Screenshots Show Amazon Streaming On Xbox, But Confirmation Still Needed
Over the years, I have gotten lots of emails from people I do and don't know sharing information on new streaming services coming to the market. Yesterday, someone I don't know sent me images that show an Amazon app running on the Xbox LIVE platform for the Xbox 360, streaming videos from Amazon's Prime Streaming service. As with anything image based, you can never tell if what you are looking at is 100% legit, but the images do appear to look real to me.
I use to be in the beta testing program for Xbox and they would test new un-announced services like this with beta testers, so it's not a crazy idea that someone might get access to it and want to share it. That said, even if they are legit like I think, we don't have any way to know how quickly such a service would be rolled out to the market if it is in fact happening. I've seen most other content services on the Xbox get tested for about six months before they are made public and I have no way to tell from the images I was sent what stage the testing may be in.
In 2009, I got sent similar images of Netflix running on the Wii that I published on my blog and sure enough, two months later, Netflix announced their deal with Nintendo. That time around, I was able to confirm what was happening through a third party and was able to validate what I had been sent. In this case, I have not yet been able to verify this news from another source, but am working to do so. While I know neither Amazon or Microsoft would be willing to comment on what I was sent, I did reach reach out to representatives of the Xbox team anyway who had "no comment". I have not heard back from Amazon as of yet.
Maybe others will be able to help verify more of these details, but from what I can tell, I think it's a safe bet that Amazon's streaming service is currently being tested on the Xbox platform.
Note: I am not sharing any of the images I received.