xbox Media Center, and has since morphed into Kodi, a cross-platform media player. XBMC also laid the foundation for Plex, which has since outgrown its media center roots to also become a streaming service for ad-supported content.
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